In the medical marijuana sector today, a handful of companies stand above the crowd in terms of share price growth, reputation in the market, and the hitting of milestones.
Some have big plans but no license. Others have a license but have yet to make good use of it.
Affinor Growers (
CSE:C.AFI,
Stock Forum) is one of the 800 or so companies hoping to receive eligibility as a Health Canada licensed producer of medical marijuana by the end of 2014 but, unlike most, its existence doesn’t depend on that decision.
In fact, the company sees profits as good – if not better – in other areas… Areas that don’t require a long period waiting for Health Canada to process a license application.
Affinor’s promotional material features a strawberry with a bite taken out of it, with the slogan “Think differently, again,” a play on Apple Computer’s famous ‘think differently’ campaign from years gone by.
And it’s an accurate reflection on how the company is doing business. Though the Apple association may be a little premature, the plan, as laid out by Affinor Chairman and Advisor (and technology supplier, and pitchman) Nick Brusatore, is to create multiple revenue streams so that the organization is ‘sector-proof’ – riding the ups when they happen, and being able to rely on new opportunities as the downs settle in.
In short, while the rest of the sector is waiting to be given permission to grow weed, Affinor is moving forward with a plan to grow strawberries.
Using their fully automated, software-driven, vertical grow technology of Brusatore’s just absorbed company Vertical Designs to produce non-GMO, mechanically pollinated, high yield, high shelf-life, high demand, fruits and vegetables, Affinor hopes to show investors that it isn’t a weedco, but an aggressive, technology-driven agricultural giant in the making.
To be sure, that’s a complicated story for a lot of drive-by investors. People tend to boil the Affinor story down to their being “strawberry growers”, as a casual insult cast from the cheap seats, rather than look at the justification behind the decision.
Just like medical marijuana vertical integration success story Abattis Bioceuticals (more on them later), Affinor’s opportunity takes some patience to understand. It’s hard to boil it down to one phrase.
Perhaps the best way to describe is is it’s not an ‘if you grow it, they will come’, story. It’s a ‘your weed is going to be worthless soon, so we’re going to set up shop in a way that takes advantage of that’ story.
STAGE ONE: THE PATH TO WEED IS PAVED WITH BUREAUCRACY AND PAIN
Affinor’s current thinking goes, simply, if the company can make as much money growing local, organic, high quality foods as they can growing medical marijuana, without needing a license to do so, why wait for Health Canada to get its act together permitting the latter option?
The decision to strawberry it up hasn’t been well received in all quarters, but it has been well received in many – and perhaps the ones that matter most; Affinor’s key investors.
Brusatore laughs the criticisms off.
“We’re a little more on the cautious side,” he told me by phone last week. “Weed is a piece of our business; we grow plants and obviously marijuana is a plant. We will do what we can for shareholders through potential opportunities in the medical marijuana business, as long as it provides itself as a positive in a corporate due diligence manner. We’re doing due diligence in things people don’t know we’re doing due diligence for, and I’ll tell you, 90% of what is out there in the weed space is crap.”
Because getting an LP approval together is a long process, Affinor’s Plan B recently became its Plan A.
And the market hasn’t punished the company for that pivot. Quite the opposite, in fact: while many of its competitors are struggling to maintain stock surges from earlier in the year as questions are asked about where mega-grows will be able to sell all their pot, and for a price that’s sustainable, Affinor is up 60% since late April.
“I can get $100m a year for high quality strawberries, without the potential downside of the marijuana business, and I can do that deal right now,” says Brusatore. “I can sign those deals today. So we’re not going to wait for Health Canada to dictate when we can make money for our shareholders, we’re going to go forward with the best plan for right now, we’re going to prove out our technology, and we’re going to get into a revenue situation as quickly as possible.”
STAGE TWO: THE DOUBLE DOWN
Long-time readers may recall the Brusatore name from another party in the MMJ space: the aforementioned Abbatis Bioceuticals (
CSE:C.ATT,
Stock Forum).
In earlier times, vertical farming expert Brusatore was closely aligned with the front running $37m market cap aggregator in the space, but ultimately took his profits and made the shift to Affinor when that group began collecting a who’s who of big brains and showed strong interest in his technology in areas beyond weed.
“I had recently made a small fortune on Abattis stock and was looking for the next opportunity. What I suggested we do at Affinor was to create a strong market cap, good liquidity and pay attention to the stockholders. I wanted smart people thinking about different ways to approach things. They agreed and we started making quiet plans to work together.”
