My holiday present...Cannabists, here is my holiday present to you. The link below is to the latest from Florida's Office of Medical Marijuana Use. Every week they report the # of patients, # of doctors prescribing, # of new business licenses and the sales of THC, CBD and Smokeable Flower for the week. Here's the link: https://s27415.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/ommu_updates/2019/122019-OMMU-Weekly-Update.pdf
In this report you can see why Trulieve has received so much attention of late since they are dominating the Florida market with over 50% market share. If you go back through the months you can see how the other competitors like Acreage have been fairing since about May 2019. Here is my rundown of the various competitors:
1. Trulieve. The only thing to really be concerned about with Trulieve is Kim the Rivers Boat Captain's husband who is up on corrpution charges for bribing Florida government officials. I think Trulieve is bigger than Kim Rivers, but you should read through this recent short report to figure out if this is too much risk for you. Here's the short report and Trulieve's respons:
Grizzly Short report: https://grizzlyreports.com/trulieve-cannabis-corp-why-we-believe-the-company-is-a-fraud/
Trulieve's response: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/12/17/1961816/0/en/Trulieve-Responds-to-Short-Seller-Report.html
2. Surterra Wellness. Private company run by an heir to the Wrigley chewing gum fortune. Doing well, but not trading at present.
3. Curaleaf. Curaleaf is scaling nicely in Florida. My only issue with Curaleaf is that it has been operating a bit like Aurora Cannabis. Aggressive M&A which is going to result in hundreds of millions of new shares and goodwill and intangible assets on the balance sheet. That said, Curaleaf is the market leader for MSOs right now and gets a lot of buzz overall. I am not investing in Curaleaf becuase of the high share count and the Select Pen management that Cura is purchasing because I think that management team is a bit f*cked up in my opinion.
4. Liberty Health Services. Many of you are probably already familiar with Liberty Heath. They have a lot of supporters. I just have never loved Liberty because it was run by an old Mettrum guy that I never trusted. Overall they are doing okay, but I am staying away from Liberty as I have owned them in the past and just don't love the management.
5. Fluent...to be honest I don't know anything about Fluent.
6. Cresco Florida...this is actually Vidacann because Cresco backed out of their deal to purchase this company a few weeks ago. Cresco decided to go with Origin House and California versus Vidacann and Florida.
7. GrowHealth. This is owned by Ianthus. Grow Healthy is starting to scale and I have a bit of money in Ianthus because they have been beaten to an absolute pulp and I think there is more value to this company than the market currently perceives.
8. AltMed Florida...again I can't comment on AltMed because I don't know enough about them.
9. MedMen. Gotham Green will put these guys into receivership in 2020 or 2021 at the latest. If you have balls of steal this can be a good trade, but for long term investors the equity of this company is most likely going to zero over the next few quarters.
10. Harvest Health & Recreation. If you look at past reports it is clear that these guys have not been scaling well in Florida yet. Harvest has been a mess with the DOJ delaying their Verano and Falcon M&A, however, they just got their hands on almost $100 million Canadian and may be able to turn the ship around.
11. Green Thumb Industries (GTI). Have not scaled Florida all that much this year and seem to be focussed more on the Country State of Illinois and the Country State of Pennsylvania. Cannabists, at this time I think it is best to approach the US on a State by State level versus Federally. Florida has 20 million people and that is enough to support a great industry all on its own. And Florida is looking to go fully legal potentially at the 2020 ballot or possibly sooner through legislation that is planned to be tabled in the next few weeks.
12. Columbia Care. This Colorado company is making waves these days. Don't know as much about them as I should and I will be becoming more familiar with them over the holidays.
13. One Plant. I know nothing about them and they are small.
14. The Botanist. This is Acreage. So far they have done sh*t and not even opened one dispensary. I think Kevin the Jaw Dropper Murphy has been spending his time being a liar, liar, liar with pants on fire than doing anything executionally.
Florida Thesis: 20 million people. Currently 300,000 medical patients buying almost 800 million of medical cannabis a year. If Florida goes full Rec in 2020 watch out because they have a huge population base and a lot of tourism.