Photo: Pascal Shirley via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped. This adapted image is also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Beyond Meat has become the first plant-based meat company to go public, and investors went wild for it. Shares priced at $25 opened at $46 on the Nasdaq this morning and closed the day up 163% at $65.75, giving the company a market value of around $3.8 billion.
According to Bloomberg, it's the best first day for a US initial public offering this year, and the best for any US listing raising at least $200 million since before the 2008 financial crisis. At one point the shares were up as much as 192%.
The California company raised $241 million selling 9.63 million shares, Fortune reports, after raising its price range to $23 to $25 because of demand. Its backers include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Chief executive Ethan Brown told Bloomberg there's no conflict between doing good and making money:
Consumers are looking for products that enable them to be healthier and reduce their footprint. Every time we're making a sale we're furthering our mission and increasing sales.
Brown told Yahoo Finance he was "elated" but added: "I'm not the CEO that's going to look every day at the stock price."
Vegan actress and investor Jessica Chastain was at the Nasdaq for the big day. "I love any plant-based product," she said, explaining that she invested after failing to find a Beyond Burger at an A&W in Toronto: "I tried for four months in Canada to get one and it sold out everywhere."
The wider market is growing fast too. Nielsen data shows US supermarket sales of meat alternatives rose 19.2% to $878 million in the year to January 5.
Not bad for a burger that's never been anywhere near a cow.
Wall Street has finally caught on to what the science has been telling us for years. Oxford University research in PNAS found that a global vegan diet would save more than 8 million lives and cut food emissions by 66%, and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found plant protein is significantly more heart-healthy than animal protein.
Back in 2016 Google's Eric Schmidt named plant-based protein the number one trend of the future, and even the CEO of Tyson Foods saw the need to move beyond meat. In 2017 one vegan startup geared up to make 4 million burgers a month. This year Greggs' vegan sausage roll pushed its sales past £1 billion and The Economist named 2019 the year of the vegan.
The money is following the plants. This is just the beginning.