Mario Tama/Getty Images
- Beyond Meat has seen a sudden, meme-like rally in the last week.
- A retail investor who's amassed a huge trove of the stock tells us why he's so bullish.
- Demitri Semenikhin looks like he's trying to do for Beyond Meat what Keith Gill did for GameStop.
An ailing stock that hit a fresh all-time low suddenly surges on a burst of retail-investor enthusiasm despite high short interest from hedge funds — does that sound familiar?
It should if you've been even casually following the meme stock saga since the early days of the pandemic. Except this week, instead of GameStop, we're talking about plant-based meat maker Beyond Meat, and instead of Keith Gill (aka Roaring Kitty), we're talking about a trader named Demitri Semenikhin.
The conditions surrounding Beyond Meat's recent stock rally are remarkably similar to the now-iconic Gamestop short squeeze of 2021 when Roaring Kitty inspired a retail investor army across to pump GameStop shares to the moon. In addition to focus from retail, the stock has also been heavily shorted by institutions, with short interest above 50% as of last week.
Now, it looks like Semenikhin, who is based in Dubai, is trying to inspire a similar winning streak for the struggling faux meat company.
For now, it appears to be working. The stock jumped as much as 78% on Monday, exiting penny-stock territory after crumbling to $0.50 last week. It was trading at about $1.11 a share around midday.
Posting on Reddit, Semenikhin said last week that he had purchased about one twentieth of the shares oustanding. He further unpacked his bullish thesis in a video on Sunday night titled "Why I've purchased 4% of Beyond Meat Stock."
"Beyond sold shares to new investors for near $3 per share and used the money to repay its debt. This move was bullish for Beyond, removing its previously high risk of bankruptcy and greatly strengthening its balance sheet," his video explained.
Business Insider caught up with Semenikhin to hear about his bullish thesis on the stock.
Meet Capybara Stocks
Like Keith Gill, Semenikhin goes by an animal-themed moniker. He posts on Reddit and YouTube under the name Capybara Stocks.
Semenikhin, who works as a real estate developer, said that his investment strategy centers on identifying companies with low share prices and high financial warrants and debt.
While Semenikhin's initial post has been removed by Reddit, Business Insider verified his position through screenshots of his brokerage account, confirming that he purchaed 3.1 million shares on October 14, when the stock closed at about $0.78 a share.
"At the current price that I bought in, the pricing was just way too low for what was happening," he told Business Insider. "It was very straightforward that it shouldn't be trading at this price."
Semenikhin's bullish thesis centers on the completion of Beyond Meat's convertible note exchange that saw the company agree with bondholders to swap notes due in 2027 for $196 million in new notes due in 2030, as well as 316 million new shares.
The announcement sent the stock spiraling last week, but he argues that the issuance of new shares was misinterpreted as a bearish development by investors. In Semenikhin's opinion, the dynamics of the Beyond Meat's note exchange have ratcheted up the likelihood of a massive short-squeeze in the stock.
He also said that he sees the company's recent moves as buying time to either grow or to be acquired, and he isn't concerned about reports of declining demand for fake meat.
His bullishness appears to have won the hearts of retail traders online, with users cheering on his initial post on Reddit and the comment section of his YouTube video awash in rocket emojis.
Semenikhin's sudden rise to retail-investor stardom is emblematic of a stock market that's allowed individual traders to steal the spotlight from big institutions. Roaring Kitty, with his regular YouTube updates and well-honed thesis on why he liked the stock, was the first, but there have been others since.
The stellar rally in shares of Opendoor stock this year has its own retail mascot in Scott Findlay, who told Business Insider last month that he's bullish on the "boots-on-the-ground, gorilla marketing campaign" being waged by hedge funder Eric Jackson.
"I find that it's a regular recurrence that whenever such events arise, and the company is small, people just don't read 8-Ks, they don't read the analyst notes," Semenikhin said about how he goes about looking for opportunities. "They don't know what's happening. I think that's why there's so much price mismatch."
As Beyond stock started surging on Monday, it quickly became the top trending name on r/WallStreetBets. Data from Stocktwits shows that sentiment among traders is ranked as extremely bullish while message volume surrounding the stock has spiked. Mentions of the stock on Reddit are up 84% in the last 24 hours.
