You’re reading 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. We no longer send these by email as we did in the past, but we post this and all of the newsletters on our website here.
Friends,
This week, we shared the BDSA update on several American cannabis markets for June, including the addition of two states, but we did not include a market that the firm covers, New York. The investment community was very excited about the prospects for companies benefitting from adult-use legalization in the state that was approved in March of 2021. The medical program was launched in 2016, and it has been a big disappointment.
The transition to adult-use has been very tough. I was in NYC in April of 2023 and wanted to go to an adult-use store but did not enter it. There were and still are plenty of unlicensed stores, and the line to get into the adult-use store in Manhattan was too long. For many reasons, New York, which is a big cannabis market, hasn’t yet been a big legal cannabis market in its early years.
The New York Cannabis Control Board hosted a livestream meeting on July 10th, and it shared some slides that indicated how adult-use sales have been going. The minutes of the board meeting aren’t yet published, but the board should post them soon. Unfortunately, the cannabis sales data is not shared on its website, but the presentation included it. New York cannabis sales have been soaring! In June, the state set a record:
On the call, a member of the team pointed out that June was perhaps helped a bit by the month being a five-week month rather than a four-week month, but the surge was phenomenal, up 53% from May and from almost nothing a year earlier. Q2 was reported at $160 million, which was up from just $23 million a year earlier and from $101 million in Q1.
The number of adult-use stores has increased to 144, with about half in NYC and Long Island. New York has over 3X the population of Colorado, but it has only 14% of Colorado’s number of dispensaries. Not only are the number of stores increasing, but enforcement actions against unlicensed retailers have been stepped up.
Investors should pay attention to this strong growth, as New York is a big state with lots of room for improvement and for growth. It’s not yet clear which stocks might benefit, but there is a lot of opportunity. The medical cannabis program in New York has 40 licenses issued to 10 registered organizations, and this group is dominated by publicly traded companies. Sales, though, are slow in the medical market, and four of these stores are temporarily closed. When I look at the adult-use store list, I see 5 of these with stores. One has two stores, but none of the six stores are in NYC. The medical cannabis registered organizations could open more stores for adult-use, and they also benefit from their cultivation and processing.
Beyond the potential for companies operating in New York, this big improvement could result in more improvements by different states like California. If more enforcement actions and increased licensing works for some states in terms of lowering the sale of illicit cannabis and raising taxes, this could become a trend.
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc.
Business for Sale – Indiva Limited
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New Cannabis Ventures publishes curated articles as well as exclusive news. Here is some of the most important content from this week:
Exclusives
Cannabis Sales Growth Lifts in June
Florida Medical Patient Growth Sets Another All-Time Low
Slow Cannabis Sales Growth in Illinois in June
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Sincerely,
Alan
