Saying “There are no sacred cows,” Canopy Growth CEO David Klein said he hadn’t ruled out the layoffs some insiders have been predicting for weeks.
BNN Bloomberg
- Last week’s expectation-beating quarterlies show the company’s decision to increase acquisitions of paraphernalia suppliers (like luxury vaporizer giant Storz & Bickel) and invest seriously in retail paid off. Analysts are pleased with the company’s direction.
MJ Biz Daily, MarketWatch, CanTech Letter
Controversy resurfaced around Green Relief, after the Financial Post viewed video of a shareholder meeting the Midas Letter mentioned a few weeks back. During that meeting, shareholders heard allegations from company executives that almost a quarter of the $60M the company raised could not be accounted for and that the founders had been “linked” to those missing funds.
WeedWeek Canada, Financial Post
- Lyn and Warren Bravo, a married couple who are two of the company’s three founders, “vehemently deny” the allegations.
Capital is beginning to return to the sector, though the amount of debt-based financing has increased from 19% of last year’s capital raises to 40% of this year’s.
Bloomberg
Will Canada quickly be overwhelmed as a legal producer as hot Latin American and Caribbean countries legalize? Will LPs increasing focus on exports force Canada to accept REC imports from countries like Jamaica? Canopy’s ex-CEO Bruce Linton, on the WeedWeek Podcast last summer, predicted it would be a long time before cannabinoids were allowed to travel easily over international borders.
Financial Post, Twitter—Trina Fraser, WeedWeek
Longtime testing lab Anandia, widely used in pre-REC-legalization MED growing circles, announced it would no longer provide testing across the entire industry and will instead provide services to Aurora alone. Aurora bought Anandia in June, 2018 in a $115M all-stock deal.
Twitter—John Fowler, David Brown, Jonathan Page, CBC Business
BC-based premium LP Westleaf rebranded as Decibel Cannabis Company—while also laying off 11 positions and cutting its REC store count from 22 to 11.
NewsWire