Grow Life 420

Aurora Cannabis Inc.’s Terry Booth is stepping down from his role as chief executive officer after seven years in the top job, the company announced Thursday.

Booth will be replaced by the Edmonton-based company’s executive chairman, Michael Singer, on an interim basis. Booth will remain on the company’s board in a strategic advisory role and plans to stand for re-election.

The change at the top comes as the pot giant looks to press the reset button following several quarters of disappointing sales and mounting losses.

Aurora also confirmed it will reduce its workforce by 500 staff, including 25 per cent of all corporate positions, a decision aimed at driving down costs as it looks to end a string of quarterly losses.

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

Vapes, edibles expected to see sales hit $250M in first year of availability: analyst

Expectations ahead of the launch of Cannabis 2.0 products – those vapes and edibles that consumers were eagerly awaiting – were certainly lofty, so it’s no surprise that they are now coming back down to reality. RBC Capital Markets cannabis analyst Douglas Miehm said in a report to clients Tuesday he expects sales of vapes and edibles in Canada to reach about $250 million this year amid a lag in new cannabis retail openings across the country. Sales of vapes and edibles in Canada should grow to about $1.5 billion by 2022, still well below earlier projections. The RBC forecast is also well below analyst consensus figures that suggest total revenue from Cannabis 2.0 products for the top seven Canadian cannabis companies will reach $608 million.

Canopy Growth shares rise above $30 mark after analyst upgrades rating, target price

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

The Marijuana Business Conference and Expo (MJBizCon) is coming to the Las Vegas Convention Center from December 11-13, 2019, and it’s the largest gathering of cannabis business professionals in the world. With 35,000 attendees from over 75 countries and programming to benefit every sector, there is no other place like it to equip businesses for growth.

MJBizCon began in 2012 and after seven years of running this sought-after event, the 2019 event will be expanding, moving to two halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center to accommodate its continued increase in global recognition, the rapidly expanding attendance and its significant impact beyond the convention center walls.

Deemed MJBizConWEEK by the Board of Clark County Commissioner and the City of Las Vegas, MJBizDaily added The Investor Intelligence Conference as the kickoff event of MJBizCon this year, Dec 9-10 at the Cosmopolitan Hotel. This dedicated cannabis investing event comes at a critical time for the industry, as pressure on cannabis stocks and companies grow.

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

Aphria to ramp up newly-licensed facility to full capacity, relies on automation to drive down production costs: interim CEO

Aphria Inc. plans to bring its newly-licensed Diamond facility to full capacity in the coming weeks to meet demand for vaping and edible products, the company’s chairman and interim CEO said while shrugging off any concern about oversupplying the Canadian cannabis market. The Leamington, Ont.-based company announced Monday it received a cultivation licence from Health Canada for a cannabis greenhouse facility that will add 1.3 million square feet of production space and 140,000 kilograms in annual capacity to its operations. “Diamond, I would want to run at full capacity because it’s so automated from a low-cost production standpoint,” Aphria chairman and interim CEO Irwin Simon told BNN Bloomberg. “It will be one of the lowest-cost production facilities to run.”

New Brunswick’s cannabis retailer eyes profitability as new president looks to fight black market

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

Ontario’s cannabis crown corporation loses $42M last fiscal year

Ontario’s government lost $42 million selling cannabis in its last fiscal year, according to provincial public accounts released on Friday. The losses come despite the Ontario Cannabis Retail Corporation, a crown corporation that operates the Ontario Cannabis Store’s online retail business and sells wholesale cannabis to the province’s private retail stores, generating $64 million in the fiscal 2018-2019 year. An OCS spokesperson said the agency wasn’t able to book wholesale revenue from selling into the first wave of physical retail stores in the latest fiscal year, which hurt the crown corporation’s bottom line. Meanwhile, the Ontario government said Friday it generated $19 million in revenue from cannabis excise taxes in its last fiscal year, falling well short of the $35-million estimate presented in the most recent provincial budget.

Canopy Growth’s IP-focused deal for Ebbu highlights difficulty of filing patents for cannabis-related products

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

A Washington cannabis company has offered to collect and properly dispose of any waste from other marijuana stores.

KING-TV reported Thursday that Canna Culture Shop began the pot waste program early this week to help reduce the impact marijuana waste has on the environment.

Owner Maryam Mirnateghi says the program is meant to keep cannabis packaging from ending up on the street or in waterways.

