Beyond Meat, Inc.

Thank you, everyone, and welcome to the Beyond Meat Inc. 2025 third quarter conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, you'll have the opportunity to ask questions during the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star and then two. Please note this call is being recorded. And we will be standing by if you need any assistance with Star Zero. It is now my pleasure to turn today's conference over to Paul Shepard, Vice President of FD&A and Investor Relations.

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and thank you for your participation in today's call. Joining me are Ethan Brown, Founder, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Luby Kutua, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. By now, everyone should have access to our third quarter 2025 earnings press release filed yesterday after market close. This document is available in the investor relations section of Beyond Meat's website at www.beyondmeat.com. Before we begin, please note that all the information presented today is unaudited and that during the course of this call, management may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in our earnings release, along with the comments on this call, are made only as of today and will not be updated as actual events unfold. We refer you to yesterday's press release, our quarterly report on Form 10Q, for the quarter ended September 27th, 2025 to be filed with the SEC, and our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31st, 2024, along with other filings with the SEC for a detailed discussion of the risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements today. Please also note that on today's call, Management may reference adjusted EBITDA, adjusted loss from operations, and adjusted net loss, which are non-GAAP financial measures. While we believe these non-GAAP financial measures provide useful information for investors, any reference to this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Please refer to yesterday's press release for a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most comparable gap measures. And with that, I would now like to turn the call over to Ethan Brown.

