EL SEGUNDO, CALIF. – Beyond Meat Inc. reduced its sales guidance for the third quarter of fiscal 2021. The announcement came a few weeks before the company announces its results on Nov. 10.

Based on preliminary results, Beyond Meat said it expects quarterly sales to be approximately $106 million, well below its guidance of a range of $120 million and $140 million. During an Aug. 3 conference call with financial analysts to discuss second-quarter results, Philip E. Hardin, chief financial officer, called the guidance “limited” and listed several reasons.

“First, an anticipated sequential moderation in foodservice shipments following some pipeline restocking activity, particularly in June,” he said. “Second, relative to a year ago, we had five fewer shipping days in Q3 ahead of the July 4 holiday, which is obviously one of our key promotional periods during the summer grilling season.

“Third, we’ve had some loss of distribution in our foodservice channels in both our US and international businesses, and some foodservice venues are finding it difficult to operate at full capacity also due to near-term labor challenges. And lastly, fourth, we believe some added caution is warranted given the recent uptick in COVID-19 infection rates due to the Delta variant and increased uncertainty associated with that.”

Reasons cited by the company on Oct. 22 for the shortfall included the Delta variant of COVID-19, a decrease in orders from a Canadian distributor, expected incremental orders that did not occur from a change in a distributor serving a large customer, a delay in shelf resets, and shortfalls in orders from some foodservice customers.

Manufacturing delays at plants in Pennsylvania also were cited as reasons.

During the second quarter of fiscal 2021, ended July 3, Beyond Meat posted sales of $149.4 million. For the third quarter of fiscal 2020, ended Sept. 26, 2020, sales were $94.4 million.