The upcoming Oatly Trilogy

We will be exploring Oatly's past, present, and future.

Last week, I immersed myself in the past, present, and future of Oatly not only as a leading consumer brand but also as a publicly listed business.

Oatly is a fascinating brand that has enjoyed huge success by challenging the world’s conventional wisdom about cow’s milk and advocating for fighting climate change. Under Toni Petersson, an unorthodox CEO who sang “Wow No Cow” in the middle of a field, Oatly took the world by storm, becoming a leading plant-based brand in the US, the UK, and Western and Northern Europe.

Having doubled its revenue in 2020, Oatly became a Wall Street darling and a publicly listed company in May 2021, with its shares trading at $17 upon IPO. The share price implied a market capitalisation of $10 billion - a hefty valuation for a consumer brand that had only been known to US customers since 2016.

Fast forward 18 months, Oatly shares have fallen over 90% from the top, with very real survival risks going into 2023. As a challenger brand that relished fast growth, Oatly is now plagued with ongoing factory issues in the US, rising material costs in Europe, and distribution problems in Asia.

Between now and the New Year, I will publish a trilogy of deep-dive articles about Oatly’s history, product offering, genius marketing, commercial success, financial position, current struggles, and uncertain future.

If you have any questions about Oatly that you would like me to cover in the upcoming articles, please leave a comment below.

Thank you and stay tuned!

Yimin