The Street Sweeper

About the Author The Street Sweeper

Sonya Colberg joined TheStreetSweeper in early 2012 as a senior investigative reporter after racking up an impressive pile of journalism awards for her past work at two major daily newspapers. For example, Colberg recently won top honors – recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists and the Associated Press alike – for her performance in the tough investigative reporting field. During her long and decorated career, she has walked away with major prizes for her in-depth coverage of business and healthcare as well. A fearless reporter with incredible writing skills, Colberg has now teamed up with Melissa Davis – another award-winning journalist who serves as senior editor of TheStreetSweeper – to deliver hard-hitting coverage of risky stocks to the investment community.

Freshpet: An Overvalued Bad, Bad Dog


Pet food company Freshpet (FRPT) jumped out with an IPO last month and shares fetched a surprising $20 the first trading day.

Freshpet loses money as it installs and maintains refrigerators in stores to display its natural, slightly-cooked dog food.

The New Jersey company released numbers late Tuesday, showing its $0.14 loss exceeded analysts’ $0.12 expectations on improved revenue of $22.5 million. Consequently, the stock dropped, followed by a jump to about $19.

But we’ve pawed through Freshpet’s numbers and were astonished to determine how many dollars the company makes per fridge:

About $19.57 per day.

That’s less than the cost of a tube of Freshpet Vital dog food.

So a company the market says is worth over $600 million sells the daily equivalent of about one meat tube per fridge.

And according to the conference call, Freshpet is expecting that figure to reach only about $21 to $22 by the end of 2015.

So it appears this money-losing company is on track to continue losing money.

At the core of that issue, TheStreetSweeper has dug up three overriding challenges facing this 10-year-old Secaucus, N.J. company.

And we believe the overall challenges make this stock worth less than one-third its current price.

1: Competition is fierce, huge players now penetrating the niche.

Overall, mass-market pet food sales have become stagnant.

That’s according to Pet Food in the U.S., 10th Edition, a significant market research study.

Numerous big producers – even Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) and Whole Foods (NASDAQ:WFM), some of which stores carry Freshpet – have consequently stepped onto the natural pet food bandwagon with their own store brands, the study states. The study also notes:

“With Hill’s reformulating Science Diet as a natural product, Wal-Mart launching Pure Balance as its first natural pet food store brand, Nestlé Purina coming on strong with Purina ONE beyOnd, Merrick acquiring Castor & Pollux and obtaining organic certification, and Del Monte (NYSE:FDP) acquiring Natural Balance, everyone is stepping up their game to take advantage of the natural boom.”

As more pet food companies go after well-heeled, picky pet owners, Freshpet lacks strong brand recognition, a factor the CEO alluded to recently.

Healthy Spot organic dog food stores, in five California locations, including ritzy West Hollywood and Santa Monica, draw wealthy customers who will spend the money to pamper their pets.

“Cleo is one of those pretentious eaters. She likes goose,” associate Kristine Kobe said with a laugh of her 8-year-old Jack Russell-Chihuahua.

The upscale boutiques’ fare includes three refrigerated natural dog food brands. Primal dog food like Ms. Kobe’s pooch eats when she isn’t sneaking a discarded french-fry, along with Stella & Chewy’s and Small Batch.

What about Freshpet?

“Freshpet? That doesn’t sound like a name that has come up before in my training,” said Ms. Kobe.

Freshpet is lost on a treadmill of natural pet food brands.

“There’s a whole variety of different brands and flavors and protein sources” of frozen/refrigerated quality food for pets, said veterinarian Dr. Karen Becker.

Another product in the niche is Blue Buffalo, which apparently backed off a reportedly poised 2014 IPO following the false advertising lawsuit filed by Nestlé Purina.

The lawsuit is another alarming signal for tiny Freshpet showing that big players won’t hesitate to go after small companies so they can claim the niche as their own.

2: Stinky, prohibitively expensive food at ~$10 per day for a larger dog. Not easy to feed and store safely, some pet owners believe Freshpet food made their pets sick.

One reviewer warns that her dog didn’t finish eating the food until the next day and became so violently ill that it nearly had to be euthanized.

“I e-mailed the company to question how long I can let the food sit in her dish, because this was the only thing that I changed before she got ill. I received word back about a week later telling me not to leave it in their dish for more than an hour.”

While many reviewers said their pets like the food, many others object to the killer price tag (~$17-$27 for 6 pounds versus Purina SMARTBLEND natural dry ~$23 for 16.5 pounds). One reviewer said Freshpet “must be on crack!” and “It’s $7.98 for 2 lbs.”

And Freshpet frequently claims its food is preservative-free.

“We have no preservatives. The only preservative is the refrigerator,” said Richard Thompson, Freshpet’s CEO.

However, Freshpet does contain salt and sodium selenite, an inorganic salt and supplement that can be toxic, like other minerals in high doses, even deadly.

And salt is an age-old preservative. In fact, competitors offer brands that do not add salt.

Indeed, salt can be a problem in pets as well as humans, as documented below.

“Animal studies have shown that increasing salt intake increases the amount of protein excreted in the urine and markedly increases the rate of deterioration of renal function in experimental forms of renal disease. Studies where salt intake has been reduced in animals with experimental renal disease show a slowing of the rate of progression of the disease.”

One former customer blames the salt, though it’s within standard levels, for worsening a pit bull’s heart condition over time and ultimately killing the dog.

3: Freshpet stock is expensive. Even management values it at $5.

Even Freshpet – which could potentially release millions of shares held under 180-day lockup in just over four months – considers its stock worth about one-third of the $15 per share value in its initial public offering.

That’s right. Just two weeks before its IPO last month, Freshpet signed a $62.5 million revolving loan deal that set the stock’s value at $5 and change, as shown in its US Securities and Exchange Commission filing, below:

“Based on the factors above, the Board of Directors determined that the Series C Preferred Stock fair value was unchanged at $5.25.”

And the valuation specialist hired to help Freshpet determined the fair value of the common stock was more brutal:

“The valuation specialist determined the fair value of our common stock at February 6, 2014 was $0.88 per share.”

Conclusion:

With Freshpet shares around $19, the market value has rocketed to over $600 million.

But TheStreetSweeper believes nobody with any sense would ever pay nearly 10 times its $62 million in sales for a company that is losing money.

Even $5 per share – a $160 million market value – sounds absurdly generous for a company with such an unworkable plan built on ridiculous numbers.

It’s time to send this dog out the back door.

According to TipRanks.com, which measures analysts’ and bloggers’ success rate based on how their calls perform, blogger The Street Sweeper has a total average return of 25.2% and a 56% success rate. The Street Sweeper isRanked #808 out of 4056 Bloggers

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