Florida Tracker
Florida sales were up for a second week in a row by 5% for THC and 22% for CBD. Sales have been overall slowly trending up as the medical market prospers. Similar bullish trends are occurring in other medical-only markets such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Verano Holdings was recently added to our long list along with Trulieve. Verano has had accelerating market share trends for the last few weeks, along with Trulieve, until this week. According to the tracker, we are expecting 3Q21 Florida revenues to be up 3% for Verano and down 4% for Trulieve, both sequentially.
MO & CRON a bit premature?
CRON is a Canadian Long.
We are LONG CRON, so we love this article from @Invest420. New Cannabis Ventures recently published a piece on why Altria may be eyeing the full acquisition of Cronos Group because they have not put out an official press release dated for 3Q21 earnings. By way of background, in December of 2018, Altria announced it was investing CA$2.4 Billion for 45% (non-diluted) plus a potential additional 10% for a total of 55% into the Cronos group. The deal closed in March of 2019. As NCV points out, the warrants Altria holds are now out of the money, with a $19 exercise price, with CRON closing price of $5.34 on Friday (warrants will expire in 16 months.) Altria has been looking to diversify, but buying CRON now will not change that. NCV points out that MO can purchase the shares of CRON for a 70%+ premium and only spend another $1.5 Billion. The story comes together nicely, except Cannabis is still federally illegal, and the BOD of MO will likely not push the subject with regulators until further clarification on permissibility.
MSOS Historic Volume
On the release of the Republican-led "States Reform Act," the MSOS ETF saw its all-time-high volume of 3.6 Million shares traded, 24% higher than the second-highest day in January. The spike in volume resulted in the MSOS rallying by 9.5% on the day Friday. As mentioned previously, this Republican-led bill shows support from the side of the aisle, not traditionally pro-legalization, which may be the crucial piece to the puzzle. We expect this spike in volume to continue the rally as cannabis legalization sets out on a bipartisan path.
