Beyond Meat expects its revenues to have fallen again in the first three months of this year amid a “very volatile” market for plant-based meat.
The US alt-meat business rounded off 2025 with near-20% fall in fourth-quarter revenues – and has guided to another decline in opening three months of this year.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
The Beyond Burger brand owner said this week (31 March) it expects its first-quarter net revenues to be approximately $57-59m, a result that would compare to $68.7m in the corresponding period of 2025. Five years ago, Beyond Meat’s first-quarter net revenues were $108.2m.
The limited guidance was issued alongside the publication of Beyond Meat’s delayed results for the fourth quarter of 2025 and for the year as a whole.
In 2025, the company’s net revenues dropped 15.6% to $275.5m, which, alongside other items, contributed to wider operating losses.
Speaking to analysts after the numbers were published, Beyond Meat’s management was asked if it could provide any guidance on its gross margins for 2026 after seeing them fall from 12.8% in 2024 to 2.8% last year.
“Unfortunately, we’re not providing guidance for gross margin for the year. To provide a little bit of context around that, one of the reasons why we continue to provide only year-end guidance on revenue is the fact that our core category, plant-based meat, remains sort of very volatile and volumes remain soft,” CFO and treasurer Lubi Kutua said. “And, with that being, obviously, at this stage, the vast majority of our business, the impact that softer volumes has on margins can be pretty significant.”
Beyond Meat has seen revenues come under pressure for a number of quarters, with the business pointing to soft demand as a factor.
The lower volumes being produced by the business, combined with higher input costs and increased inventories, is weighing on margins, the company says.
“The lower fixed cost absorption continues to be a headwind on margin,” Kutua told analysts. “It’s just extremely difficult for us to forecast gross margin to any degree of certainty when there’s so much variability on the top line. We have initiatives in place that are aimed at expanding margins … but, ultimately, we need to see some stabilisation on the top line in order for us to have greater confidence in terms of where margins will shake out.”
Beyond Meat’s fourth-quarter results – which included a 19.7% decline in net revenues – “reflect persistent weak demand in the plant-based meat category”, founder and CEO Ethan Brown added.
Brown also repeated his belief the meat industry is mis-representing the plant-based alternatives on sale, which, he says, is weighing on demand. Meanwhile, US sales of red meat are on the rise.
“As I have noted countless times in these calls, the incumbent industry did a masterful job of seeding doubt in the mind of the consumer,” he said. “For the time being, we operate in an upside-down world with proteins from peas, lentils, fava beans and brown rice, mixed with avocado oil and a limited number of other clean ingredients, is disingenuously, though broadly cast, as less than healthy. I believe this confusion will ultimately clear.”
The Beyond Meat founder pointed to the company’s efforts to “innovate around taste and health” and the business’ “various accreditations and certifications”, including with the Clean Label Project.
“We continue to lead the category in bringing clean plant-based meats to the consumer while hammering away at persistent misinformation promulgated by the incumbent industry,” he added.
The publication of Beyond Meat’s fourth-quarter and full-year accounts were delayed while the company completed an accounting review focused on inventory.
Fourth-quarter net revenues stood at $61.6m, down from $76.7m a year earlier.
Gross profit was $1.4m, with a gross margin of 2.3%. That compared to gross profit of $10m – and a gross margin of 13.1% – in the fourth quarter of 2025. Beyond Meat said the gross profit and margin for the final three months of last year included charges from “provision for excess and obsolete inventory” after cuts to its product line and costs linked to the end of its operations in China.
The company made a fourth-quarter operating loss of $132.7m versus one of $37.8m in the corresponding period of 2025. The result included a series of charges covering areas such as a write-down of assets held for sale, and a litigation accrual.
Fourth-quarter net income was $409.9m, compared to a net loss of $44.9m a year earlier. The result included a $548.7m non-cash gain on Beyond Meat’s recent debt restructuring.
The company, set up in 2009 to focus on offering on plant-based meat alternatives, is looking to broaden its product range. Earlier this year, Beyond Meat launched a line of “plant protein” beverages. Brown said the business is “repositioning” to become Beyond, The Plant Protein Company.
“It is not in any way abandoning the original mission and focus that we have had,” Brown said. “It’s simply broadening the aperture of our business and meeting consumers where they are today.
“If I thought that Beyond, in our original value proposition, were struggling during a period when the role of science and public discourse and social media, media and government was pronounced and effective, when our pricing and economic stability and buying power are all favourable and the American political landscape were characterised by a sense of common ground versus the vision and Beyond were really suffering, I would be very concerned for our long-term prospects and for the plant-based meat category overall. But none of that is true, right?”
He added: “One of the things that is most significant for our business in terms of what’s impacting it is this kind of surround sound of pseudoscientific jargon and positioning and promotion that really overwhelms what is decades and decades and decades of science. I think nothing in our lane is [a] more obvious representation of this troubling trend than the resurgence of red meat.
“But the good news is that this is a pendulum, it’s going to swing and it’s going to swing back and I’m very comfortable that Beyond will prosper when it does. But I’m not going to wait around for that. Because of the work we’ve done, particularly over the last ten years, to really lead the category and developing extremely clean, healthy products, we’re really well positioned to look outside the category and take that technology, take that science, take that brand into segments and categories that are many, many, many times the size of the plant-based meat category.”
