Beyond Meat's scorching-hot IPO has shades of the dot-com bubble

Beyond Meat shares skyrocketed 163% during their first day of trading.The last time an initial public offering saw such a big pop was during the tech bubble. Beyond Meat has never turned a profit. Watch Beyond Meat trade live.Beyond Meat shares have been on fire since making their stock-market debut. Last Wednesday, the plant-based burger maker priced its initial public offering at $25 a share. By the end of trading on Thursday, the stock had surged by 163% to settle at $65.75.The opening-day advance was the largest since the height of the dot-com bubble, which occurred at the turn of the millennium. In fact, Beyond Meat's gain was the 16th biggest of all time for an initial public offering, and every one above it occurred in 1999 or 2000, according to Dealogic.“The 163% first-day surge for Beyond Meat was beyond comprehension for a company that's never turned a profit,” tweeted David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff. Beyond Meat has a history of losing money. It has yet to turn a profit since its founding in 2009, losing $29.9 million in 2018, $30.4 million in 2017, and $25.1 million in 2016 as it “invested in innovation and growth.” The losses have come even though sales have grown mightily over the same time, something not uncommon among start-ups. Beyond Meat's net revenue grew from $16.2 million in 2016 to $32.6 million in 2017 and $87.9 million in 2018.“The recent large IPO pop for Beyond Meat highlights the market's appetite for innovation in the same nontech industry,” Nomura Instinet analyst Joseph Mezrich wrote in a note sent out to clients on Tuesday.That excitement has caused Beyond Meat's valuation to sky rocket from $1.5 billion at its IPO pricing on May 1, to as high as $4.7 billion on Tuesday. Currently the company is valued at $4.1 billion.“You know things are getting bubbly when a food producer with no earnings sees its market cap balloon to over $4 bln in just days after its IPO, and with a price/sales ratio of 50x! For veggie burgers!!” Rosenberg added.