Beyond Meat Stock Soars 163% On Wall Street Debut

Shares of vegan burger maker Beyond Meat zoomed at Wall Street debut on May 2 after investors lapped up the plant-based meat maker's stock.

On day one of trading, the stock jumped 163 percent taking the California company’s valuation to $3.8 billion. Shares, priced at $25 at the start of trading soared to $72 during the trading day, before closing at $65.75.

The phenomenal surge in market cap

The impressive stock market debut has earned Beyond Meat the fame of best-performing public offering by a major U.S. company in twenty years.

In the IPO, the company sold 9.5 million shares to raise at least $240 million.

Now the company plans to invest the proceeds of the deal to expand the manufacturing facilities and boost up sales and marketing with “general corporate purposes,” according to the prospectus.

CEO sees a big opportunity

Speaking at the stock market launch on the Nasdaq exchange, founder and chief executive Ethan Brown said plant-based meat is an “enormous opportunity for economic growth in rural America and throughout the world.”

Beyond Meat has been in the business of creating meat substitutes using plant ingredients such as proteins from peas, beans, and soy to replicate the animal-based meat.

The bulk of the company's revenues comes from its flagship Beyond Burger patties. Imitation sausages and vegan ground beef are the other important products.

Backed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates

Beyond Meat is backed by many prominent investors including Microsoft founder Bill Gates and actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

Although leading American meat processor Tyson Foods had picked a 6.5 percent stake in Beyond Meat, the stake was sold last week as the firm wanted to develop own alternative protein products.

Beyond Meat is working on some aggressive strategies to expand sales outside the U.S market.

Beyond Meat entered the U.K market via supermarkets where meat alternatives are getting more shelf space.

Beyond Burger made its presence at 350 Tesco stores in August 2018.

According to research by the Vegan Society, the vegan population is surging in the U.K. There were 540,000 vegans across the U.K in 2016 that is drastically up from 150,000 in 2006.

In 2018, Beyond Meat announced that $50 million of its revenues came from retail sales, including Amazon's Whole Foods Market and Kroger Co supermarkets, while restaurants offered $37m of sales.

The regulatory documents filed before the stock market debut revealed that Beyond Meat's net loss is coming down.

While the net loss narrowed from $30.4m a year earlier to $29.9 million in the year ended 31 December 2018, the net revenue doubled to $87.9m during the same period.