What happened
Shares of Beyond Meat (BYND -0.74%) -- a maker of plant-based, meat-resembling foods, and one of the hottest initial public offerings (IPOs) of the season -- are up 11% as of 1:45 p.m. EDT today. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a lot of "beef" between the buns here.
So what
As far as I can tell, two things are driving enthusiasm for the fake-meat producer. First, Investor's Business Daily named Beyond Meat its "IBD stock of the day" yesterday, arguing the shares, which trade at $77 and change as of this writing, are "forming an IPO base with an 85.55 buy point" -- which presumably means IBD is telling investors to buy Beyond Meat at any price up to and including $85.55 a share.
I have to say I'm skeptical of this analysis. With no profit to hang a price-to-earnings ratio on, and a price-to-sales ratio of more than 50 at present, I'm at a loss to understand what basis IBD has for saying Beyond Meat is worth $85.55 per share -- other than its assertion that "you can spot the typical proper buy point by simply adding 10 cents to the base's left-side high."
Image source: Getty Images.
Now what
The second factor appearing to drive Beyond Meat's stock-price surge today is more future-looking. Media outlets reported that earlier this month, Beyond Meat rival Impossible Foods raised $300 million in funding, bringing the pre-IPO company's valuation to "about $2 billion."
Impossible Foods CFO David Lee was quoted as disclaiming any intention to go public right away, but saying that this latest round of funding confirms investors' "appetites" for meat-alternative stocks -- which logically is good news for Beyond Meat as well as for Impossible Foods. Of course, with Beyond Meat's stock having already more than tripled its IPO price, we already kind of knew that.
It still doesn't make Beyond Meat stock cheap enough to buy.
