Beyond Meat To Expand Product Distribution Across Europe

Beyond Meat will expand its product distribution across Europe at several European retail locations by this spring. According to the company, citing the Nielsen Protein Report, the plant-based foods market in Europe has seen sales growth of 49% over the past two years.

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Currently, Beyond Meat’s (BYND) products are available in approximately 122,000 retail and food-service outlets across around eighty countries globally. In the United Kingdom, BYND products will be available in 445 Sainsbury’s and Waitrose retail stores, while in Germany and Austria, BYND will expand its product offerings to 1,000 and 1,500 retail stores, respectively.

In March this year, the company’s products became available for the first time in Netherlands at nearly 1,000 Albert Heijn and Jumbo stores.

Beyond Meat’s Chief Growth Officer, Chuck Muth said, “These new and expanded retail partnerships throughout the continent serve as strong proof points that Europe’s appetite for plant-based meat and Beyond Meat products in particular is on the rise. In fact, because of our strict ingredient guardrails, we’ve been able to more easily enter global markets including the EU to make plant-based meat options that are better for people and the planet more accessible to all.”

In June last year, BYND opened its first manufacturing facility in Europe in partnership with Zandbergen World’s Finest Meat in Zoeterwoude and also acquired its first manufacturing facility in Europe located in Enschede, Netherlands. (See Beyond Meat stock analysis on TipRanks)

Earlier this month, the company opened its first end-to-end manufacturing facility outside the United States in the Jiaxing Economic & Technological Development Zone (JXEDZ) near Shanghai, China. This facility is expected to significantly increase the scale and speed of production and distribution of the plant-based meat company’s products in China and is also expected to improve the company’s cost structure and “sustainability of operations”.

In March, Oppenheimer analyst Rupesh Parikh reiterated a Hold on the stock. Parikh said in a note to investors, “Consistent with our prior work, we are increasingly cautious on BYND’s retail performance with now much more formidable competition from Impossible Foods and difficult upcoming comparisons. As we illustrate inside, competition in the core burger category is heating up with a larger Impossible Foods presence and competitive prices.”

“For now, BYND still has an advantage given a larger product assortment at retail, but margin risks are growing. We continue to view Street forecasts as aggressive and would tread cautiously from here. To us, the shares remain expensive at ~13x our FY21 sales forecasts,” Parikh added.

The rest of the Street is also sidelined on the stock with a Hold consensus rating based on 3 analysts suggesting a Buy, 8 analysts recommending a Hold, and 4 analysts suggesting a Sell. The average analyst price target of $142.20 implies around 7.5% upside potential to current levels.