The 411 on Vegan Investing

Suresh vegan investing

Ready to learn about all things vegan investing? On this episode of EATKINDLY With Me, Suresh Seneviratne gives an introduction to vegan investing.

He is joined by Maria Gallagher of The Motley Fool, a Virginia-based private financial and investing advice company. Suresh asks, “For those of us who are perhaps not as experienced with the verbiage and lingo of the investing world, can you tell us what IPO stands for?”

“IPO is Initial Public Offering,” Maria says. “So usually a big company will go to an IPO roadshow. They’ll work with an investment bank so that their stock becomes public and can be traded on the public market.”

Maria also explains the difference between impact investing and other types of investments. “With impact investing, your main priority is no longer to beat the market. Your main priority is to have your money make an impact. And so if that means lower returns, that is okay with you.”

The 411 on Vegan Investing

Looking to get into vegan investing? To see just how good plant-based companies with IPOs are, Suresh and Maria try two brands that have gone public: Beyond Meat and Oatly.

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Beyond Meat

The first on the list: Beyond Meat. “See for me, I love that little bit of grilled, charred taste in it. And I love the softness; I love the consistency of it,” Suresh says. “To me, it reminds me a lot of what I remember meat tasting like.”

The plant-based meat company went public in May 2019. And on its first day of trading, its shares soared 163 percent. “I do think it’s a pretty talked about stock. You can see after it went public it had a really big pop, which is when it just skyrockets because so many people are trying to get into it,” Maria says. “It is expected to be the number one stock within this plant-based industry.”

Oatly vegan brand
Oatly went public earlier this year, raising $1.43 billion in its IPO. | Scott Olson / Getty Images

Oatly

This oat milk and ice cream brand has been around since launching in Sweden back in 1994. Oatly went public earlier this year, raising $1.43 billion in its IPO. 

“From an analyst perspective, I think Oatly is very interesting in a way,” Maria says. And Suresh is a fan of the company. “Oh, it’s so creamy,” he says after taking a spoonful of the company’s vanilla-flavored oat milk-based ice cream. “It’s so smooth and silky.”

For those looking to dip their feet into vegan investing, Maria believes there will certainly be more vegan brands to go public—especially plant-based dairy companies.


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