Ontario’s move to raise the number of stores cannabis companies can operate has been welcomed by some in the industry, but an expert says the change may only help a select few operators in the over-saturated market. This month, the Ontario government doubled the number of retail stores allowed per licensed cannabis operators, increasing the limit to 150 from the previous cap of 75. Gennaro Santoro, senior director of strategy at EY-Parthenon, told BNNBloomberg.ca that…
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Three years after Canada legalized cannabis, the industry appears ready for a reset. When midnight struck on Oct. 17, 2018, Canada became the first developed nation to allow the sale of cannabis for recreational purposes, and since then the industry has had its share of ups and downs. While billions of dollars worth of legal pot has been sold across thousands of licensed stores, helping to stamp out roughly half of the illicit market, it's…
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Jamaica is running low on ganja. Heavy rains followed by an extended drought, an increase in local consumption and a drop in the number of marijuana farmers have caused a shortage in the island's famed but largely illegal market that experts say is the worst they've seen. “It's a cultural embarrassment,” said Triston Thompson, chief opportunity explorer for Tacaya, a consulting and brokerage firm for the country's nascent legal cannabis industry. Jamaica, which foreigners have…
Billionaire activist investor Nelson Peltz has resigned as a senior advisor to Aurora Cannabis Inc. to pursue other commitments, the company announced Monday.
Peltz first joined Aurora in March 2019 under a senior advisory services agreement where he was tasked with helping the company devise a strategy to find a way to marry its cannabis business with the U.S. consumer market.
Peltz, a founding partner of Trian Fund Management LP, a New York-based hedge fund with more than US$9 billion in assets under management, was heralded at the time of his hiring to be a key part of a broader U.S. play that could help unlock potential partnerships with Aurora and other consumer-packaged goods companies.
Canopy Growth has laid off an unspecified amount of staff from one of its Ontario facilities, The Canadian Press reports. The newswire service said Canopy conducted a number of layoffs from its facility located at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., but didn't provide specific figures on the departures. It is unknown whether the layoffs were related to previous workforce reductions the company confirmed to BNN Bloomberg in July. Canopy said last month it had reduced its staff count…
Cannabis companies are learning that to survive the pandemic, bigger isn’t necessarily better. Specialized operations and a narrow geographic footprint are buoying marijuana providers such as Trulieve Cannabis Corp. at a time when the broader industry is struggling with falling demand and capital constraints. That’s a shift from a few years ago, when exuberance in the market pushed cannabis companies to expand their reach across the nation in a hasty land grab, which has left…
There are now over 1,000 licensed cannabis stores in Canada, as new stores in B.C. and Ontario push the store count into quadruple digits. Alberta continues to lead the country with nearly 500 cannabis stores in the province, although several analysts have said the market is saturated and that some stores recently had to close due to challenging conditions. There are also nearly 500 cannabis stores in Ontario waiting to be fully licensed by provincial regulators, with several industry observers expecting those stores to open as late as next year due to a backlog of authorization requests.
Members of a Victoria-based medical cannabis dispensary protested outside the B.C. legislature on Thursday after the its storefront was raided by the province’s safety unit, CTV News reports. The Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club was raided on Wednesday, with authorities seizing all cannabis found on the property for the second time in the last eight months. The club was founded in 1996 and offers a wide range of medical cannabis products to its 8,000 members at a lower price than retailers. Ted Smith, the club’s founder, said the dispensary is trying to get an exemption from Health Canada in order to continue operating as a non-profit organization.
Economic activity in Canada’s legal pot industry tripled since legalization: StatsCan
Canada’s cannabis industry generates about $8.16 billion to the country’s economy, according to latest data from Statistics Canada. The legal cannabis industry contributed about $3.96 billion to Canada’s gross domestic product as of February, StatsCan said. That’s up 215 per cent since recreational cannabis was legalized in Oct. 2018. Meanwhile, StatsCan said the illicit market is estimated to contribute $4.13 billion to the country’s economy. That’s down about 21 per cent since Oct. 2018.
Fire & Flower books Q4 loss of $22.2M through impairment, restructuring charges
Canadian cannabis retailer Fire & Flower shares closed down about 5 per cent on Thursday after the company released its fourth quarter results.
Canada pot market on track to hit $1.9B in sales, according to February retail figures
Canadians spent nearly $150 million on cannabis in February, down slightly from the prior month, according to Statistics Canada. StatsCan said $149.9 million of legal pot was bought in February, down 2.7 per cent from January. On a daily basis, Canadians bought $5.16 million of pot in February, up from the $4.97 million bought per day in January, and resulting in an annualized revenue rate of $1.9 billion. Only three provinces reported monthly sales advances in February, with Saskatchewan leading declines with a nearly-15-per-cent fall in activity, the data showed.
Tilray CEO compensation declines by 89% in 2019, filings show.
Canadian officials are turning to the cannabis industry to see if laboratories typically used to check for cannabinoids can be also used to test for COVID-19.
In an email sent to licensed cannabis industry executives on Thursday obtained by BNN Bloomberg, Health Canada acting director general Joanne Garrah asked respondents if there was any spare lab capacity to assist the country with COVID-19 testing.
“Health Canada is working to identify lab capacity that might be available across the country in various sectors, including at licensed cannabis production sites, to assist with supporting COVID-19 testing,” the email stated.
More than three-dozen Ontario government employees working in the cannabis space were named on the province’s annual Sunshine List, which tracks public-sector staffers that make more than $100,000 a year.
The majority of those listed represent The Ontario Cannabis Store, accounting for 36 of the 39 people associated with the cannabis sector on the list, which was released late Friday.
OCS chief commercial officer Cheri Mara was the top earner among her peers, making $241,284 in 2019. Nicole Stewart, who is the Department of Finance Canada’s lead on implementing cannabis retail in the province, was the top ministerial earner, with an annual salary of $190,702.
Holiday buying strength helps push pot sales to record highs in December.
Canadians bought about $146.2 million of legal cannabis in December, the biggest month of sales on record, according to Statistics Canada. Taken at an annualized run rate, those sales figures would see sales in Canada’s legal recreational cannabis industry hit $1.75 billion. Canadian retail store sales rose 8.1 per cent in December from the prior month with nine out of 10 provinces reporting monthly sales advances. Manitoba led all provincial gains with a surprising 53.9 per cent rise in sales, while British Columbia was the only province to report a decline in purchases.
Cannabis data added to Nasdaq platform in derivatives push
