Beyond Meat‘s stock sizzled in its first day trading on the NASDAQ, opening at $45 per share—already an 80% premium over its initial IPO price of $25—and steadily rising before closing up 163% at $65.75, giving the company a market cap of around $3.8 billion.
The shares rose as high as $72.95 in intraday trading, an increase of more than 190%, showing the markets’ keen appetite to get a piece of Beyond Meat. The California-based business is the “first plant-based food company to go public on a major exchange,” according to a tweet posted by the company.
Beyond Meat’s skyrocketing debut performance hints at the company’s missed opportunity toward a sizable cash balance. However, early investors in the company are surely being rewarded for their sound choice of investment. Kleiner Perkins, whose 15.9% pre-IPO stake amounted to roughly 7.75 million shares, first invested in the business in 2012 when its share price was $0.71. The business is also backed by Leonardo DiCaprio, well-known in the world of VC for his interest in eco-friendly startups. The Academy Award-winning actor invested in the company’s Series G about a year before Beyond Meat more than doubled its valuation to $1.35 billion in November.
Using the company’s S-1 filing and PitchBook data, we broke down the numbers surrounding Beyond Meat’s public debut, its journey to a unicorn valuation and the investors that may end up with a hefty paycheck.
The graphic below has been updated to correctly reflect the valuation in 2011.
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