It’s been a tough few months for Beyond Meat… And now the plant-based faux foods pioneer has secured a $100 M loan to help pay down its soaring debt. Beyond’s Q1 US retail sales fell 15.4 percent to $31.4 million, and product volume slumped 23.3 percent.
The whole plant-based ‘fake’ meat sector has been suspiciously quiet lately. And in the business world, that usually means there’s trouble in River City.
With a capital ‘T’…
That’s trouble with a capital ‘T’, and that rhymes with ‘P’, and that stands for ‘Profit’. Beyond isn’t making any. In fact, it’s losses over several fiscal quarters of declining sales and revenues, have pushed it’s total debt load over the $100 million mark.
So the company has been fishing around for some kind of arrangement to secure emergency funding. And it’s struck a deal with Unprocessed Foods, LLC, an affiliate of the Ahimsa Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on advocating for plant-based diets.
Under the deal. Beyond keeps operating while trying to turn itself around. And Unprocessed Foods gets the right to purchase up to 12.5 percent of Beyond’s shares. In other words, Beyond has agreed to let Unprocessed sequester the shares as collateral for the loan.
Ahimsa is described as a ‘non-profit organization focused on advocating for plant-based diets’.
Meanwhile…
Beyond hastens to pint out that the whole faux-meat sector is struggling right now.
According to founder and CEO Ethan Brown, the company will ‘evaluate additional opportunities to shore up its finances as it doubles down on efforts to position plant-based meat as a healthy al-ternative for consumers to increase their protein intake’. Beyond has moved to combat ‘misinfor-mation’ about the health of its ingredients, Brown said, noting the company’s, “value proposition remains obscured in doubt.”
“We should be a central part of satisfying consumer interest for protein,” Brown told investors in a recent conference call. “Yet … we need to reestablish ourselves within their decision set.”
My take
That’s a lot of fancy business lingo. The sort of language that tries to camouflage losses by calling them ‘negative growth’. Calls loss of prime display space in retailers’ meat department displays as ‘head-winds’. And spins ‘Hail Mary’ moves as ‘investing opportunistically’.
Nevertheless… Beyond is ‘bulling through’, trying to find ways to rekindle interest in its products – among both retailers and consumers alike. Whatever the outcome, it appears 2025 will be a true make-or-break year for Beyond and the whole plant-based meat substitute industry…
~ Maggie J.