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UPDATED: Some of North America’s Largest Cannabis Companies Are Releasing Earnings This Week. Here Are the Highlights.

Companies include Curaleaf Holdings, GTI, Acreage Holdings, Cresco Labs, and MedMen.

Jun 2, 2019 7:57PM EDT Business

Y. Lee is a South Korean journalist.

This piece was updated to include the below two companies’ earnings calls on May 31. For company earnings from earlier in the week, see below.

Harvest Health & Recreation’s Q1 2019 revenue was $19.2 million, up 131% from $8.3 million in the same quarter last year, and a 14% increase from the previous quarter. Losses for the quarter came to $20 million, which the company says is “reflective of the planned investments in people and infrastructure to support the company’s growth initiatives and planned expansion.”

In the last month, the company has executed multiple “definitive agreements” on several acquisitions (Verano, Devine Holdings, CannaPharmacy) that are expected to increase its geographical footprint extensively from 16 currently open stores to 60 by the end of the year, according to CEO Steve White. System-wide, Harvest’s goal is to open 140 stores by 2020, said White during an earnings call Friday morning. But despite the rapid expansion, company executives say that margins are not expected to be impacted. “We expect our margins to hold steady for the year,” said CFO Leo Jaschke. “We’re looking at pro forma of 20 percent EBITDA margins, which is consistent, which is what we had stated previously.”

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iAnthus Capital Holdings Q1 revenue hit $9.6 million, up 384% from $1.9 million in the previous quarter. Pro forma revenues were $18.5 million, up 22% from the previous quarter. Net loss was $18.3 million, up $15.9 million in the previous quarter.

The company highlighted the official closing of the MPX Bioceutical Corporation deal on Feb 5, 2019, marking iAnthus’ presence in 11 states and the first public-to-public merger transaction in U.S. cannabis industry. iAnthus’ Q2 report will include both companies’ numbers for the months of April to June said executives in an earnings call on Friday.

“A key building block to success is being in enough of the right markets on a national scale … If you want a national brand, you need a national presence,” said CEO Hadley Ford. “MPX is an award-winning brand,” Ford continued. “[It is] asked for by name, and frequently sells for 20 percent more than competing products. It’s penetrated 20 percent of the stores in Arizona, 30 percent in Massachusetts, 40 in Nevada, and over 70 percent in Maryland.”

Subsequent to the end of the quarter, on May 14, iAnthus also announced its new retail brand “Be.” which is anticipated to open in Brooklyn, New York in the fall of this year. “Be.” is iAnthus’ unification solution to the six different retail names the company had previously, according to Ford. Locations in Miami, Las Vegas and Atlantic City are expected to follow. The closing of the acquisition of CBD For Life, a national CBD brand, is also expected in early June.

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This piece was updated on May 31 to include the following three companies. For earnings published on May 30, see below.

Curaleaf Holdings Q1 2019 revenue hit $35 million, up 288% from $9 million in the same quarter last year, but only a 10 percent increase from the prior quarter. Part of this slowing down can be attributed to the lack of flower in Florida in Q1, said CEO Joseph Lusardi during an earnings call Thursday evening, who noted that since handling supply constraint issues, the second quarter has seen much better results in the state.

CFO Neil Davidson also noted Curaleaf’s disappointment in the extensive time it is taking to approve the company for adult-use licenses in Massachusetts. “We remain disappointed by the Massachusetts adult-use license approval process,” said Davidson, “which has been significantly slower than anticipated. We believe approval of our adult-use locations in Massachusetts is a question of ‘when’ and not ‘if,’ but the timing remains in the hands of the regulators. Regardless, we are continuing to build capacity in anticipation of what we believe will be a significant adult use market.”

Executive Chairman Boris Jordan also jumped to join the conversation. “Let’s be completely and brutally honest about this, right? If we don’t get our licenses in the third quarter, or at the end of the second quarter so that we have them in the third quarter, obviously that will be an issue, right?” Jordan said, alluding to the fact that revenues from Massachusetts constituted a large portion of Curaleaf’s projected revenues for 2019. However, he added, the company still remains confident in its ability to reach financial goals based on the fact that it is hopeful about receiving its licenses by the end of June as well as confident in the financial cushion that Florida provides with the growth they see there.

