Beyond Meat, the US-based vegetarian meat developer that counts food producer General Mills as an investor, will go public today in an initial public offering sized at approximately $241m.
The company priced more than 9.62 million shares at $25.00 yesterday, having increased the range of the offering from $21 to $23 per share, to $23 to $25 on Tuesday. It will float on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.
Beyond Meat develops and supplies plant-based substitutes for beef, pork and poultry meats. Its best known product is the Beyond Burger, which is simulated to have a similar taste and texture to ground beef, and which it provides to both restaurants and, in packaged form, supermarkets.
The company nearly tripled revenue to $87.9m in 2018 while cutting its net loss slightly to $29.9m. It will channel up to $50m of the IPO proceeds into strengthening its production facilities, while $50m to $60m has been earmarked for research and development and marketing.
The IPO comes after a minimum of $160m in funding, $17m of which was raised from General Mills’ strategic investment arm, 301, in addition to DNS Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and Obvious Ventures in 2015.
Beyond Meat added $30.1m in an early 2017 round that featured $15m from Tyson New Ventures, meat producer Tyson Foods’ corporate venturing subsidiary, and further funding from Cleveland Avenue, DNS, Seth Goldman Revocable Trust, GreatPoint Ventures and Union Grove Venture Partners.
Cleveland Avenue led a late 2017 round that was sized at approximately $56m according to Beyond Meats’s IPO filing, and which included Tyson Foods, before joining DNS Capital for a $50.3m round that closed in November 2018.
KPCB’s 15.9% stake in the company was cut to 13.3% in the IPO, and its other notable shareholders are Obvious Ventures (7.7% post-IPO), DNS Capital (7.5%) and Cleveland Avenue (4.5%).
Tyson had a 6.6% stake when Beyond Meat filed for the offering in November 2018 but has since divested its shares, due to tension that arose between the companies when Tyson revealed it planned to develop its own meat-free products, according to Axios.
Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Credit Suisse are lead book-running managers for the IPO. BofA Merrill Lynch and Jefferies are book-running managers while William Blair is co-manager. They have the option to buy about 1.44 million more shares to boost its size to $277m.
Photo courtesy of Beyond Meat, Inc.
