Beyond Meat, maker of plant-based burgers, sausage, chicken strips and more, has filed for a U.S. initial public offering (IPO).
Rumors first started circulating last month when CNBC reported that plant-based meat company had hired J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse to help lead their IPO. On Friday Beyond filed for an initial size of $100 million. The company has applied to list on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol BYND.
El Seguno, CA-based Beyond Meat sells its non-GMO plant-based meats in over 32,000 retailers, as well as Del Taco, T.G.I. Friday’s and A&W. According to Crunchbase, the company has raised $72 million in funding thus far. Tyson Foods, the largest meat company in the U.S., has a 5 percent stake in Beyond Meat, and the company also boasts investments from Bill Gates, Obvious Ventures, and Leonardo DiCaprio.
In the past Beyond has struggled to keep up with high customer demand; they even had to delay their U.K. launch, expected in August, despite the fact that in June they added a second production facility aimed at tripling production. (Beyond recently rolled out in U.K. supermarket chain Tesco’s last week.)
With the demand for plant-based proteins growing by leaps and bounds, paired with the rising number of flexitarians around the globe, Beyond Meat’s post-IPO future looks bright.
This will be the first public stock offering for the recent smattering of companies making meat-like alternatives out of plants. If successful, Beyond Meat’s IPO will make it easier for others in the space like Impossible Foods to and Seattle Food Tech to follow a similar path. The success or failure of Beyond’s IPO could also have implications for the nascent cell-based (AKA lab-grown) meat space, which itself has seen a lot of investment this year.
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