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Green Thumb Industries Q1 2019 revenue hit $27.9 million, up 155% from $10.9 million in the same quarter last year and a 34 percent increase from the previous quarter. CEO Ben Kovler pointed to the two successful closings in the first quarter (Advanced Grow Labs on Feb. 12; For Success Holding Company, the owner of the Beboe brand, on February 21) as significant contributions to the consolidated results as they allowed GTI to expand its reach to Connecticut, California, and Colorado.

In addition, the company also acquired and closed a fifth retail store in its home state Illinois subsequent to the quarter, maxing out the five retail store cap in the state. Kovler said that on a combined basis, the transactions in and subsequent to 2019’s first quarter “add 14 retail licenses to GTI, bringing our total retail licenses to 88 and adds three new markets – Connecticut, California, and Colorado — bringing out total market reach to 12 states.”

During an earnings call Thursday evening, the adult use legalization bill working through the Illinois legislature this week, came up in questions. Kovler said that though the adult-use program would be “unbelievably bullish” for GTI, as it would mean an additional license for each store operator in the state, it would be hard for him to make a prediction on exactly what will happen with the bill. “But,” he added, “we think it’s going to be a big 24 hours in Illinois.”

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Green Growth Brands Q3 2019 revenue amounted to $5.6 million, $5.1 million of which was generated by the company’s Nevada cannabis operations. Cannabis Wire recently published a piece about top license holders in Nevada, and GGB is toward the top.

“By the time we finish June, we’re going to be at 100 shops and if we choose to, because this is a very fluid market, we could have as many as 280 shops between two brands by the end of this year,” said CEO Peter Horvath, referencing the national expansion of the company’s Seventh Sense Botanical Therapy products, which are hemp CBD based, via recently announced partnerships with DSW shoe stores and major malls. “So what we’re talking about is opening hundreds of shops in just six months. That’s something that is historic. It’s extraordinary and the quality with which we’re doing it is exceptional.”

When asked during an earnings call what the optimal number of states was for Green Growth at the moment, Horvath said that “if we could be in all the states, just like anybody else, we would be,” but that varying regulations in each state makes this difficult. “We’re learning this as we go. We’re excited to focus on Nevada and Massachusttes and we’re always curious about other states,” Horvath said. “We can’t make any claims about where we’re going to be until we either do a deal or organically win licenses in those states so it’s kind of a stay tuned we’ll-update-you-as-we-make-progress” situation.

Below earnings were published on May 30

Charlotte’s Web Holdings reported Q1 2019 revenue of $21.7 million, a 66 percent revenue increase from $13.1 million in the same period last year. The company will also delist from the CSE and land on the TSX Friday.

During an earnings call, the company highlighted the expansion of its canine line, which now includes hemp-CBD chews, flavored and unflavored oils, and a topical balm. Though most of the pet product sales are currently coming in through e-commerce, CFO Rich Mohr said that the company is “looking for local distribution first and working with the large retailers.”

The company also discussed doubling its hemp acreage planting to 700 acres. When asked what the company’s plans were for the inventory, Mohr said that the crop would be used mainly as a means for the company to “react very quickly when it comes to these fast retailers that are coming on board” as well as a cushion for the future. “This is an agricultural crop so there’s a lot of variations from year-to-year and you can’t be left in a situation where you don’t have enough raw material to produce your products, which is the reason we go for larger inventory levels,” Mohr said. “We still believe that the inventory we produce during 2018 will cover us for 2019 and 2020 and we’re being proactive with our growth in 2019’s crops.”

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Acreage Holdings reported Q1 2019 revenue of $12.9 million, up 487% compared to the same period in 2018, but also a net loss of $31.2 million.

Naturally, Canopy Growth’s pending acquisition came up, and the deadline for Acreage’s shareholder approval next month. CFO Glen Leibowitz outlined how, upon shareholder approval by both Acreage and Canopy and British Columbia’s top court, Canopy will pay $300 million to Acreage shareholders. “This 300 million dollars will be paid on a pro rata basis and equates for a range of $2.50 to $2.63 cents per share depending on when our pending transactions close,” said Leibowitz, who also noted that once a qualifying event takes place that would trigger Canopy’s acquisition, such as a change in US federal cannabis law, all Acreage shareholders will receive .5818 shares of Canopy per Acreage share.

