Tilray Brands Two Markets Cannabis and Craft Beverages
St. Patrick’s Day is upon us and investors feeling lucky might be looking to undervalued craft beer stocks to diversify their portfolios. Though global beer markets remain frothy, with sales falling 3% in recent years, craft beer sales are expanding and jumped 6% over the same period. This points to an important consumer trait: buyers want something unique and tailored to their individual preferences rather than sticking with old standbys. Think seeing a cannabis stock like Tilray Brands(NASDAQ:TLRY) at the top of an undervalued craft beer stocks list is odd? While the company, like most cannabis stocks, is arguably overvalued, with slim-to-no moat, Tilray’s craft beer forays have gone largely unnoticed.
Last year, the company bought eight craft beer brands from mega-distributor Anheuser-Busch (NYSE:BUD), including Shock Top and HiBall Energy. Financial news generally took the move one of two ways, neither of which is particularly positive. First, some assumed it was an admission of defeat for Tilray in terms of cannabis markets. Alternately, others saw it as a needless push toward diversification that would ultimately impact their core cannabis focus.
I argue that there’s more to the story. Lacking a nationally legal cannabis infrastructure in the states, many competitors can’t actively build a network in most states that includes marketing, distribution, legal compliance, marketing, and more – everything involved in getting vice products to market. Tilray, in effect, just bought those operational value chain drivers from one of the largest companies experienced in pushing products to customers. As the fifth-largest craft beer distributor after the move, Tilray is expanding its revenue opportunity and effectively subsidizing its penetration into areas otherwise unfriendly to its cannabis concept through craft beer sales.