Dunkin’s Beyond Sausage Sandwich.
Courtesy of Beyond Meat
Alternative-meat pioneer Beyond Meat is out at some Dunkin’ locations. The news has Beyond Meat shares falling.
Beyond Meat (ticker: BYND) stock is down 2.4% in after-hours trading. Shares fell 0.3% in regular trading Wednesday, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.2% and 0.1%, respectively. Dunkin’ Brands, the company that franchises Dunkin’, was purchased by a private company in December 2020. Its shares no longer trade on public exchanges.
J.P. Morgan analyst Ken Goldman says Dunkin’ is discontinuing its Beyond Sausage breakfast sandwich that featured a Beyond Meat patty. That product showed up in Dunkin’ locations back in 2019. Beyond Meat is featured in another product at Dunkin’, a wrap with a plant-based sausage. Goldman believes that that product is on the way out too. “At last measure, 9,000 [Dunkin’] locations had been carrying the [breakfast sausage] product,” he pointed out in a Wednesday research note.
Dunkin’ told Barron’s in an emailed statement that the company has a strong relationship with Beyond Meat, and continues to work with the alternative-meat producer. “The Beyond Sausage Breakfast Sandwich continues to be available at several hundred Dunkin’ restaurants throughout the country including in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Hawaii, Utah, Kansas, and Wyoming,” said a company spokesperson.
It looks to be a partial removal, although a couple of hundred is far short of Goldman’s 9,000 number. Beyond Meat wasn’t immediately available to comment on Goldman’s report or the status of its plant-based products at Dunkin’.
Goldman rates Beyond Meat stock at the equivalent of Sell. His price target is $90 a share. Beyond Meat stock closed at $147.44 on Wednesday.
Beyond Meat isn’t a popular stock among analysts these days. Only about 23% rate shares at Buy. The average Buy-rating ratio for stocks in the S&P 500 is about 55%. The average analyst target price on the shares is about $122, about 17% below recent levels. Strong recent performance is one reason shares are above the price targets, having risen about 18% year to date, including a 38% surge in the past month.
Beyond Meat stock trades at about 725 times estimated 2022 earnings. The company is just becoming profitable, and analysts are expecting fast growth in the future to help expand the company’s profit margins. Sales are expected to grow from $561 million in 2021 to $1.1 billion by 2023.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]
