Beyond Meat drops after posting quarterly loss and lower-than-expected forecast, driven by falling US demand
Beyond Meat continued to drop in premarket trading on Tuesday after the plant-based meat maker reported a bigger Q3 loss and lower outlook for fourth-quarter sales than what Wall Street was expecting on Monday.
In Q3, the company reported an adjusted loss per share of $0.47, worse than the $0.45 loss that analysts were anticipating.
Beyond Meat posted preliminary Q3 results on October 24, estimating revenues of about $70 million (confirmed at $70.2 million with Monday’s release), down 13% year on year. Per the company’s press release, the drop was primarily driven by a 10% decrease in volume of products from weaker demand from US customers and restaurants.
Management had delayed the release of these results because it wasn’t yet able to figure out how big of a write-down to make on long-lived assets that weren’t worth as much as previously thought. Ultimately, that noncash impairment charge on its long-lived assets was $77.4 million, making up the bulk of its $81.2 million in total noncash impairment charges.
Beyond Meat expects sales of between $60 million and $65 million in the fourth quarter, short of the consensus estimate for $70.1 million. CEO Ethan Brown commented that “category headwinds and an accompanying softer top-line continue” to weigh on the company.
The stock, which attracted significant retail interest — spiking more than 1,000% in only three days in late October — has been sliding since it peaked on October 22. At the time of writing, BYND is down about 6% relative to Monday’s close — leaving the stock up just 23% on where it was one month ago, before its mind-boggling rally.