Brusatore moved a significant chunk of his Abattis winnings into Affinor, backing himself and his technology as much as the team he was joining. The Chairmanship came after he had bought a large holding in the business.
“Prior to signing, I bought as much as I could and started hammering the bids. People thought I was out of my mind; I could have bought a shell for nothing, but I wouldn’t have what I have if I did that. There are some incredible people in this company and I wanted to be a part of that.”
STAGE THREE: THE SOFT SELL
Affinor’s tendency to not over-promote was an important attraction too, though it must be said if you put a microphone in front of Nick Brusatore, he’s going to make it work hard.
Dude can talk. As this interview will show.
“When you create 200-baggers in the stock market, it creates a lot of attention across the sector,” he says. “As a company, we’re into marijuana, we have our own facility, we’re waiting for its licence but when people call us on the phone, I’m not telling them ‘it’s coming any day now,’ because I don’t know that it is. I hate that promotional crap. The company should be good enough that you don’t need to make big promises. Just do good business and you’ll attract a following.”
Busatore has seen a lot of big talk in the early stage weed business, but he says he’s determined not to add to it with outrageous promises.
“I won’t BS investors like a lot of other guys out there because we don’t know; nobody does,” he says. “We think we’re getting there, we’ve got a lot of very smart people working on it and we’re putting together an amazing facility, and we can assist in the development of the market based on our partnerships and scale possibilities, but I just don’t trust it when someone says they’re right around the corner from being legal. That’s not what we do.”
The strawberry plan, to Brusatore, makes economic sense, at least in the short term. It gives the company time to perfect its facility, practices, technology and grow model, while earning revenue and not risking product recalls or breaking the law, something few competitors can boast.
“We’re a plant producer and processor. With the vertical grow technology, we can produce on a scale nobody can compete with. Starting with food, specifically strawberries but there’s potential for other high value crops. We have 20 acres for our greenhouse with our own technology, and we can produce $100m in fresh strawberries with $50m in set up costs. 35% net. Trade secrets in our tech.”
Brusatore says he appreciates the excitement building behind his company, but believes investors haven’t seen anything yet.
“The meat and potatoes is on the way,” he says. “The building, land assets, revenues, a real business plan by people with experience in the business, this is what the market needs, not LOIs to build vaporizers in the Honduras. Frankly, most of the industry makes me sick. I’m so glad the exchange put out a warning to investors, though we kind of got caught up in it. Sadly, when Bloomberg wrote about that news release we got grouped in with some random pump and dumps, and we might have to sue Bloomberg for that if they don’t issue a retraction.”
Behind the scenes, Affinor is doing a lot more than growing strawberries, including serious work in the medical marijuana business. The plan includes lining up behind other companies with distribution channels and a need for product to supply them, rather than building a patient database from scratch.
“There are lots of people who have potential distribution,” says Brusatore. “We’ve been looking at the path of least resistance, and least cost to shareholders. People who are really lining up the distribution end of the game, we’ll supply them in bulk. We can set them up with packaging, analytics, protocols, automation; we do that for food so it’s second nature for us.”
He adds, “We just want to get a license, make small alignments, follow the rules closely, and do what we’re good at. We don’t want to go too deep into speculative deals; we’ve only issued about 10% of agreed stock payments to potential partners. If they don’t get a license, they don’t get the rest of stock. We’re in talks with number of large groups who are currently licensed who want to purchase production, so we might get involved in a streamlined consolidation move.”
PART FOUR: WEED AS WHEAT
Part of the reason Affinor isn’t diving headlong into an all or nothing marijuana grow approach is the increasing belief – one also held by Brusatore – that there’s likely to be a glut of medical marijuana product in in Canada before long, and a real lack of distribution options for some companies, which will put increasing pressure on pricing.
And by ‘pressure on pricing’, he means the bottom’s going to fall out of the market.
This is something I’ve been saying for some time, and it’s a theory picking up steam.
“The price will tank quickly,” says Brusatore. “Guys that need to get a big price for their marijuana to survive will tank as the global market opens up and people continue to grow their own. Legalization will come fairly quickly but when that happens, will it be grown cheaper in Lakeshore, Ontario, or Uruguay or Jamaica or who knows where?”
“I think with the mega-grows, what they need to be concerned with is Argentina and Brazil. When you can grow it there, nobody will grow here. Bedrocan can produce for $100 per lb, but to me it looks like the price will be driven down by the global market. The licensing terms from Health Canada are so short – I talk to license-holders and they want $10m-$20m for a license, but who will invest that sort of money for a one year term?”
