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Ppatties of Beyond Meat Inc.'s plant-based burger Beyond Burger are cooked on a skillet on November 19, 2020 in Katwijk, Netherlands.
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  • Beyond Meat rose nearly 13% Monday after Bernstein gave it a double upgrade to "outperform" from "underperform."
  • Bernstein gave Beyond Meat a $130 price target, saying the brand should benefit from the economic reopening.
  • The company posted a wider than expected loss for the first quarter of the year.
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Shares of Beyond Meat rose nearly 13% Monday to a two-week high after Bernstein gave the plant-based meat maker a double upgrade to "outperform" from "underperform" with a $130 price target.

The faux-meat maker climbed 12.69% to $120 at 2:35 p.m. ET Monday.

Analyst Alexia Howard gave the California-based company a double boost due to a "significant" increase in restaurant sales on the back of reopenings throughout the country.

"We believe that Beyond Meat should be recognized as a reopening play that stands to regain meaningful momentum over the coming quarters," Howard in the note said.

Beyond Meat has tumbled 44% since January.

"Even though the combination of Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat has slowed from a triple digit to a high double-digit rate (currently 77% YoY), it seems as though the overall underlying momentum remains fairly strong in US Retail outlets despite the negative year on year results as the company laps the panic buying that happened at the start of the pandemic," Howard in the note said.

The company, founded in 2009, posted a wider than expected loss for the first quarter of the year.

Customers, including restaurants, bought less of the company's meat substitute, which they stockpiled during the height pandemic. That was the third straight quarter that Beyond Meat has reported losses that are wider than expected.

Read the original article on Business Insider