Essay By Eric Worrall
Bill Gates’ Beyond meat, promoted as a climate friendly alternative to real meat, is struggling with consumer backlash against processed foods.
Beyond Meat’s stock collapses after debt deal
By Laurence Darmiento
Staff Writer
Oct. 16, 2025 3 AM PT
- Shares of El Segundo-based Beyond Meat fell to less than $1 after a debt deal, down from their 2019 peak of nearly $235.
- The plant-based meat maker has seen sales plunge from $465 million in 2021 to $326 million last year as consumers return to animal protein.
- Second-quarter sales dropped 20%, part of a broader 18% decline across the U.S. plant-based meat industry over the last two years.
What does it cost a company when it’s no longer in the zeitgeist? For stockholders in Beyond Meat, perhaps as much as 99% of their money, if they bought at the top of the market.
Shares of the El Segundo maker of plant-based meats, an investors’ darling a few year ago, collapsed this week to less than $1 after the company wrapped up a deal to reduce its debt burden. The deal involves issuing up to 326 million new shares to the note holders.
The stock-diluting deal was spurred by declining sales at the company, which makes pea-based foods that mimic the taste of beef, chicken and pork.
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Read more: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-10-16/beyond-meat-fake-meat-pioneer-financial-trouble-plant-based-impossible
$235 down to $1. That has got to hurt.
Beyond Meat makes a big deal of their environmental credentials;
WE BELIEVE THERE’S A BETTER WAY TO FEED OUR FUTURE.
By shifting from animal to plant-based meat, we can positively affect the planet, the environment, the climate and even ourselves. After all, the positive choices we make every day – no matter how small – can have a great impact on our world.
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Read more: https://www.beyondmeat.com/en-US/our-impact
I believe there is more to this story than consumer economics. I suspect Beyond Meat is a casualty of the betrayal of trust people experienced during the Covid lockdowns.
The same people who promote the climate crisis also told us Covid was so severe we all needed to endure harsh lockdowns. Since Covid claims were exposed as wild exaggerations, people appear to be asking more questions about other claims they took on faith, like the claim that eating real meat hurts the planet.
I suspect companies like Beyond Meat have been caught out by this rise in public skepticism.
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Experience changes minds. I understand the Soylent Corporation’s stock is also tanking.
It’s beyond belief that investors invest in anything to do with these green scams, as they all need massive subsidies then fail.
Nobody reads history.
Grok: The South Sea Bubble was a speculative financial crisis in 1720 Britain. The South Sea Company, granted a monopoly to trade with South America, saw its stock price soar due to hype and exaggerated promises of wealth, despite limited actual trade prospects. Investors, driven by greed and speculation, poured money in, inflating the stock price. When the company’s inability to deliver profits became clear, the bubble burst, causing a stock market crash. Many lost fortunes, exposing the dangers of speculative mania and poor regulation. It led to reforms like the Bubble Act to curb fraudulent companies.