They say you are what you eat—and investors who bit into Beyond Meat are feeling a little undercooked.

Beyond Meat finally dropped its delayed Q3 earnings, and the results were hard to digest: the company posted a $110.7 million loss, far worse than last year’s $26.6 million, on $70.2 million in revenue, which—while slightly above expectations—was still down 13.3% YoY. Shares fell 8.61% today, extending a brutal slide for the once-hyped alt-meat pioneer, which hasn’t turned a quarterly profit since 2020 and is now down 99% over the past five years.

The drop boils down to weak demand from both shoppers and restaurants. On the consumer side, US sentiment just hit its lowest level in three years, and with budgets tightening, many are skipping Beyond’s pricier patties. On the restaurant side, fewer distribution points in the U.S. and lower burger sales at fast food restaurants dragged on results. The pain was sharpest at home: US retail and food-service revenue plunged 21%, compared to just a 1% dip internationally.

Meme stock mania

Beyond Meat’s past few months could only be described as meme-stock madness. It all started when retail trader Dimitri Semenikhin posted a bullish analysis of the company’s growth potential on reddit. The hype sent shares soaring 1,300% in four days, before reality hit—taking the stock down 44.53% in the past month and 70.35% year to date.

The comeback looked a lot like GameStop’s 2021 rally, when Keith “Roaring Kitty” Gill and a legion of retail traders sent prices skyrocketing in defiance of Wall Street. This time, Beyond joined a new batch of meme-stock revivals including Krispy Kreme, Opendoor, Rocket Mortgage, and Kohl’s.

The problem is that meme-stock rallies run on crowd psychology, not company performance. And when meme stock hype met earnings reality today, Beyond Meat couldn’t sustain investor exuberance.

What’s on the menu next?

Beyond Meat may be all sizzle and no steak: the Food Institute recently warned the company could face bankruptcy by 2027, when its sizable debt comes due. CEO Ethan Brown insists a turnaround is underway, but at this point, meme stocks like Beyond Meat might belong on Reddit rather than in your portfolio.—SY

Despite CEO and Founder Ethan Brown’s focus on positives—like launching a new Beyond Steak product, expanding presence to 2,000 Walmart stores, and implementing cost-cutting measures—he still faces a fundamental problem: consumer skepticism. Increasingly, meat alternatives are perceived as ultra-processed and less nutritious than real meat. Scientific studies have raised concerns about the high levels of sodium, additives, and industrial processing in many plant-based proteins, undercutting the halo that once fueled the category’s explosive growth.

Tune in to the Brew Markets podcast to hear what Brown had to say—and why I think the company may be living on borrowed time.—AB

🟢 What’s up

• BigBear.ai jumped 18.32% after beating Q3 estimates and announcing a $250 million deal to acquire Ask Sage, a generative-AI platform serving defense and national agencies.
• Payments firm Bill Holdings popped 11.49% following reports it’s exploring a potential sale.
• Swiss sneaker brand On Holding AG surged 17.99% after topping both revenue and earnings expectations and raising guidance for the third straight quarter.
• Financial-software maker Clearwater Analytics rose 7.66% amid reports it’s considering a sale after receiving takeover interest.
• Oklo climbed 6.67% despite posting steeper-than-expected losses as investors cheered news that the Energy Department approved its nuclear-fuel facility design, keeping it on track to deploy its first reactor.

What’s down

• Circle shares plunged 12.21% despite strong Q3 results after the company raised its full-year expense outlook, signaling higher costs ahead.
• Although Alkermes reported success in a narcolepsy drug trial, investors were spooked when the company clarified that the positive results relied on statistical adjustments that could inflate false positives. Shares tumbled 7.11%.
• Solar-tracking firm Nextracker announced a rebrand to “Nextpower” to reflect its move into a full power-tech platform—but investors weren’t impressed, and shares sank 8.81%.
• USA Rare Earth shares initially rose after announcing UK approval for its acquisition of Less Common Metals, a key supplier of rare-earth alloys—but the early gains reversed, and the stock fell 4.78%.
• Eledon Pharmaceuticals lost 11.27% following its $50 million public offering, which will increase share count and dilute existing investors’ ownership stakes.

The old saying “Don’t mess with Texas” just gained a lot more clout now that Coinbase is moving to the Lone Star State.

