Specialist
Former Head at Impossible Foods Inc
Agenda
- Meat substitute demand and pricing trends
- Competition between Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat (NASDAQ: BYND)
- Threat from traditional meat suppliers
- Ingredient sourcing, sustainability and supply chain
Questions
1.
What is your updated perspective on industry trends? What themes should investors pay attention to when evaluating the plant-based meat and dairy substitutes space, and how it evolves going forward?
2.
You mentioned how Impossible and other players might try to replicate the market opportunity demonstrated by Beyond. What are the similarities and differences of the historic approach between Impossible and Beyond, and how might it change going forward?
3.
Thinking about Impossible’s current assets, what is the limit in volumes that it will be able to produce, considering how the downstream processing bottleneck is in the blood?
4.
If Impossible is effectively racing to get to market before Beyond really owns the whole piece, when might Impossible achieve what it needs to do? At what point does Beyond really saturate that?
5.
What is the cost structure of Impossible vs Beyond? How should we be considering the economies of scale as each grows?
6.
What is your assessment of Impossible’s haem manufacturing, perhaps on a per-burger basis? To what extent do you expect that cost per burger to contract, as it scales?
7.
What impact would changing to more commonplace substitutes, from haem, have in the eyes of the consumer? Right now it’s almost a marketing ploy, but would the consumer actually notice a difference? If so, how meaningful would that change be?
8.
At the end of last week, the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] approved the Impossible Burger to be sold at retail D2C. Does that change the way you think about things? Will this diminish the Impossible Burger’s value proposition or potential value proposition for consumers, through the D2C channel?
9.
When thinking through the D2C channel, how much of Impossible Burger’s value proposition gets diminished if it shifts away from having the red ‘meat’ turn brown during cooking, etc?
10.
Is there an opportunity for Impossible to use the haem-based manufacturing process to put the product through D2C, and simultaneously use the beet-based process through McDonald’s or whatever it ends up being with OSI?
11.
As you said, Impossible is a slightly higher price point vs others. To what extent do you think it can justify that? How much will price need to come down to compete effectively in D2C?
12.
When comparing the Impossible price point vs Beyond, will the broader consumer base think it deserves a higher price point?
13.
Is there a meaningful difference in the environmental impacts of Beyond’s process vs Impossible’s process? Is that a factor we should consider?
14.
How are you thinking about the threat of new entrants into the space? Given the growth profile here, it must be attractive to the CPG companies and traditional meat processors, etc? To what extent do you think it will be the current brands such as Beyond and Impossible, to really win this fight?
15.
What is your outlook for Impossible over the next 12-18 months? What might be a best-case and a worst- case scenario for Impossible?
16.
Do you think the growth rate in upcoming years will be attractive enough to be of potential IPO interest?
