Beyond Meat shares reversed course violently after being pummeled early in the session, touching as low as $141 per share, despite the Dow being up well over 1,000 points for the entire session.
The plunge in shares was a breakneck-speed response to a headline that McDonald’s was developing its own “McPlant” in-house meat-free burger for trials next year. Competitor Burger King is already offering a similar product, its “Impossible” Whopper, in partnership with Impossible Foods.
But BYND shares swung higher in early afternoon trading after Reuters clarified that Beyond Meat helped co-create the McPlant with McDonald’s.
The market at first believed the original incomplete headline to mean that McDonald’s was foregoing a partnership and was doing their meat-free R&D in-house. For instance, outlets like CNBC reported this morning that the McPlant was “created by McDonald’s and for McDonald’s”. At the same time, no supplier had been named:
The company has not yet disclosed the supplier for the line. A company spokesperson declined to identify their supplier but said that McDonald’s will not be manufacturing the products.
But a few hours later, around 1345 EST, headlines crossed the wire to the contrary:
BEYOND MEAT, MCDONALD’S CO-CREATED MCPLANT, REUTERS SAYS
BEYOND MEAT QUICKLY TURNS POSITIVE
BEYOND MEAT CONFIRMS CREATED MCPLANT WITH MCD: RTRS
Beyond Meat shares are roughly unchanged on the day now.
We will update this story as more details become available.
