Mike Meade

My take on the target market for each company’s beverages: Trulieve: Health conscious people looking for a healthier alternative, likely targeting natural grocers for distro GTI: Party/concert goers, distribute in liquor stores, more mass market Curaleaf: Curaleaf investors

Big news… we’re expanding. 🎉 Onward is officially landing in more states and more shelves.

The reality for MSO's is that the industry economics are horrible. They primarily operate as retailers producing and distributing a commodity product. In my view, the true value creation in this sector will come from brand equity. GTI is essentially the only mso actively investing in a genuine brand. Most others are basically selling private label products through their own stores and calling it a “brand". I prefer to track this through external CPG sales (CPG revenue - intercompany eliminations) and CPG cogs. GTI’s external CPG revenue remains steady despite ongoing pricing pressure. While CPG margins have declined, this is to be expected. I think the argument could be made that market share should be prioritized over margin. Given the pricing pressure, I think change in COGS is a more reliable metric for sales volume. Per unit COGS is likely relatively stable, making it a better indicator for volume sales growth. For GTI, CPG COGS for the first nine months increased 14% YoY, meaning their sales volumes are likely up around the same.. External CPG revenue over the same period grew 12%. They didn't start reporting segment gross profit until this year, but will continue to track it moving forward. Verano, for comparison, saw their external CPG revenue for the 9 months fall over 30%.