Reminds me of the dot com bubble when IPOs doubled on opening day but it still is not as frothy as that era and we may never get a repeat of that tech boom and bubble that imploded with disastrous effects for many.
But, when fake meat is worth more than the real stuff, then one must be alert.
This is from BARRON'S:
"Today, Beyond Meat, the maker of plant-based burgers, soared 163% on its first day of trading. That gives the company a market value of more than $4 billion.
For those who lived through the dot-com bubble, a first-day doubling could still feel common for a newly issued stock. There were 117 IPOs that doubled on their first day of trading in 1999 and another 77 in 2000, according to IPO expert Jay Ritter. But since the Internet crash, the IPO double has actually become a rare event. In fact, there have been just 24 of them since 2000. Beyond Meat makes it 25.
It's too soon to say what Beyond Meat's first-day return means for the broader market, but the frothy response is worth watching, especially with Uber Technologies and Slack about to stage their own public debuts.
Beyond Meat would seem to be an odd candidate for a huge IPO pop. After all, there's not much tech inside the company's pea-based meat. And the business remains rather niche. Beyond Meat had sales of $88 million last year, losing $30 million in the process. But Barron's Al Rootnotes that its losses are shrinking as the company's sales are exploding. They were up 170% in 2018. Investors are excited about the growth and Beyond Meat's ability to feed a growing demand for non-meat alternatives.
This afternoon, Al went beyond the company's financials, too. His story immediately goes in my collection of favorite Barron's headlines: "Beyond Meat Is Now Worth More Than All the Peas in America."..."