![]() In some ways, he says, it’s a sign of its success. ![]() Speaking last week, though, Brown says that there’s nothing so unusual about Beyond’s position. A January cover story from Bloomberg Businessweek, for instance, had nary a peep from Beyond’s CEO. ![]() (The company plans to contest the claims, which is says lack merit.)īrown has often given reporters the silent treatment when they come knocking to talk about Beyond’s struggles. But there was also more bad news this spring: an investor lawsuit claiming that Brown and fellow executives had lied about the company’s business prospects back in the good old days in order to inflate the company’s stock price. Beyond had slowed its cash burn to $59 million from more than $100 million during the same quarter in 2022, beating analysts expectations. In May the company released new quarterly financials that seemed to show some modest progress. In October, the company laid off 19% of its staff, and it’s also seen three high-profile C-suite departures.īrown has been trying to turn things around. Instead, global sales numbers fell almost 10%. The company posted a loss of $366 million last year-though that wouldn’t be so bad if burning that cash had pushed Beyond products onto more menus and dinner plates. From a supernova IPO peak of $234 per share in 2019, Beyond’s stock price is down to just $15.81 as of July 20. that started it all, has fared particularly badly in some ways, especially compared to its biggest rival, Redwood City, Calif.-based Impossible Foods (it helps though, that Impossible is a private company, which means it can keep its financials close to the chest). More than a dozen startups in the space have folded in recent months. High food prices have caused shoppers to forgo expensive meat alternatives, while cooling hype and high interest rates have tightened the spigot of venture capital that fuels the industry’s smaller players. It’s rougher out there than it was during the plant meat glory days. You just have to be comfortable with both.” “When you’re struggling, it’s the opposite. “When you’re doing well, they make you seem like you have the Midas touch,” he says, speaking in a hotel room in Midtown Manhattan last week. Instead, there’s only one question on the minds of financial analysts and business journalists: Can Beyond Meat actually make money? Brown has had plenty of time to think about the dynamic. Today, Brown still has the same talking points-environment, health, animal welfare-but fewer people seem to be listening. It was a rare business that was doing well while doing good-and it helped that it was doing really, really well. In talks and interviews with friendly journalists (including two sit downs with this magazine) Brown spoke about how his products could help change the world by cutting livestock emissions, improving people’s health, and displacing the systematic animal cruelty that underpins Americans’ eating habits. Partnerships with McDonald’s and KFC were in the works, and the investor presentations were all upside, with plant-based hamburgers poised to take an enormous bite out of a $270 billion meat industry. Back in 2019, the CEO and founder of faux-hamburger startup Beyond Meat closed the most successful IPO since the financial crisis. In retrospect, rising as high as Ethan Brown did four years ago might almost guarantee a brutal, Greek tragedy-style fall from grace somewhere down the line.
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