Beyond Meat Closes at Record High as Short-Seller Losses Mount

(Bloomberg) -- Beyond Meat Inc. shares closed at their highest price yet as short sellers felt the burn to the tune of half a billion dollars.

The shares rose 12% to $169.96 on Monday, extending a rally that has added almost 600% to the stock price since its initial public offering last month. That has cost short sellers $560 million in mark-to-market losses since the IPO, including $97.5 million in this session alone, said Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director of predictive analytics at financial analytics firm S3 Partners. Bearish bets in the faux meat company are at $799 million with 5.3 million shares shorted, according to S3 data.

“We are still not seeing any short covering in size today, as any shorts exiting their positions are being replaced by new shorts,” Dusaniwsky wrote. “Prime brokers are recycling the stock borrows they have on their books -- just the names of the short sellers are changing.”

Makers of real meat, like Tyson Foods Inc. and Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., are also getting burned as summer barbecue season gets underway this week and Beyond Meat kicks off sales of its “Beyond Beef” plant product meant that’s meant to look like ground beef.

Tyson shares slipped 4.1% while Pilgrim’s Pride fell 3.8%. Sanderson Farms Inc. tumbled 7.5% in its biggest drop in 18 months.

With its own veggie burger in the works, Tyson has been the lone outperformer among so-called “protein” names since Beyond’s IPO on May 1. Tyson shares are up 5% since then, even as concerns over feed costs weigh on chicken producers.

--With assistance from Lydia Mulvany, James Attwood, Bailey Lipschultz and Catherine Larkin.

To contact the reporters on this story: Cristin Flanagan in New York at cflanagan1@bloomberg.net;Janet Freund in New York at jfreund11@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Catherine Larkin at clarkin4@bloomberg.net, Morwenna Coniam, Scott Schnipper

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