Roots Corp’s debut on the Toronto Stock Exchange may be one some investors would like to forget.

Shares of the Canadian retailer (ROOT.TO) plummeted nearly 17 per cent to close its first trading day at $10, shaving $2 from the initial offering price of $12.

Analysts told BNN that the timing of the IPO may have been a factor in the stock’s performance, given the weakness being seen in the Canadian retail sector.

“I just feel that with the HBCs of the world and some of the other retailers out there that there’s just worry about the online presence: The Amazons, the Wal-Marts, other types of companies like those that are stealing market share,” Cole Kachur, senior wealth advisor of Scotia Wealth Management told BNN on Wednesday.

“It’s probably something that’s overdone and it’s a short-term thing, but you don’t necessarily want to ride the wave down. You’d probably want to wait to see a little bit of a turnaround before you started picking stuff up in that sector,” he said.

Roots raised $200 million in its initial public offering, with most of it going back to shareholders.  

“It was private equity that put some money on the table. I think they wanted to take their money out of the equation,” Wolfgang Klein, senior investment advisor at Canaccord Genuity Wealth Management told BNN. “So, it’s not going back to the company, per se.”

Roots' weak start may have been foreshadowed by the company having to prices its shares at $12 apiece, which was lower than the initial price range of between $14 and $16 per share the company had targeted.

It comes at a time when the retail landscape is facing growing uncertainty, including Sears Canada filing for bankruptcy and Hudson’s Bay Company getting mired in a battle with an activist investor, all under the shadow of Amazon’s growing online dominance.

“You start to look at how Amazon is affecting sector by sector by sector … retail’s a very, very interesting landscape,” Klein told BNN. “But, with drones, with delivery, with this shared economy that we’re now involved in: The whole landscape is changing.”

Kachur says those challenges have underscored Roots’ less than stellar performance on Wednesday.

“Even before the IPO, the pricing did come down. So, you got the understanding that there wasn’t going to be full-scale demand for it and we’re starting to see that here in the market here today,” he said.