On Monday, Beyond Meat Inc. (BYND, Financial) saw its rating jump from a Barron's equivalent of a buy to a sell. Barclays analyst Benjamin Theurer skipped over rating the company as a hold and joined the majority of Wall Street analysts marking the company as a sell.
Beyond Meat is a provider of plant-based "meats," such as burgers (64% of 2019 sales), sausage (23%), ground beef (13%) and chicken. Unlike other vegetarian products, Beyond Meat seeks to replicate the look, cook and taste of meat, is targeted to omnivores and is sold in the meat case. The products are widely available across the U.S. and Canada and in 63 additional countries as well.
International (outside of the U.S. and Canada) revenue represented 16% of 2019 sales. The company's products are available in retail stores and the food-service channel (on college campuses and restaurants such as Carl's Jr., Subway, Dunkin' Donuts, A&W Canada, TGI Fridays and Del Taco, with test markets for burgers at select McDonald's and Hardee's locations, and for boneless fried chicken at KFC).
The ratings jump came on the heels of Beyond Meat seeing a week-long decrease in price per share. Alongside the majority of publicly traded companies, Beyond Meat took a beating in March and saw its value drop to as low as $54.02 on June 8. The company had been rallying over the first two weeks of June before seeing the current dip.
On June 29, the company was trading at $141.68 per share with a market cap of $8.82 billion. GuruFocus gives the company a financial strength rating of 9 out of 10 and a profitability rank of 1 out of 10. A cash-to-debt ratio of 8.84 places it above 81.26% of consumer packaged goods companies. Beyond Meat reported increased earnings in the first quarter of 2020 despite a lower-than-average operating margin.
Over the last year, Beyond Meat has seen primarily sells by gurus and insiders. December 2019 and this month were both peak times for sells by insiders. Gurus Philippe Laffont (Trades, Portfolio) and Jim Simons (Trades, Portfolio) both made buys into Beyond Meat during the first quarter.
Top guru shareholders include Vanguard Group Inc. (Trades, Portfolio), BlackRock Inc. (Trades, Portfolio), Barclays PLC (Trades, Portfolio) and Credit Suisse AG (Trades, Portfolio).
Disclaimer: Author owns no stocks mentioned.
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