Brusatore thinks we’ll be looking at a base weed price of $75-100 per lb before long. “Similar to tobacco,” he says.
He also sees a lot of issues with some of his competitors, including the first public license-holder to market, Tweed (
TSX:V.TWD,
Stock Forum).
“I look forward to looking at their quarterlies,” he says. “Their burn is high, cost to produce is high, and then you’ve got to sell everything through legitimate channels. There are some difficulties, that’s for sure. This is why I think there’s more money in strawberries right now.”
Brusatore says he was so concerned with the overall Canadian weed sector that he had planned to produce a video warning investors about what he considers to be some of the shadier plays on the market (no names for the moment), but the exchange beat him to the punch, releasing their own warning.
“People need to look at just the basic set of numbers; the cash in hand, the burn rate, the market cap. If they don’t line up in decent sequence, I don’t care what the stock is doing, it’s a bad deal.”
Which is part of the reason why Brusatore sees value in the food space.
“The big funds and major players are more interested in food right now. They have their eye on weed but it’s a 9:1 ratio for food vs marijuana because nobody has stuck their head above the crowd and demonstrated solid revenues and legitimacy yet.”
Which isn’t to say Affinor isn’t growing a little test crop on the back forty.
“As far as growing marijuana, we’re pretty well versed. We’re growing right now. Our plants are impeccable. We know what we’re doing. I was in Rolling Stone in 2000 in an article about marijuana, we’ve been all over CNN about growing marijuana. It’s so easy to grow I don’t even bother growing it. Now, good strawberries? That’s a tough one.”
Brusatore says the berry plan is for the product to be greenhouse-grown, 100% organic, and produced in a 13-level stack that makes extremely tight use of the facility footprint. The crop will be mechanically pollinated, and the process has been designed and patented by his company, Vertical Designs.
“Canada imported $400m of berries last year,” he says. “If I only supply Canada, $400m is not a bad market.”
“There are lots of exotic type things we can’t grow in Canada unless it’s in a greenhouse. Our country is a wheat, canola, corn kind of agricultural landscape. The bio-makeup of the country is fit for those. If you’re growing indoors, economics, power, the cost to create environments, alternative energy, geothermal, solar, wind - all these things will come into play, so you want to be growing something with strong margins but that you can also turnaround quickly. Our system adds vertical growing to the mix to enhance profitability. Once operations up here in Canada are working, we will license all over the world very quickly. People are already coming at us, we’re closing mega-deals all over world, the opportunities are clearly there. But we’ll build the cookie cutter program first, have someone cut us a cheque, sign the deal, and here we go.”
STAGE FIVE: WORLD DOMINATION
For a guy who doesn’t want to over-promote, clearly Brusatore is a bit of a Chatty Cathy. He’s a fan of what he’s got, what’s he’s done, and believes heavily in where he’s going. And he’s the type of guy who is always moving forward, perhaps to a fault.
At a cocktail party Thursday at Vancouver’s Hotel Georgia, Brusatore announced the company has done a deal with Lululemon founder Chip Wilson to take over the failed Local Gardens rooftop urban farming operation built on top of a parkade on Vancouver’s Richards Street. The 5700 sq. ft. space was expected to turn in 150,000 lbs of produce per year for local restaurants, with 20 times usual yield and under 8% of traditional water consumption, but didn’t have the capital to continue operations through early growing pains (no pun intended, but I’ll take credit for it) and filed for bankruptcy just 18 months after it opened.
To Brusatore’s credit, he’s getting a facility for pennies on the dollar. But he’s also sold his own Vertical Designs firm to Affinor this week, and acquired a metals fabricator to build parts for his operation in Washington State-based Fab-All, and he maintains a connection with the surging cannabinoid biotech stock Cannabis Technologies (
CSE:C.CAN,
Stock Forum), and you get the impression if he spotted a ten by ten East Van backyard greenhouse full of dreamcatchers and cracked flowerpots, he’d at least knock on the door and see what they wanted for it.
Those acquisitions haven’t been warmly accepted by the market in the last week. Concerns over focus, dilution, and how the pieces will all fit into one plan are fair. Brusatore says the pieces are all part of the same puzzle. He’s locking down every aspect of the business that he can.
“We want to own revenue streams all over,” he says. “When we bought Vertical Designs, we bought a company with contracts with some of the biggest food producers to set up facilities. When we bought Fab-All, they supply all of our parts for the grow systems. Now that’s locked down. The rooftop is a value deal for a substantial grow facility right in the middle of downtown Vancouver.”