Thank you, Paul, and good afternoon, everyone. First and foremost, I would like to recognize all veterans on this important day of observance, including those veterans we are fortunate enough to have on our team at BEYOND. You exemplify the values of putting others and country first, and we are deeply appreciative of your service, sacrifice, and courage We are indebted to each of you, and that is top of mind today. I will now turn to the business and cover three main subject areas. First, I will seek to put our recent balance sheet activities in their appropriate context. Second, I will briefly review the performance headlines from our third quarter of 2025, results that point to a business that remains in turnaround mode. Third, I will outline the key operational and top-line initiatives we are taking in pursuit of this turnaround and return to growth. Though a protracted process, our recently announced transaction with our bondholders was sweeping in its scope, and together with the nearly $150 million in cash we raised through the completion of our existing ATM program represents a fundamental reset of our balance sheet. Specifically, we reduced debt levels by approximately $900 million, nearly 75% of our total leverage, and put in place a path to potentially convert another $209 million for a total reduction of over 90% in total outstanding debt for consideration of any PIC interest. Further, the transaction not only significantly reduced leverage levels, but extended the maturity of most of our overall debt profile. We view this as an important resetting of our balance sheet and one that supports in many ways a reset of our business as we target sustainable operations and renewed growth. Clearly, we were disappointed by this quarter's results, which I will now summarize before outlining with as much specificity as this forum permits our path forward. Net revenue of $70.2 million came in within our guided range but nevertheless represented 13% decline year-over-year as we faced ongoing category challenges. This quarterly net revenue decline, coupled with a less favorable product mix and higher trade promotion spending versus the prior year, put pressure on gross margin even as conversion costs fell on a year-over-year basis. Lower volumes also reduced fixed cost absorption, and we continue to experience a transitory accounting drag in the form of $1.7 million in non-cast charges related to the suspension of our China operational activities. Accordingly, gross margin landed at 10.3% in the third quarter, down from 17.7% in the year-ago period. Operating expenses, excluding a large non-cash impairment charge related to certain long-lived assets, improved on both a year-over-year and sequential basis. I should note that operating expense in the third quarter included substantial non-routine expenses a feature that makes our cost-cutting appear more incremental than our underlying progress would suggest. Highly conscious of the opportunity our substantial delevering and increased liquidity provides, we are intensely focused on the five following steps towards sustainable operations and a return to growth. One, we continue to address misinformation surrounding our plant-based meats. As many of you are aware, As industrial livestock and pharmaceutical interests rally around scare tactics and misinformation to confuse consumers, we are driving the health profile of our products to greater heights so as to reduce the disingenuous to the absurd. The result of our multi-year efforts is a growing range of products, such as the Beyond 4 platform and Beyond Steak, that deliver on taste with ingredients and nutritional profiles and have earned various accreditations and recognitions in the Clean Label Projects, American Diabetes Association, and American Heart Association, and enthusiastic support from an impressive assembly of leading medical nutrition experts. More of this journey is shared in our short, approximately nine-minute documentary on YouTube, Planting Change, and this defining commitment is made clear in product advertising that highlights impressive ratios of protein to saturated fat, cholesterol, and calories, together with great taste and clean, simple, limited ingredients. It is also made clear in our innovation roadmap where new products are designed to reinforce this message. Consider, for example, our Beyond Chicken Pieces, which although still gaining national retail distribution, has achieved considerable taste and nutrition accolades while delivering 21 grams of protein per serving with zero cholesterol and less than one gram of saturated fat from heart-healthy avocado oil, all in just 150 calories. We've recently opened Beyond Test Kitchen, where consumers get the early opportunity to buy our latest innovation before it hits supermarket shelves. The first two innovations on this direct-to-consumer platform purposely exemplify our commitment to delivering taste and strong macronutrient ratios with clean, simple, and limited ingredients. One is Beyond Steak Filet, which provides 28 grams of protein with zero cholesterol and only one gram of saturated fat, from heart-healthy avocado oil, all with only 230 calories per serving. The other is the Beyond Ground platform. Simply put, Beyond Ground is a center of the plate protein that confidently stands on its own. It's not trying to mimic any species of animal, say a cow, chicken, or pig, and is consistent with our increasing emphasis on using Beyond versus Beyond Meat as our primary brand identifier. It is made with only four ingredients, water, baba bean protein, potato protein, and psyllium husk. And each serving delivers an impressive 27 grams of protein and 4 grams of fiber, all in just 140 calories, with no cholesterol, zero saturated fat, and no added oils. The original is designed as a blank canvas to be seasoned as the consumer would like, and to our delight, we are watching early adopters develop a host of recipes around it. For those who prefer a seasoned variety, we're also selling a Tuscan tomato, a Korean barbecue, and Chipotle pineapple version. Two, we are building back distribution in U.S. retail and U.S. food service. In U.S. retail, we are successfully rebuilding distribution and seeking to consolidate our brand where possible into brand blocks. As you will recall, over the last 18 to 24 months, we've seen a substantial migration of our products from the refrigerated meat aisle to the frozen meat aisle and frozen meat alternative aisle. Though we believe that ultimately plants and animal protein should be offered to consumers in equally prominent locations in the supermarket and ideally in the same section to facilitate convenience and choice, the unplanned and at times chaotic transition replete with long periods without product availability at all followed by consumers' lack of awareness regarding new placement, has been damaging to our business. Accordingly, we are now encouraging the consolidation of our brand, where possible, within brand blocks in the frozen section of supermarkets to reduce what can seem like a game of hide-and-go-seek for the consumer. As we rebuild our presence in U.S. retail, we are prioritizing consolidated offerings at high-impact chains to drive results. For example, in October, We announced plans with Walmart to increase availability of select products at over 2,000 stores nationwide, including our new Beyond Burger six-pack, which is designed to offer consumers value during a sustained period of economic stress. In U.S. Food Service, we are adjusting our go-to-market strategy to capture a higher percentage of operators whose consumer base assigns value to our award-winning non-GMO plant-based meats made from simple and clean ingredients. Though we expect a renewal of interest in plant-based meats in the broader restaurant segment in the United States, particularly as the price of animal protein continues to rise and we start to achieve the necessary scale to consistently underprice it, for the time being we see room for growth within institutions, restaurant chains, and other establishments that are more directly and explicitly focused on health and clean ingredients. Accordingly, we are increasing our investments against these specific targets. Three. Through our transformation office and program, we are implementing further actions to reduce and reset our operating expenses. We continue to seek to more fundamentally and more quickly reset our operating base. And as you recall, we have enlisted the restructuring support of Alex Partners, including our appointment of John Boken as Chief Transformation Officer to accelerate the work of our transformation office. We are deep into this process and are committed to positioning the business for more fundamental resizing of operating expense. Further, this underlying series of actions relating to our base operating expense is joined by what we believe will be a reduction in certain non-routine and non-recurring spend that burden our operating expense in 2025. Four, through our transformation office and program, we are taking additional action to expand margin in the currently constrained demand environment. We have and will continue to take steps to exit certain unprofitable product lines while reconfiguring others, or making targeted investments in our facilities, including a continuous production line for certain popular but currently lower margin products, and are doing extensive RFP work to drive competition and lower pricing within our supply chain. As with operating expense, we expect this underlying margin progress to be accompanied by the retirement of certain drags previously mentioned, such as the charge for China-related depreciation, and remain committed to the goal of laddering margins back to 30% plus. Five, we are considering certain strategic initiatives that, if successful, could help accelerate a return to growth. The path articulated above addresses the core challenges our business faces. The need to counter misinformation and change the product narrative around our products is reestablish distribution and improve product availability in the U.S. retail and food service markets, and drive significant operating expense reduction and margin expansion through our transformation office and program. These, along with other similar efforts, are designed to support the achievement of EBITDA-positive operations as soon as possible, even in an environment where demand remains subdued for the near term. We do, however, see the potential for growth outside of these actions if we take a more comprehensive view of the Beyond Brand technology across our U.S. and European markets, and we will be exploring this in quarters to come. It would be too early to provide further information today for a host of reasons, and as such, I'll leave the subject now for future updates. In closing, as those of you who have followed us closely know well, Over the last decade or so, we've lived at the forefront of the rise and precipitous destabilization of a nation industry with a deeply disruptive potential. All too typical of the heavy turbulence experienced by a company so closely wedded to emerging innovation, we've, as they say, been through it. Along this journey, I have sought to characterize our response as harnessing adversity to grow stronger, better, and more capable of achieving our long-term vision. More than any time over the last six plus years of being a public company, we have the opportunity today to reset our business in service to sustainable growth on behalf of all shareholders and on behalf of our mission. We are buoyed by and I am personally moved by the tremendous support we have seen from retail investors from throughout the United States all the way to Korea and have great enthusiasm for winning on their behalf. We are acutely aware of having more challenges to overcome, more misinformation to counter, more costs to cut, and more margin to expand. We've been in our turnaround phase for too long, and moving forward, you will not simply see more of the same from us. There is plenty of fight left and beyond and enormous enthusiasm to use this reset to hasten our future as a global protein company of tomorrow. With that, I will now turn the call over to Luby.