Key Takeaways

  • Plant-based meat alternative supplier Beyond Meat announced in a securities filing on Monday (January 12) that it appointed Tony Kalajian as Chief Accounting Officer and principal accounting officer, effective January 12.
  • The appointment comes weeks after the company fired its former principal accounting officer and controller, Yi (Jevy) Luo. Luo departed on December 23, as previously reported by CFO Dive.
  • About a month before Luo's termination, Beyond Meat disclosed in a November filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it had a material weakness in its internal controls over financial reporting, and as a result delayed its third-quarter report by about a week.

Dive Insight

According to Monday's filing, Kalajian will take over the principal accounting officer role from Beyond Meat's Chief Financial Officer Lubi Kutua. Kutua had temporarily held the position after Luo's departure and will continue to serve as treasurer and CFO.

Kalajian joins the plant-based meat company as it works to improve internal accounting and financial processes amid ongoing financial difficulties. When announcing the material weakness, management believed the company lacked "sufficient technical resources" to ensure proper accounting treatment for certain transactions, and simultaneously announced plans to improve these controls.

According to the November 12 filing, these improvements include hiring personnel with "solid technical accounting and public company reporting knowledge" and implementing new training for key accounting and financial personnel.

Kalajian is a healthcare industry veteran who, according to the filing, most recently served as consulting CFO for Quantem Healthcare, operating as ContinueEM, an outpatient and urgent medical care company. According to his LinkedIn profile, he also served as Chief Accounting Officer and interim CFO at Calidi Biotherapeutics, and as Chief Accounting Officer at OncoCyte Corporation and Lineage Cell Therapeutics.

The filing shows that upon assuming the roles of Chief Accounting Officer and principal accounting officer, Kalajian will receive an annual base salary of $325,000 and will be eligible for an annual bonus of up to 35% of his base salary. Beyond Meat will also grant him a one-time cash award of $35,000 upon his start.

While Kalajian and other key executives work to improve Beyond Meat's accounting processes, company leadership is also addressing continued declines in sales and profits—in the third quarter ended September 27, its gross profit fell by about half to $7.2 million, according to its earnings data.

The company's stock, after falling 76% last year, continues to trade below $1 per share, drawing increased attention from shareholders. Law firms Pomerantz and Bleichmar Fonti & Auld recently announced investigations into allegations of securities fraud by the company or its executives, and invited investors to participate in a potential class action against the meat alternative supplier, according to recent press releases.

Additionally, in November, Beyond Meat was ordered to pay nearly $39 million in damages to Sonate Corporation in a trademark infringement lawsuit, as reported by Bloomberg Law at the time.

Beyond Meat did not immediately respond to requests for comment.