Beyond Meat’s Dirty Factor And Grim Future

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Beyond Meat’s Dirty Factor And Grim Future

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Beyond Meat Inc. (NASDAQ: BYND), the meatless meat company, has posted grim financial reports recently. This has led Wall St. to question whether meatless meat has a bright future. As management has tried to contend with investor discontent, another problem exists. Bloomberg found one of its plants produced meatless meat under circumstances that would make customers’ stomachs turn.

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The Bloomberg report was damning. It reported the facility had what appeared to be mold, Listeria, and “food safety” issues. Potential Beyond Meat customers have to pause and ask whether its products could cause serious health problems.

In the most recently reported quarter, Beyond Meat reported revenue dropped 22.5% to $82.5 million. Beyond Meat is supposed to be a growth company at the vanguard of the meatless meat revolution. As it turns out, there may be no revolution at all. Digging through its complex financial report shows that Beyond Meat also lost $101 million. The company also forecasted that future revenue growth would be a high hurdle to clear.

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As earnings were released, Beyond Meat President and CEO Ethan Brown said, “As we shared last month, Beyond Meat is executing a full force pivot to a sustainable growth model, emphasizing the achievement of cash flow positive operations within the second half of 2023.” Investors may ask, “A pivot to what?” If the demand for meatless meat has fallen, a pivot does not resolve the issue.

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The harsh reality about meatless meat is that people may have found they want real meat. For the most part, it is less expensive. And vegetarians already have huge menus of foods that have not included meatless meat–ever.

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A dirty factory may be all that is needed to make Beyond Meat a permanently poor investment. The stock is down 70% this year. That is likely not the bottom.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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