BYND - Beyond Meat Stock Plunges 17% on Earnings Miss and Coronavirus-Fueled Sell-Off
Beyond Meat (NASDAQ: BYND), which makes plant-based meat substitutes, reported fourth-quarter and full-year 2019 results after the market closed on Thursday.
Shares are down 17% on Friday, as of 1:50 p.m. EST, while the S&P 500 is 2.6% lower. We can attribute the stock's drop in part to the company's quarterly earnings falling short of the Wall Street consensus estimate and its 2020 EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, and depreciation) coming in lighter than what analysts had been expecting. (Quarterly revenue and the 2020 revenue outlook both exceeded estimates.)
However, a large part of the stock's plunge is surely due to overall tough market conditions. The market has been getting walloped this week by the rapid spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus well beyond China. While it's not possible to tease out how much of Beyond Meat's stock drop is due to this factor, I'd guess it to be at least half of it. That's because at this point, investors are likely more concerned with revenue growth than profit growth -- and the company did great on this front. During any market sell-off, highly valued stocks are usually the first ones investors ditch.