Company CEO Sebastien Plouffe agrees, stating in a news release; “This acquisition will position Affinor Growers as one of the world’s most profitable vertical farming companies. On closing of the [Vertical Designs] transaction and after construction of the first production facility, Affinor Growers will gain additional income streams from equipment sales, royalties on licence agreements, consulting and profits from selling crops.”
“I understand farming isn’t sexy,” Brusatore says. “Even automated, multi-level farming. But hey, y’all gotta eat, right? Weed is a luxury. Food is a necessity. Look around the world – there’s water conservation issues, biological issues in fields, food security issues, bee pollinators are dying, so we’re focused on food right now because it’s a problematic market, and Affinor can become a problematic crop problem solver for the world, in automated form.“
Affinor is moving on strawberries right now, but sees the potential for even bigger margins in other areas, once the science and growing model are proven out.
“We’re looking at things like grapes, asparagus, olives - grapes take eight years to bear fruit. Olives can be 80 to 100 years. But we can manipulate stage one pathways to get fruit earlier in a controlled space. These are issues people aren’t even talking about because people get confused on focus. We’re going to see news releases, shovels in the ground, land purchased, greenhouses built quickly, science advanced. We’re not being crazy, we just want to move to a place where it’s ‘here’s the numbers, and here’s the big purchase order.’”
Brusatore says Affinor is in due diligence currently with some very large groups with a view to rapidly expanding once the model is proven. “Mutual funds, large groups - trust me, they’re not looking at marijuana. They like us because we’re into the food. Or, to put it another way - we can grow marijuana when the time is right, but marijuana growers can’t grow strawberries.”
One potential snag in the plan came with Abattis, who owned the license to use some of Brusatore’s technology in marijuana production. He doesn’t see that as a problem.
“I just developed new technology,” he laughs.
STAGE SIX: GETTING PAST THE HYPE TROUGH
To be clear, Affinor does not present a slam dunk in the sector, at least not yet. Just as the Health Canada licensing situation comes with no guarantees, so too does the agriculture sector. A lot of companies in the food space chase whatever crop is hot right now, such as blueberries, which in just a few years became so plentiful there are silos full of 3-year-old frozen product across the northern US.
But Brusatore says that’s part of what motivates him to develop a company that is able to pivot and isn’t dependent on one stream of income, or one crop, or one facility.
“I think what we’ve done is create a real company with real value for shareholders. We’re not betting it all on the marijuana game, and that just differentiates us from the rest and hedges our bets in this arena. We consider ourselves the safe play, the slow and steady, bricks and mortar, stay focused, not get spread out doing unnecessary acquisitions play.”
“I have a very realistic approach about things,” he says. “It’s great if shareholders are believing in your story, but at the end of the day, you better make damn sure you’re making money, not bleeding and diluting to get paycheques. We’ve decided we don’t want to be raising money for wages, we want to build an enduring business entity that produces revenues that more than pay our salaries. There are no bonuses until we’re making money. We’ve chopped salaries to get there sooner.
Brusatore agrees with the increasing stance in the market that there should be no ‘marijuana sector’ – rather, that there are a whole load of sectors that can use cannabis-related products in existing businesses.
“We are a tech company, really. We are an agriculture company. Not a marijuana company. Marijuana is a plant; it’s just a plant. Great, we’re involved in the hype of it all, but it’s not the biggest piece of the puzzle to us. There’s lots of hype and if it breaks out, we’re right there. But right now, people are fighting to get our investors on our bulletin boards to look at other stocks, which is a compliment to us. They see our investors as the ones to come get. We’re being watched by regulators due to the splash we made coming in, they watch us all day long, but they won’t find anything we do that is underhanded so we welcome the attention.”
On the financial side, Brusatore likes the lay of the land right now for his company.
“We’ve got about $3m in the bank, we have low debt, warrant exercising should bring us about $3m-$4m. We should end up with $5m-$6m cash. I just sent in $580k to exercise warrants. We’ve had offerings from other groups to invest, but we don’t need to do a financing. We can do it but not for equity; we could use a bank if we needed for cash. We’re not looking at more dilution. We could borrow another $2m if we needed it. We don’t have to go far to look for financing.”
Brusatore believes recreational marijuana is coming to Canada – especially should Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party take power at the next federal election. But when/if that happens, he doesn’t expect to see the streets paved with gold.
