You’re reading a copy of this week’s edition of the New Cannabis Ventures weekly newsletter, which we have been publishing since October 2015. The newsletter includes unique insight to help our readers stay ahead of the curve as well as links to the week’s most important news.
Friends,
At $18.69, the Global Cannabis Stock Index, which has represented the overall publicly-traded market for the medical and legal marijuana sector since 2013, is down a stunning 43% in 2022 and has fallen 79% since the peak of $92.48 in 2021. Representing plant-touching cannabis companies in the United States, the American Cannabis Operators Index is down a bit less at 35% in 2022.
We are seeing a broad array of expansions, and the pending increase in the Illinois dispensary count has us very excited. The expanding markets in the East, which we will talk about in an upcoming exclusive, are exciting as well. With the cannabis stocks under pressure and the fundamentals for many companies likely to improve, we are becoming more bullish.
After a little more than 15 months from Ross Gerber’s table-pounder interview with Yahoo Finance seven trading days before the very top of the cannabis stock rally of 2021, it seems Gerber announced his capitulation on May 28th when he tweeted he has given up on cannabis legalization. Contrarian investors abound should take note!
Exclusive content
Backbone Founder and CEO Rajesh Chandran has a background in machine learning. Coupling his love of data and the nascent cannabis industry, the company now serves to unify supply chain data and enable cannabis companies to run efficiently. In an exclusive interview with NCV, Chandran talks about how Backbone serves its customers and how the company will continue to expand.
Each month we summarize the top revenue and income producing publicly-traded cannabis companies As of last month, 38 companies qualified for our senior list and 16 qualified for the junior list. Most investors know the top companies such as Trulieve, Curaleaf, Green Thumb Industries and Cresco Labs, but we dive further to explore up-and-coming companies as well.
We published the performance of the seven NCV Indices for May which include the long-running Global Cannabis Stock Index as well as the American Cannabis Operator Index, Ancillary Cannabis Index and Canadian Cannabis LP Index as well as Tiers 1, 2 and 3.
Illinois adult-use cannabis sales decreased slightly by 1.5% sequentially in May to $129.8 million from $131.7 million, but have increased 11.5% year-over-year.
Uniquely positioned, Greenlane is a Nasdaq-listed company that sells hundreds of ancillary non-plant touching products to many of the top U.S. multi-state cannabis operators. Greenlane is one of the very few ways to gain exposure to the American cannabis industry, without having to worry about interstate commerce rules, archaic exchange limitations or punitive taxation.
Get up to speed by visiting the Greenlane Investor Dashboard that we maintain on their behalf as a client of New Cannabis Ventures. Click the blue Follow Company button in order to stay up to date with their progress.
New leadership
Fire & Flower announced new leadership. Effective June 1, Stéphane Trudel took over as CEO. Trudel was Senior VP of Operations for Alimentation Couche-Tard, a convenience store operator that has a 35% ownership stake in the company.
Dealmakers
Harborside has provided finalized details of the integration measures it needs to take to become Statehouse Holdings. The company said the integration is underway and it expects the first phase of the process to be completed by the end of this month.
Aurora Cannabis is shoring up its balance sheet with the closing of its upsized bought deal offering, bringing in gross proceeds of approximately $172.5 million. Two days later, on June 3, the company announced that it has repurchased approximately $20 million of its convertible senior notes. Aurora’s balance sheet now stands at approximately $455 million in cash.
California cannabis brand Shryne Group recently received a senior secured term loan of up to $170 million from Silver Spike. The specialty finance company was created to invest in the cannabis space in the form of direct loans.
Earnings
Cansortium Q1 revenue increased 19% sequentially to $19.7 million and was up year-over-year by 30%. The company, which operates under the Fluent™ brand, said recent cultivation improvements and added capacity have supplied the product needed to optimize store productivity. On April 20, Cansortium opened its third store in Pennsylvania and expects to open four to six new stores in Florida in 2022.
Entourage Health Q1 revenue rose 17% sequentially to C$12.4 million and was up 21% year-over-year. CEO and Executive Chair George Scorsis said the results reflect the company’s strongest operating performance to date “mainly from fulfilling some of the largest purchase orders in our company’s history.” Last month, Fire & Flower Holdings Corp. announced it had entered into an agreement with Entourage to provide same-day delivery services to Entourage’s patients in certain regions within Ontario through its Starseed platform.
To get real-time updates download our free mobile app for Android or Apple devices, like our Facebook page, or follow Alan on Twitter. Share and discover industry news with like-minded people on the largest cannabis investor and entrepreneur group on LinkedIn.
Use the suite of professionally managed NCV Cannabis Stock Indices to monitor the performance of publicly-traded cannabis companies within the day or over longer time-frames. In addition to the comprehensive Global Cannabis Stock Index, we offer a family of indices to track Canadian licensed producers as well as the American Cannabis Operator Index and the Ancillary Cannabis Index.
View the Public Cannabis Company Revenue & Income Tracker, which ranks the top revenue producing cannabis stocks.
Stay on top of some of the most important communications from public companies by viewing upcoming cannabis investor earnings conference calls.
Discover upcoming new listings with the curated Cannabis Stock IPOs and New Issues Tracker.
Sincerely,
Alan & Joel
info@newcannabisventures.com
