How were Canada’s biggest cannabis companies valued so high, yet are now sitting on billions of grams of unsold cannabis and many still haven’t turned a profit? A new feature in the Walrus magazine dives deep into the great — and largely unmet — expectations of legalization.
Canopy Growth — who reported more disappointing earnings last week — is a prime example of a larger troubling industry trend, where built capacity was the key indicator of value to shareholders. Valued at more than $20 billion in 2019, the company had seven growing facilities across Canada. The more indoor growing space a company built, the higher their valuation grew.
“Public markets were responding to funded capacity,” said Jay Rosenthal, who is quoted in the story. “The more capacity you had, the more people believed your company was going to be real and therefore would invest in your stock.”
But despite growing kilo upon kilo of cannabis, licensed producers in Canada have sold just five per cent of what they’ve grown, and massive cultivation facilities have already shuttered or are up for sale. An estimated 1.1 billion grams of cannabis is sitting in storage, already too old or of too poor quality to sell.
Read more at businessofcannabis.ca