Beyond Meat, a US-based vegetarian meat developer backed by food producers General Mills and Tyson Foods, filed on Friday to raise up to $100m in an initial public offering on Friday.
Founded in 2009, Beyond Meat develops and supplies plant-based beef, pork and poultry substitutes. Its lead product is the Beyond Burger, which has been designed to taste and feel like ground beef.
The company made a $22.4m net loss in the first nine months of 2019 from $56.4m in revenue. It will invest the IPO proceeds in upgrading its production capabilities, and funding its sales and marketing and research and development activities.
The offering will follow at least $160m of funding according to the IPO filing. Beyond Meat secured $17m in a 2015 round featuring 301, the corporate venturing vehicle for General Mills, as well as DNS Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and Obvious Ventures.
Tyson Foods subsidiary Tyson New Ventures invested $15m in the company as part of a $30.1m round that closed in January 2017 that included Cleveland Avenue, DNS, Seth Goldman Revocable Trust, GreatPoint Ventures and Union Grove Venture Partners.
Beyond Meat received $10m in convertible note financing in November 2017 before closing a $56m round in June 2018 that was led by Cleveland Avenue and backed by $8m from Tyson New Ventures, $1.1m from DNS and undisclosed amounts from others.
Investors including Cleveland Avenue and DNS supplied another $50.3m in funding for the company in a round that closed this month, the filing stated.
Tyson New Ventures owns a 6.6% stake in Beyond Meat, whose other notable shareholders are KPCB (16.1%), Obvious Ventures (10.4%), DNS Capital (9.1%) and Cleveland Avenue (5.4%).
Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Credit Suisse have been appointed active book-running managers for the IPO, which will take place on the Nasdaq Global Market, while BofA Merrill Lynch and Jefferies are book-running managers and William Blair co-manager.
Photo courtesy of Beyond Meat.
