Business
Fewer research analysts covering cannabis underscores industry woes
Cannabis industry earnings calls have been a little quieter this year.
Fewer research analysts are covering the U.S. marijuana industry, which experts say reflects the challenging economic headwinds facing the industry, including high taxes, high interest rates, rock-bottom stock prices and the slow pace of federal MJ reform.
New York-based Cantor Fitzgerald and Cowen are among the more notable financial-services firms that have dropped coverage of U.S. plant-touching cannabis companies.
“It speaks to the unhealthy state of our industry,” Jesse Redmond, the managing director of the cannabis sector and head of research at Florida-based Water Tower Research, told MJBizDaily.
U.S. cannabis stocks have taken a beating in the past 18 months.
The AdvisorShares Pure US Cannabis ETF – which tracks major U.S. marijuana stocks under the symbol MSOS – has fallen to just over $5 from a high of more than $56 in February 2021.
In addition, cannabis companies are increasingly turning to debt financing rather than equity raises, which means there’s a smaller audience for research.
Low share prices and fewer mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings and other types of banking activities mean there’s less revenue to fund research, Redmond said.
“Without that activity, there aren’t the revenues to justify paying the person to write the research,” he said.
The recent shake-up includes:
- New York-based Cantor Fitzgerald, which has stopped covering all U.S. marijuana companies except for WM Technology, which operates the Weedmaps platform, after the departure of analyst Pablo Zuanic.
- New York-based Cowen, which was recently acquired by Canada-based TD Bank, is no longer covering U.S. cannabis companies. But analyst Vivien Azer will include the industry’s larger trends as part of her beverages, tobacco and cannabis portfolio.
- Jon DeCourcey, a former analyst covering the cannabis industry, is no longer with financial services firm BTIG, which specializes in investment banking, institutional trading and research. He is now head of investor relations at Florida-based multistate cannabis operator Ayr Wellness, according to DeCourcey’s LinkedIn profile.
Neither Cantor Fitzgerald, Cowen nor BTIG responded to requests from MJBizDaily for comment.
Many other financial-services firms are still providing coverage of U.S. plant-touching companies, such as Florida-based Water Tower Research, New York-based capital markets company Viridian Capital Advisors, Toronto-based Echelon Wealth Partners and Vancouver, British Columbia-based Canaccord Genuity.
Analysts have been ‘a little too optimistic’
When Cowen became the first big financial-services firm to initiate coverage in 2019, investors said it lent legitimacy to the burgeoning industry.
Back in 2019, both operators and service providers were optimistic that federal legalization and/or the SAFE Banking Act would be passed in Congress.
Industry officials also were increasingly hopeful that big institutional investors would take an active interest in the U.S. cannabis industry – a move that could have provided key funding to companies.
But none of that has happened.
Instead, retail investors still make up the bulk of investment in U.S. cannabis, Water Tower’s Redmond said.
And retail investors can often access research only if they pay for it or are clients of the financial-services firm producing it.
That optimism might have also bled into analyst research.
“We’ve all been a little bit too optimistic,” Redmond said.
Between price targets and predicting the passage of SAFE Banking, many analysts through the second half of 2022 underestimated the impact of factors such as high interest rates, falling wholesale cannabis prices and high taxes.
“I think that even the ones that were doing the research and getting it out, maybe it wasn’t that helpful for people,” Redmond said.
Cannabis ‘not ready for prime time’
But the industry has other issues in addition to overly optimistic forecasting from analysts and slow movement on federal cannabis reform, Matt Karnes, founder of New York-based cannabis financial consultancy Greenwave Advisors and a former sell-side and buy-side analyst, told MJBizDaily.
Plenty of cannabis companies are still finding their footing, he said, pivoting out of oversaturated legal markets and looking for promising paths to profitability.
Another sign of the industry’s immaturity?
A disproportionate number of cannabis companies have restated their financial results, he said, showing that the industry is still mastering the accounting intricacies of the sector.
“You make your investment based on what comes out on a quarterly report,” Karnes said.
“And then two quarters later – oops! How is that supposed to give any investor confidence?”
With fewer analysts covering cannabis, Karnes said, it could contribute on a small level to the enormous difficulties U.S. plant-touching companies are having attracting investment in the industry.
But, he noted, there are still analysts covering U.S. plant-touching operators, such as Matt Bottomley at Canaccord Genuity and Andrew Semple at Echelon Wealth Partners.
“It’s a slight incremental negative,” he said of the impact on raising capital.
“But I don’t think the industry was necessarily ready for prime time.”
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/fewer-research-analysts-covering-cannabis-underscores-industry-woes/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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