2 May 2019: Beyond Meat soars 163% on its debut
Beyond Meat began trading on May 2, 2019 at $25 a share and closed at about $65, a 163% gain and the best first day for a big US IPO since the financial crisis. Plant-based burgers were the future of food, or so the price said. The shares kept climbing for months, then sales growth stalled and competition arrived. Within a few years the stock traded far below its IPO price.
The lesson: A hot story can set a price that the business never comes close to justifying.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Beyond Meat at the start of 2020 → $40.00 today, vs $2,092 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2020, the first year in our price data after the event. That is a loss of $960, while a plain index fund over the same years made $1,092.
What Beyond Meat teaches: Being early to a big idea is not enough when adoption stalls, and a company priced for disruption suffers badly when growth turns to decline.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | $75.00 | $40.00 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Beyond Meat? Every starting year and the full story →
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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