Leanna Garfield/Business Insider
- Beyond Meat bulls are a thing of the past — no Wall Street analyst has a rating above "market perform."
- Shares plunged 25% Tuesday after JPMorgan downgraded the stock to "neutral" from "overweight."
- Shares are rebounding on Wednesday morning, trading up about 5% to near $132.30 apiece.
- Wall Street’s average price target is $96.
- Watch Beyond Meat trade live.
Beyond Meat‘s stock is beyond buying.
Wall Street’s last Beyond Meat bull downgraded the stock Wednesday. Now, none of the nine analysts that cover the plant-based meat alternatives company have a rating above "market perform."
Alexia Howard, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., and the last bullish voice on the company, changed her rating to "market perform," saying that her downgrade is "driven by valuation considerations as the stock has traded in a highly volatile manner since its IPO likely due to its limited public float."
Other analysts have also questioned just how much the company is worth. On Tuesday, JPMorgan analysts Ken Goldman and James Allen downgraded the stock to "neutral" from "overweight," a move that was "purely a valuation call." Beyond Meat fell more than 25% after the downgrade.
Shares are bouncing back on Wednesday despite Howard’s downgrade, trading up about 5% near $132.25. The stock is still trading well above the average analyst price target of $96, and is more that 400% above their May 1 initial-public-offering price of $25.
The scarcity of Beyond Meat shares has driven the price higher and also made it very difficult to bet against. When shares soared to a high of $168 Monday, short sellers were staring at a mark-to-market loss of $568 million and had to pay a borrow fee of 134%, meaning it was more expensive to short the stock than to own it. Still, short sellers remained in the trade, betting that a pullback would have to come at some point.
NOW WATCH: Mount Everest is not the hardest mountain to climb — here’s what makes K2 so much worse
See Also:
- Walmart is quietly closing stores — here’s the full list
- WHERE ARE THEY NOW? The players drafted before Stephen Curry in the 2009 NBA Draft
- A woman who has reviewed over 50,000 résumés says these are the 7 most annoying mistakes she sees
Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Carmen Reinicke)