The nation’s largest cryptocurrency platform is pulling up roots from Delaware and reincorporating in the land of big hair and cowboy hats because it “has become an increasingly attractive hub for innovative companies like ours,” Coinbase’s chief legal officer Paul Grewal explained in a WSJ op-ed.

Delaware has long been the go-to incorporation darling thanks to its lenient corporate laws. But recent court curveballs have shaken that trust—especially after Elon Musk packed up Tesla and SpaceX for Texas when Delaware judges ordered his EV giant to scrap his $56 billion pay package in 2018. “If your company is still incorporated in Delaware, I recommend moving to another state as soon as possible,” Musk posted on X. Dropbox and TripAdvisor also recently ditched Delaware for California and Nevada, respectively.

So what does Texas have going for it? According to Grewal, recent reforms like Senate Bill 29 provide “a business-friendly legal ecosystem with strong protections and efficient dispute resolution.” Translation: It’s harder for shareholders to sue the company and its top brass.

That’s not all: Chevron set its sights on Texas for its first natural gas plant to power data centers and cash in on the AI boom. And the Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) will be ready and raring to give the NYC-based New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq a run for their money when it comes online in 2026.

Texas is already the world’s eighth largest economy, close behind California. Is it fixin’ to become number one?—JD

AI evangelists have been searching for a sign to prove all this AI spending is worth the hype. Yesterday, AMD CEO Lisa Su answered their prayers.

AMD dropped some seriously ambitious numbers at its first Financial Analyst Day in three years: The company said that it’s aiming for roughly 35% compounded annual growth in the next three to five years, as well as about 60% growth in its data center business. Su also said she sees the total addressable market for AI data center chips reaching $1 trillion by 2030, and argued that AMD would have “double-digit” share in that market over the next three to five years. All of this, of course, is only possible because of “insatiable” AI demand.

Su doubled down on big tech’s big spending plans when interviewed by CNBC this morning: “I don’t think it’s a big gamble,” she explained. “I think it’s the right gamble.”

Shares of the semiconductor giant shot up 9% today. All of these bold predictions come as a follow-up to the company’s Q3 earnings announcement last week, which triggered a selloff despite AMD beating expectations.

Challenging Kingvidia’s throne: Nvidia currently owns 90% of the chip market, according to CNBC. But AMD could catch up, given it’s the only other major developer of graphics processing units, or GPUs. Shares of AMD have surged an eye-popping 114.33% this year so far, beating even Nvidia’s gain of 44.31%.

Can all of this pay off?

AMD is clearly confident despite growing scrutiny over the seemingly circular web of spending among big tech giants that’s marked the AI boom.

Michael Burry of “The Big Short” fame disclosed short bets against Nvidia and Palantir last week, and recently accused companies of understating the depreciation of chips, calling it “one of the more common frauds of the modern era” on X.

Some analysts weren’t wooed by AMD’s big forecasts yesterday, and remained focused on the numbers we saw in last week’s earnings release. “The real issue here then is that the stock is going to be binary around AI market share in our view, and a 5 year single point earnings model doesn’t really capture the richness of that debate,” explained Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore in a note today. “We knew all of that coming into this meeting, and it didn’t change our mind at all,” he said, reaffirming his “equal weight” rating.—LB

• Farewell Lincoln: The last American penny ever was minted today at the US Mint in Philadelphia.
• Waymo launched driverless robotaxis on highways for the first time ever in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix.
• Anthropic is splashing out $50 billion to build AI infrastructure, starting with constructing data centers in Texas and New York.
• The White House said that key October jobs and inflation data won’t just be late, but might never be released at all due to the government shutdown.
• Atlanta Fed President Bostic announced he’ll be retiring when his term expires in February.
• Related: The Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether or not President Trump can fire Fed governor Lisa Cook in January 2026.
• Bank of America argued that investors have become so enamored with the AI trade that they could be missing out on other opportunities.

We should be getting October CPI tomorrow, but the government’s not going to reopen quickly enough to have all the data ready to go—and according to the White House, there’s a good chance we never see that data.

But even though they don’t have inflation data to discuss, the folks from the Federal Reserve have plenty to talk about: we’ll hear from San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly, New York Fed President John Williams, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem, Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack, and Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic.

We’ve also got a few big names on the earnings calendar tomorrow, including Disney, Applied Materials, Nu Holdings, JD.com, Bilibili, and Brookfield.