Acreage continues to expect 50 to 60 dispensaries in operation by the end of the year. The pending agreement with Canopy also may mean a revision to Acreage’s original growth plans for the year. “It’s too early to provide specifics as we have not yet had those discussions,” said Leibowitz. “However, it could entail accelerating our build up in some states and potentially slowing down in others, all of which can have an impact on our financial results.”

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Trulieve Cannabis reported Q1 2019 revenue of $44.5 million, a 192% increase from $15.2 million in the same quarter last year.

Moving forward in 2019, Trulieve is looking to increase its footprint in Florida, where it is already the largest medical cannabis company, as well as expand more nationally to include operations in California and Connecticut, the latter in which it recently acquired The Healing Corner dispensary.

“In 2020, of course, Florida continues to be the lion’s share of the guidance, which we feel at this point very confident in our ability to model out,” said CEO Kim Rivers, who added that next in ranking of contribution to the company in its future outlook would be Massachusetts. “It’s important to note that in Massachusetts there is a mix of retail in the vertical model and also wholesale. For Connecticut and California, those were very much based on historical performance… those were just simply projected forward.”

As Trulieve looks to expand outside of Florida, its EBITDA margin is expected to fall slightly between 2019 and 2020 as it adjusts to the different regulatory structures of the different states. “As we go into other regulatory structures, we’re required, of course, to flex to those opportunities,” said Rivers. Their 2020 guidance therefore shows numbers that are realistic with what the company saw as achievable when “driven by the regulatory structures that we’ll find ourselves in as we move into those other markets.”

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MedMen Enterprises reported Q3 2019 revenue of $36.6 million, up 156% from $16.8 million in the same quarter last year, but its loss was still significant at $63.1 million.

Adam Bierman, co-founder and CEO, began the company’s earnings call Wednesday evening by addressing some of the issues that MedMen has faced in the previous quarter and recently, including multiple lawsuits and coverage questioning the company’s financial health. “Over the past year we’ve created tremendous long term value for the business yet we’ve also had to deal with a few not-so-great realities of managing a high-growth business, such as a well-publicized employee and early investor lawsuit. From an operational standpoint, this company has never been better positioned than it is right now today. Yet we have a stock price that has underperformed the North American Marijuana Index by over 45 percent since our all-time high last October,” said Bierman. “This disconnect is our responsibility to reconcile and our work to do so is well underway.”

CFO Michael Kramar said that the company has already reduced its expenses by 9 percent, from $40.9 million to $37.5 million, this quarter. “Everyone across the organization has gone into this initiative,” said Bierman who noted that as a part of this commitment, both he and Andrew Modlin, co-founder and president, have entered into new employment agreements, taking $50,000 in annual salaries.

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Cresco Labs reported Q1 2019 revenue of $21.1 million, up 313% from $5.1 million in the same quarter last year.

In some states, such as Ohio, sales have been lower than initial expectations as the medical use program has gotten off to a slow start. “Only 17 of the 56 dispensaries [in Ohio] have received a certificate of operation,” said CFO Ken Amann. In other states such as Arizona and California, where revenue contributions are still in the early stages for Cresco, Amann said he expects growth to accelerate and “have meaningful contributions beginning in the second half of the year.”

Despite generating revenue from six states, Amann noted that the bulk of the company’s revenue were comprised from Illinois and Pennsylvania, places where Cresco has seen an acceleration of patient growth. “Illinois’ patient count has increased by 25 percent this year to over 65,000. And in Pennsylvania, nearly 102,000 patients are registered to participate in that program, up from 83,000 at the end of last year, an increase of 23 percent,” Amann noted.

The company also expects its pending acquisitions of Origin House and VidaCann to allow for more expansion outside of Illinois and Pennsylvania and into the broader North American cannabis market. With its new acquisitions, Charles Bachtell, co-founder and CEO said that Cresco “will have the distribution platform to enable us to take market share in the largest and most important markets in the cannabis industry.”

Origin House also reported Q1 2019 revenue yesterday, which rose to C$11.2 million from C$0.6 million the same quarter last year. Net loss was C$17.4 million, up from C$4.7 million.