Ethan Brown, a former Clean Technology operator, founded ‘Beyond Meat, Inc.’ in 2009 after a simple realization. Ethan realized that animal based protein can be substituted with similar meat-like protein products without involving animals. With a relentless desire to imitate animal meat, Ethan believes man-made processes can emulate digestive systems that animals such as cows, goats, pigs, and chickens use when eating plants and grains in order to grow larger.

Brown cites a few of the many reasons to eliminate animals from humans’ food production cycle. They include 1) an advancement in human health conditions, 2) an improvement in carbon and other GHG (greenhouse gas emissions), as well as 3) reductions in the scale and magnitude of human-led animal cruelty for animal meat protein.

In May 2019, Ethan Brown and his team took the company public with the ticker symbol BYND. Going public comes with the challenges of public float. After an initial stock price at $25 per share, short-lived stock price gains have since been overshadowed. Market forces have imposed downward pressure on Beyond Meat’s stock price. These adverse pressures are mostly premised on ‘Beyond Meat’s company financials’ while largely disregarding the company’s strategic efforts to invest in research and development (R&D) as is expected in early-growth public companies that pioneer never-before traded products.

Consumer demand, measured by revenue generation, seems to be unduly skewed towards a direct comparison with mature meat industry firms whose holdings and commodity inputs are widely traded with already mature growth potential. If considered along with traditional meat industry firms that offer limited inherent differentiation, The Vegan Digest believes that there is a natural expected gain in market share for Beyond Meat’s newer highly differentiated and price-competitive products.

According to Beyond Meat’s 2024 Full Year Earnings Call, Beyond Meat executives deem Beyond Meat products to be under-indexed and believe that ‘there’s actually an opportunity to grow simply by gaining some market share’ with better storefront market presence. Beyond Meat’s strategy to take advantage of this perceived opportunity appears to include an expansion of product range and product mix and to establish that presence in store sections where mature meat industry firms compete.

The near one hundred million pounds of product that Beyond Meat generates annually indicates a natural demand for plant-based meats or an ability to drive demand for plant-based meats with operational costs. According to Ethan Brown, “2024 was a pivotal year for Beyond Meat that returned to year-over-year net revenue growth.” Even though net income is yet to be positive, considering the costs to pioneer a highly differentiated plant-based meat product as well as the costs to gain maintainable market share, The Vegan Digest finds that current and notable downward pressure on Beyond Meat’s stock price is largely unfair.