The sad desk salad hits the suburbs

A rosier-than-expected forecast from Sweetgreen triggered a series of analyst upgrades.

Matt Phillips

3/25/24 3:11PM

Forget semiconductors, perhaps the real technology of the moment is salad.

Shares of Sweetgreen, the salad and grainbowl spot urban professionals flocked to in the before times, are on a tear.

They’re up more than 100% this month and have more than tripled over the last year.

Sweetgreen executives forecast first-quarter — and full-year — sales would be above where Wall Street analysts were expecting, when they reported results on Feb. 29.

Interestingly, while the company was once associated with the lunchtime rush of young workers in major urban centers, Sweetgreen’s better-than-expected outlook doesn’t really suggest any kind of return-to-office upswing.

Rather the company has been gaining traction by shifting its strategy to the ‘burbs.

“What we're doing with Sweetgreen is we're broadening our footprint and broadening into new markets,” the company’s chief financial officer told an conference of analysts earlier this month. “We certainly have left the urban centers in a large way and have, yeah, grown much more in the suburban markets.”

For the record, the shares are still below their November 2021 IPO price of $28.

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Monster surges on energy drink buzz, while Celsius sinks on distribution concerns

Shares of Monster Beverage climbed 5% after the bell on Thursday, and held most of those gains into early trading on Friday, following strong Q3 results.

The energy drink giant topped market expectations, with quarterly sales up 17% year over year to $2.2 billion and adjusted net profits growing 41% to $524.5 million — 11% ahead of Wall Street’s estimates. In the report, Monster highlighted its zero-sugar line and new product launches, with a stack of novel flavors already released this year, as bright spots.

During a call with analysts, Chief Executive Hilton Schlosberg said that the global energy drink category “remains healthy with robust growth,” The Wall Street Journal reported, adding that demand for more affordable caffeinated drinks is rising as coffee has become “really expensive.”

Meanwhile, rival beverage business Celsius saw shares fall as much as 23% on its Q3 results yesterday — despite beating expectations, with revenue jumping 173% — largely due to concerns about a change in the company’s distribution channel, as its newly acquired Alani Nu brand joins the PepsiCo distribution network.