The Beyond Meat, Inc. (NASDAQ:BYND) share price has fared very poorly over the last month, falling by a substantial 30%. For any long-term shareholders, the last month ends a year to forget by locking in a 51% share price decline.

In spite of the heavy fall in price, you could still be forgiven for feeling indifferent about Beyond Meat's P/S ratio of 0.9x, since the median price-to-sales (or "P/S") ratio for the Food industry in the United States is about the same. Although, it's not wise to simply ignore the P/S without explanation as investors may be disregarding a distinct opportunity or a costly mistake.

What Does Beyond Meat's Recent Performance Look Like?

Beyond Meat could be doing better as its revenue has been going backwards lately while most other companies have been seeing positive revenue growth. It might be that many expect the dour revenue performance to strengthen positively, which has kept the P/S from falling. If not, then existing shareholders may be a little nervous about the viability of the share price.

What Are Revenue Growth Metrics Telling Us About The P/S?

The only time you'd be comfortable seeing a P/S like Beyond Meat's is when the company's growth is tracking the industry closely.

Taking a look back first, the company's revenue growth last year wasn't something to get excited about as it posted a disappointing decline of 7.5%. As a result, revenue from three years ago have also fallen 31% overall. Accordingly, shareholders would have felt downbeat about the medium-term rates of revenue growth.

Turning to the outlook, the next three years should generate growth of 4.3% per annum as estimated by the eight analysts watching the company. That's shaping up to be similar to the 2.9% per annum growth forecast for the broader industry.

In light of this, it's understandable that Beyond Meat's P/S sits in line with the majority of other companies. It seems most investors are expecting to see average future growth and are only willing to pay a moderate amount for the stock.

What Does Beyond Meat's P/S Mean For Investors?

Following Beyond Meat's share price tumble, its P/S is just clinging on to the industry median P/S. It's argued the price-to-sales ratio is an inferior measure of value within certain industries, but it can be a powerful business sentiment indicator.

We've seen that Beyond Meat maintains an adequate P/S seeing as its revenue growth figures match the rest of the industry. At this stage investors feel the potential for an improvement or deterioration in revenue isn't great enough to push P/S in a higher or lower direction. Unless these conditions change, they will continue to support the share price at these levels.

Before you settle on your opinion, we've discovered 2 warning signs for Beyond Meat (1 shouldn't be ignored!) that you should be aware of.

If strong companies turning a profit tickle your fancy, then you'll want to check out this free list of interesting companies that trade on a low P/E (but have proven they can grow earnings).

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