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

Aphria to open pot shop in Jamaica – at a legit, real location

Aphria is opening a pot shop in Jamaica. The Leamington, Ont.-based cannabis producer said its Jamaican subsidiary Marigold Projects received a retail licence from the country’s Cannabis Licensing Authority to open its first store in Kingston this August. The company said it will open the doors to the Sensi Medical Cannabis House at Peter Tosh Square, Unit #51, noting that “yes, it is there” – a slight nod to a short seller report published in December that alleged the company’s Jamaican operations did not exist at that specific location. The retail store will include a smoking lounge for on-site consumption, accessories and proprietary cannabis strains for sale. Marigold plans to open another four retail stores in Jamaica, pending licensing approval.

Friendly Stranger gets a little (financing) help from its friends

Toronto-based cannabis accessory story Friendly Stranger Holdings landed a $5 million investment from several strategic partners, including Canadian licensed producers VIVO Cannabis and 48North.

– Read the entire article at BNN bloomberg.

Medical marijuana patients in Canada believe it’s getting harder to access their cannabis now that recreational pot is legal in the country. According to a recent survey jointly commissioned by Canadians for Fair Access to Medical Marijuana, the Arthritis Society and the Canadian Pharmacists Association, one in four medical cannabis users say supply issues are hindering their ability to access the medicine they need. As a result, 64 per cent of medical cannabis users are either under-dosing or stretching out their supply. One other key finding from the survey: just as many patients access their medical cannabis via mail order from a licensed producer (38 per cent) as they do via the illicit market (37 per cent).

Canada’s pot czar criticizes Ontario’s claims of undersupply in country’s pot market

Is Ontario making up excuses when it comes to capping the number of pot shops in the provinces? That’s what Bill Blair, Canada’s minister of border security and organized crime reduction, is saying after Ontario blamed the federal government for lingering cannabis supply issues for limiting the number pot retail stores.

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

Shoppers Drug Mart sees cannabis and blockchain technology as a perfect combination to get more doctors on board with prescribing the drug to patients in Canada. Ken Weisbrod, Shoppers’ vice-president of business development, said the company signed a deal with TruTrace Technologies for a pilot program to provide software to track medical cannabis from seed to final product. As Canada looks to become a global medical cannabis leader, tools like blockchain will be crucial for legal pot to be traceable and accountable for patients and for practitioners to feel confident about it as a treatment, Weisbrod said.

iAnthus cancels options plans, aims to reissue at higher strike price

iAnthus Capital Holdings is walking back plans to issue stock options to its senior executives at a lower rate. The U.S. multi-state operator said 60 per cent of the options that have been issued in 2019 will be cancelled, effective Monday, and that the company plans to reissue them sometime later at a strike price of at least $7.50 a share. Last week, the company offered an apology to shareholders after it decided to cancel stock options on June 6 earmarked for many of its senior executives before issuing new options at a lower price.

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

The average cost of dried cannabis has gone up by more than 17 per cent since legalization, with consumers in New Brunswick and Manitoba seeing the biggest jumps, according to an analysis compiled by Statistics Canada.

As well, the cost of a legal gram of weed appears to be rising as illegal cannabis prices drop.

Statistics Canada said Wednesday the unweighted average price per gram of dried cannabis from both legal and illegal sources combined post-legalization was $8.04. That legal price, which includes online and in-store purchases, amounts to approximately 17.3 per cent more than the pre-legalization price of $6.85.

Buyers from legal sources since Oct. 17 last year have paid an average of $9.99 per gram, about 56.8 per cent higher than the average illicit market price of just $6.37 per gram. Those who prefer shopping in legal brick-and-mortar shops say they are paying even more, the government agency said.

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

Canadian cannabis market outlook scaled back amid early legal growing pains

The bloom may be coming off the cannabis flower in Canada after one research firm cut its outlook estimates on the country’s burgeoning pot market. Cannabis industry research firm BDS Analytics said Canada’s pot market is expected to grow to US$5.2 billion by 2024 up from US$569 million last year. That’s revised lower from the firm’s previous January forecast, which predicted the Canadian market would hit US$5.9 billion by 2022. BDS attributes the reduced forecast to limited physical retail distribution, a complex supply chain, low availability of “non-flower” products and an increasingly active illicit market that continues to flourish in the country.

Harvest expands U.S. footprint with CannaPharmacy acquisition

Harvest Health & Recreation, fresh off its acquisition of Verano Holdings, isn’t sitting still in the M&A space. The Phoenix-based company announced it will acquire CannaPharmacy for an undisclosed sum, a deal that will add cannabis licences in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and Maryland to Harvest’s U.S.-wide portfolio. Once the deal closes, Harvest will hold licenses that allow it to operate up to 213 facilities, including 130 retail dispensaries across the U.S. Harvest expects that the transaction will be accretive to its 2020 revenue and EBITDA, the company said in a release.

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.