Beyond Meat’s stock plummets as test for McDonald’s McPlant ends

Beyond Meat, the Los Angeles headquartered manufacturer of plant-based meat alternatives, share price reportedly plunged by six percent in the morning trading late last week after McDonald’s concluded its McPlant burger test.

According to CNBC, this information was shared by J.P. Morgan and Beyond Meat was affected by the end of the McPlant test in the United States since the plant-based burger uses Beyond Meat’s meat patties.

It was reported that McDonald’s confirmed on Thursday, July 28, that its McPlant test in some of its fast-food chain outlets has ended. The restaurant did not mention any plans of having another testing for the meatless burger. There is no word from neither McDonald’s nor Beyond Meat if the nationwide launch of the McPlant burger is proceeding or not.

In any case, the stock price of Beyond Meat may have plummeted by six percent last week, but overall this year, it was said to have fallen by 53%. This result has dragged the company’s market value down to $2.06 billion.

It was in November of last year when McDonald’s launched the test of its meatless McPlant burger in eight of its restaurant branches in the U.S. It was carried out to see if the new vegan menu item will create a big impact in the stores.

Later, in February this year, McDonald’s rolled out the plant-based burger in about 600 locations to gather more information relating to the percentage of demand for McPlant from the customers.

Based on the gathered result from the research, analysts found that the demand was not big as expected. In fact, it may be disappointing because it was described as a “lackluster demand” for the McPlant burger with Beyond Meat’s patty.

Peter Saleh, an analyst at BTIG, LLC, which is a global financial services firm specializing in investment banking, institutional trading, research and related brokerage services, reported in June that he was told by McDonald’s franchisees that sales from McPlant were truly disappointing.

An analyst from J.P. Morgan, Ken Goldman, also noted last week that some McDonald’s staff told him that the plant-based burger sandwich did not sell well enough. Because of this result, they think that McDonald’s will have to think twice about its nationwide launch, which may not even happen.

“Consensus contemplates 21% growth for BYND’s total top line this year, followed by another 25% next year,” Golman wrote in his notes. “These rates will not be easy to hit, in our view, without McDonald’s in the U.S.”