“It’ll be $20 per pack with $18 taxes per pack. My family used to own liquor stores during prohibition in the 30s, and we’ve already seen this process, we know what’s on the way. Will it be a boutique business or will it be strangled by the big boys? There are lots of places cheaper than Canada and the US to produce medical marijuana. I mean, try to get a tobacco license these days; you can’t do it. There’s no money in it.”
Brusatore’s separation from Abattis is something many insiders have wondered about. He says it wasn’t anything scandalous, just a variation in preferred direction. That should come as no surprise; Brusatore doesn’t call shotgun, he likes to be at the wheel.
“I’ll be honest, it’s wasn’t so much about any issues with Abattis as much as my need to be in control,” he laughs. “It’s a great company and they’re going to do great things, but if something’s not going in exactly my direction, it drives me up the wall. If I do it, I’ll do it my way.”
Brusatore takes great pain to note that the Abattis crowd are “Great guys, good friends, I’m looking forward to their labs getting going, and they’ll have the greatest analytics program in the US. If we end up being in the MMJ space, I’m more than willing to utilise their labs and be a customer. If everyone’s building something that pertains to industry needs, those are the people we want to be aligned with.”
For all his grand plans, the theme that keeps coming up in talking to Brusatore is one I’ve been pounding the podium on for some time; legitimacy. The need to establish real businesses that push past the hype and do things better than the way they’re done right now. The need to return on the investment made and grow in a sustainable way in industries with exponential upside potential.
Brusatore loves hemp. He loves the science. The loves the promise of cannabinoids and medicines that will be derived from them. And he sees the big price surges that have happened in the sector to date as destined for a turnaround before the real businesses in the space start building a long term growth curve.
“What people are forgetting is all these companies with bigger market caps than ours, they’re looking for ways to get past that first surge and taking note as to what we are doing. The daytraders are getting weeded out and larger players are stepping in when they see real businesses emerging. The sector volume is lower today than earlier in the year, but stocks are not dropping. Now people are waiting for the real deal to stand up and start trading. Get it on the rails, become solid, get to the TSX and bigger boards, with revenues and dividends.”
Brusatore’s not in the game, he says, to get rich. Abattis took care of that. Now it’s about empire building.
“I’m really looking forward to getting off the junior boards and becoming a global company. The medical marijuana market is North America right now, but food is global. In the food business, we have offers to build facilities in England, Ireland, the UAE, and Caribbean. License fees on the technology are going to be significant. Consulting feeds will be ongoing. Parts sales will keep money coming in.”
Don’t believe him? Call him up and tell him so.
“I deliberately put my personal cell number on every press release,” says Brusatore. “I take calls from shareholders, if they need to talk, they can call me and hear it straight from my mouth. They don’t feel like they’re being bullshitted by an IR guy. I need control, and that means a lot more work but it’s critical to our team. My reputation has been 15 years in the making and, with what’s happening here, I believe my whole career is on the line every day.”
And the expansion plans? They’re not done yet.
“We’re looking at a pharma facility that’s built. Looking at expanding into drug production maybe. We’re being a little more reserved with that because it’s a big player. Lots of DD with some big boys. We’re doing our best to be transparent and easy to digest, not tie investors up with lots of business models, but if we find something that we think will add to our current model, we’re going to give it a real good look.”
Brusatore has done a lot of explaining over the last few months, as investors haven’t always been into the food over weed plan. But he’s happy with what he’s hearing from people who own Affinor stock.
“I have no investor issues. People understand what we’re doing when they hear me speak, they’re getting it, they know it makes sense. Emails and texts come in all day saying keep it up. Our support is good, and people know I’ve got skin in the game. $2.5m in cash, and my reputation. We’re gonna get it done. With this team behind me, we can’t fail.”
So Nick, about that whole ‘not over-promoting’ thing..
“Solving world hunger and curing cancer; not a bad way to close out a career, eh?” he laughs.
Perchance to dream, Nick. Perchance to dream.
--Chris Parry
https://www.twitter.com/ChrisParry
Chris(dot)Parry(at)Stockhouse(dot)com
FULL DISCLOSURE: Affinor Resources has been an occasional customer of Stockhouse Publishing over the last six months, and has paid a fee for this article to be shared on the Stockhouse distribution network. They did not pay for its creation, and it was written with no promises made in terms of article composition. Affinor were not given the right to change, edit, write, see or approve any part of this document before it was posted and agreed with those terms.
The author was not paid by Affinor to write the document, nor does he own any Affinor stock, nor is he shorting any stock, and will not benefit in any way by an increase in Affinor’s share price.
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