As investors rushed to earn significant percentages from Farms just minutes after it was made public Friday afternoon, founder Matt O’Hayer took a moment to express what he learned about turning his farm egg business into a 20-hen grass for an IPO.
“Always be over-capitalized,” O’Hayer said in an Instagram interview with Forbes.
Friday’s public provision did that, filling Vital’s coffers with $200 million and giving it a market capitalization of $1.3 billion at the close. Just two years ago, when Forbes filed O’Hayer’s profile in 2018, Vital Farms had grossed a total of $25 million, in an estimated $136 million listing.
Now, the largest grazing egg logo in the United States, and one of the maximum IPO expected in the food industry, has been achieved by Vital Farms: its stocks have risen by 60%, in the end by $35. Even before his public debut, he had to increase the initial value of his shares, first expected to be between $15 and $17, to $22.
The company’s good fortune shows that more moral standards, such as paying farmers and factory staff higher value and not futures contracts to cover securities, are exciting for consumers and investors.
And it can be played.
Also give Beyond Meat the credits for emotion. Its inventory has risen 175% since its IPO last May, largely due to the exaggerated request of institutional investors for more sustainable public investments.
“There’s an old adage that says that if you’re really in your business, justice is what matters most to you. If you’re not in your business, it’s cheap,” O’Hayer said Friday. “I have the merit here of the retrospective.”
A longtime entrepreneur (he started promoting eggs door-to-door just before his 13th birthday, after his uncle paid for his college education), this is the time of O’Hayer’s IPO. He founded a reserve company that went public in 1998 and made a friendly foreclosure after 9/11. The corporate was not in a position to deal with the crisis.
O’Hayer spent the next five years living on a catamaran where he and his friend Catharine, now a wife, sold charters on vacation. In 2007, they moved to Austin, the home of John Mackey, O’Hayer’s intelligent friend and founder of Whole Foods, who encouraged O’Hayer to think about conscious capitalism. As O’Hayer learned more about the growing demand for human-grade food and how complicated it was to achieve it, he proved his luck in the business. He bought 20 Rhode Island Red hens and a 27-acre plot in Austin and began promoting eggs at local restaurants and farmers markets.
He ended up giving the maximum egg to a food bank because few people would pay the value he demanded: more than $10. “I wasn’t in a position to sell them cheaply,” said O’Hayer, who handed over the eggs for a 2005 Subaru he still owns in 2018. “I sought to identify what they would charge in the long run.
“I was looking for the way out. Instead of looking to get rich, I learned that I could start a business where I focused on employees, customers, shareholders and the environment,” O’Hayer said. “It’s much more of a laugh than focusing on profits.”
I learned all about food and drink as an editor at Forbes, from billionaires and new agricultural technology companies to wine entrepreneurs and CPG. I run 30 Under 30 Food and
As editor of Forbes, I echo everything about food and beverages, from billionaires and new agricultural technology companies to CPG and wine entrepreneurs. I’m at the most sensible point on the food and beverage list of 30 children under 30, as well as for Forbes’ list of 25 state-of-the-art agricultural technology start-ups. My reports took me to the secret kitchen of In-N-Out Burger, made me walk through drought-affected farms in California’s Central Valley and even sent me to a chocolate factory designed like a castle in northern France. Gravito towards the intersection of force and mass manufacturing. I also make an awning with good looks and non-public care. Send the recommendation to [email protected].