Beyond Meat Collapses After Missing Revenue Forecast, Blames COVID

Update 1630ET: After a tempestuous day, Beyond Meat shares are collapsing after hours following a miss on top-line sales.

Global sales rose 2.7% in the third quarter to $94.4 million, the company said Monday in a statement, well below the $132.1 million average of analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The company said a decline in restaurant demand impacted sales.

“For the first time since the pandemic began, we experienced the full brunt and unpredictability of Covid-19 on our net revenues,” Chief Executive Officer Ethan Brown said.

BYND is now down almost 30% on the day…

That is the lowest since May…

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As we detailed earlier, Beyond Meat shares reversed course violently after being pummeled early in the session, touching as low as $141 per share, despite the Dow being up well over 1,000 points for the entire session.

The plunge in shares was a breakneck-speed response to a headline that McDonald’s was developing its own “McPlant” in-house meat-free burger for trials next year. Competitor Burger King is already offering a similar product, its “Impossible” Whopper, in partnership with Impossible Foods. 

But BYND shares swung higher in early afternoon trading after Reuters clarified that Beyond Meat helped co-create the McPlant with McDonald’s. 

The market at first believed the original incomplete headline to mean that McDonald’s was foregoing a partnership and was doing their meat-free R&D in-house. For instance, outlets like CNBC reported this morning that the McPlant was “created by McDonald’s and for McDonald’s”. At the same time, no supplier had been named:

The company has not yet disclosed the supplier for the line. A company spokesperson declined to identify their supplier but said that McDonald’s will not be manufacturing the products.

But a few hours later, around 1345 EST, headlines crossed the wire to the contrary:

BEYOND MEAT, MCDONALD’S CO-CREATED MCPLANT, REUTERS SAYS

BEYOND MEAT QUICKLY TURNS POSITIVE

BEYOND MEAT CONFIRMS CREATED MCPLANT WITH MCD: RTRS

Beyond Meat shares are roughly unchanged on the day now.

We will update this story as more details become available.