Beyond Meat sends traders on wild ride as eye-popping rally stalls
22/10/2025 22:39
** Beyond Meat's BYND.O shares soared as much as 112% on Weds, but ended session slightly in the red as its recent dizzying run stalls ** Struggling plant-based meat maker's stock in the session surged as high as $7.69, touching highest levels since Aug 2024, stretching rally to nearly 1,400% since closing at $0.52 last Thurs ** However, the stock reversed course to stumble about 28%, then rebounded to close down 1.1% at $3.58 ** In extended trading, BYND shares were last down about 20% ** Its heavily shorted shares appear to be swept up in the latest 'meme stock' frenzy as retail traders pile in ** BYND was the #1 ordered U.S. stock among Fidelity's retail customers on Weds with a 57%-43% buy/sell ratio, according to Fidelity's website ** Trading volume has skyrocketed to record levels since BYND went public in 2019: about 2 bln shares changed hands in each of today's session and Tues, following over 1 bln shares of volume on Mon ** BYND has roughly 398 mln shares outstanding, per LSEG data, after its recent debt exchange offer ** Wall Street analysts remain unimpressed as 5 rate BYND stock "sell" or "strong sell" and 3 rate "hold" with a median PT of $2.42 ** Other retail favorites such as Krispy Kreme DNUT.O, GoPro GPRO.O and 1-800-Flowers.com FLWS.O also saw big swings on Weds. DNUT and GPRO gained about 9% and 5%, respectively, while FLWS ultimately lost about 15% on the session (Lance Tupper is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own) ((lance.tupper@tr.com ; 1-646-279-6380))