What Happened?
Shares of plant-based food and beverage company SunOpta (NASDAQ: STKL) fell 18.8% in the morning session after the company reported weak fourth-quarter results: its gross margin missed significantly, and its full-year EBITDA guidance fell short of Wall Street's estimates. However, SunOpta exceeded analysts' EPS projections and delivered a slight EBITDA beat. While these positive aspects are noteworthy, the overall performance for the quarter was underwhelming.
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What The Market Is Telling Us
SunOpta’s shares are quite volatile and have had 15 moves greater than 5% over the last year. But moves this big are rare even for SunOpta and indicate this news significantly impacted the market’s perception of the business.
The biggest move we wrote about over the last year was 10 months ago when the stock gained 15.1% on the news that the company reported a "beat and raise" quarter. First-quarter results blew past analysts' revenue expectations, due to a 23.5% volume growth partially offset by a 5% price reduction for pass-through commodity pricing. EPS was inline with expectations. Its full-year revenue guidance also came in higher than Wall Street's estimates (raised from $685 million to $700 million). Zooming out, we think this was a fantastic quarter that should have shareholders cheering.
SunOpta is down 17.2% since the beginning of the year, and at $6.41 per share, it is trading 18.8% below its 52-week high of $7.89 from December 2024. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of SunOpta’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $2,373.
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