Shares of plant-based meat company Beyond Meat (NASDAQ: BYND) fell over 6% on Friday on high volatility after short-selling firm Citron Research said in a tweet that the company was “beyond stupid.”
The research agency tweeted, “$BYND has become Beyond Stupid. Most heavily traded retail stock on Robinhood, market cap now bigger than industry, and superior competitor coming to market soon. We expect $BYND to go back to $65 on earnings On retail exhaustion.”
Beyond Meat, which started trading on May 2 at an offer price
of $25, ended the first day of trading at $65.75. Till date, the stock is up 271.68%,
reminiscing the days that led up to the dot-com crash.
The company’s market cap has increased from $3.83 billion on the first day of trading to the current $5.5 billion, which has led bears to suggest that a free fall may be in the making. We had reported earlier on the illogicality of the company’s valuation, as compared to its revenues.
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The El Segundo, California-based firm’s annual revenues increased 175% in 2018 to $88 million. However, the company’s valuation represents over 62 times its annual revenues, which is an outlandish figure given that the company hardly makes any money.
Despite the stock rally and the optimism in the market, there has been a drastic increase in people shorting the stock. As per the latest stats, over 40% of its shares are currently being shorted, indicating that more people are finding Beyond Meat’s valuation ludicrous and expect it to fall shortly.