How To Analyze A Marijuana Stock

have you heard this? I'm very curious. No, okay, So you know how like I am always sort of jumping on like whatever the hot market story is. Last year I was talking about crypto a lot, and this year I wrote an article about cannabis or whatever it is.

And you consistently cover of the very serious things, right, So you're it's like credit markets and market structure, and you basically have an understanding of the things that will be enduring through markets for a long time, whereas I'm much more flighty and just sort of jumped to whatever is hot. So anyway, apparently they say that that I'm the momentum I'm the momentum factor, and you're the value factor. Is sort of how they see our different roles, and

that perfect. That's great. Um, I guess we need to think about rebranding add thoughts as a momentum and value, cause it sounds like a terrible like sitcom, but it is a good characterization anyway. So, you know, I wrote the story a few weeks ago for Business Week about exactly what I'm talking about, cannabis and crypto and various investing fads and bubbles and psychology and stuff like that.

And in doing the research for that story, I came across what at the time was a group of anonymous experts in marijuana investing called the Canna Lists, and they have a podcast and a page on Reddit where they analyze, really intensely breakdown the various businesses of all these marijuana

companies that people are investing in. And it's pretty clear that they're very far ahead of the pack, like a few different guys whose understanding of the granularity of the industry are far above where most of the media and uh, most Wall Street analysts are on this nascent area. Right.

So I remember reading a little bit about this in that piece that you did for a Business Week, and I thought it was really fascinating because every once in a while you see these communities essentially spring up on Reddit, and uh, sometimes these communities go into an insane amount of granular detail about what they're talking about, and the Catalysts is definitely one of those. And even though you know, I started by saying how you and I we we

sort of have different complementary approaches. One thing that I know both of us are very fond of is any stories of essentially someone on the Internet becoming the ax in a certain space. So like we both used to like Calculated Risk Bill McBride, we had him on the podcast, Like we both love these stories of like someone online on their own, independent of major institution, is becoming the expert, becoming the must read on some new area, right especially

when it's new. And that's I think the thing that's the most interesting about cannabis stocks right now, because you're talking about an entirely new industry potentially with a whole new set of rules, in a whole new way of functioning, and a lot of the people, the traditional people, the cell side analysts on Wall Street haven't really wrapped their heads around it just yet exactly right. So the interesting thing is right after my article came out. The Canalysts, Uh,

they d anonymize themselves. They docks themselves in real and revealed who they are. And we're very lucky because one of them has agreed to come on Today's Odd Lots podcasts. So I would like to bring in uh, Craig Wiggins. He is one of the three Canalysts. Craig, thank you very much for joining us. Joe Tracy pleas pleasure to be here. It's it's nice to be a guest on a podcast and not have to run the run the show.

I know it's really I've been whenever a few times I've been a guest on a podcast, I always appreciate how much easier it is. I'm glad you're with us. Tell us, why don't you just give us the background? Who are you? Who are the cannalysts? And why do people read your stuff? Well? With respect to the cannalysts, I actually found both Cytochrome Graham Jones, who's our PhD candidate at Brock University in biotech, and Molly Time Andrew Udell on social media forums and the social media forums.

You would think in most cases you to these farms and uh, someone characterized it as a zoo very loose dialogue, a lot of pumpers, a lot of bashers and the like.

But both these individuals I found to be incredibly intelligent and boy was that was that or a good call in my base my part, So we were both All three of us were casually introduced by myself as a as a group, and in November of last year, we decided to break off from another reddit, weedstocks subreddit and formed the Cannabists because we wanted a curated place for engaged investors that was deep, it wasn't people giving opinions

without fact. So we actually formed the Cannabists last November, very late November early December last year, and we've had quite quite a run of it lately. We have several platforms. We use our quarterly earnings analysis where I complete rundowns. I'm a credit guy by trade. I was in I've been involved in international trade finance and supply chain management finance for over thirty years now, Molly time Andrew was thirty years in credit risk management and energy trading, so

he knows the equity box. I'm I'm a lender. I like to get repaid, So I know that fundamental credit analysis stuff. And when we added Graham to the mix, which does he does our science side and our patent review, we became very very three dimensional. And uh so we've we've expanded that or ask me anything series is been phenomenal. It is c suite. Uh we bring in the executive suites to talk about their companies and our community asks them any anything that that like. And uh, it's amazing

the response we've had. We've had CFOs come on and we after two hours they give us six which is amazing. Tracy, I was just gonna say, a credit analysts talking about cannabis kind of the perfect guest for the two of us. Oh. Absolutely, And I love the credit risk manager with thirty years experience whose user name is Molly Time. That's fairly unusual.

It's named after his cat. Actually, just to take a step back for a second, why were you all on social media or on the Reddit forums talking about pot stocks in the first place. What sparked your collective interest? Well, on my side, it was about the name accounting treatment of h I f r S international financial reporting standards, where these companies growing cannabis at harvest we're able to take the entire profit before sale, less the selling expense

through their income state. I found it to be very, very misleading, so I dug into that and started commenting about that in the industry. For Andrew Uh, it was more about a long lifetime passion for cannabis and the stock market quite frankly, and for our younger PhD candidate, it was about learning the finance side and applying the science to it. So all three of us came from a different place where we were very fortunate to meet

each other. So for for those who haven't been following the ins and outs of pot stocks, can you maybe describe the state of the current cannabis industry, like where are we in terms of legalization and where are we in terms of companies actually getting started and producing and selling cannabis. Well, next week, October seventeen, Canada will become the first G seven country to legalize adult use cannabis.

We've had medical cannabis for a decade and Uh under various regimes and the last four year is under a pretty steady regime. And when Trudeau was elected, part of his platform was I'm going to legalize adult use cannabis. So we're we're a week away. It isn't going to go smoothly in Canada. It's not California, it's it's not Colorado. We have government's provincial governments that have inserted themselves into the supply chain and are acting like central warehousers and

they're gonna handle all the online sales. So that's a little different. But right now the market extremely froth. You've got to be very careful jumping into this market because as an investor, if you're a trader, you love the volatility. But as an investor, and I'm an investor, I'm not a trader. Andrews the trader in our midst like, I

look at it and the fundamentals. These companies are so far out over their skis right now on valuations versus fundamentals, and I think there's gonna be some massive failures within the industry, and you've got to be very choosy about what you're investing in. I'm fifty two years old. I don't have a lot of time to recover if I screw up, So I'm a little different than the thirty

year olds. In the twenty year olds, Well, let's talk about this because I think the only two things that most people would know when they come to it is that the legal cannabis market is still fairly small around the world, certainly in the US, but there is pretty big potential for it to get much bigger as legalization expand. So everybody by now essentially knows that that's the story or that's the theme. But then you mentioned there's gonna be a lot of failures. A lot of these companies

are out over the skis, out over their skis. So if you're deciding among stocks, what is the first thing you do to actually sort of ascertain who's really going to be able to profitably exploit this market? Well, I'm going to start with something that's probably the hardest thing to evaluate, and that's management. Um management is everyone can print off a very nice looking TV that that looks really good. A lot of companies, uh those cvs. The

back stories for management look very very good. But making sure you map what management says to what they actually do to me is very very important, especially in the new industry. Like I'm a big believer in jockey before horse and hope that the trainer gets the horse up to speed and and that's how I've approached it. And I'm again I'm a lot more cautious. I'm a little older. I'm not going for the I'm not looking for the biggest company. I'm looking for the most profitable company. Can

I ask you, know you mentioned management just then? How standardized are corporate practices of cannabis companies at this point? You talked about I f r S accounting rules. There's certain guidance that comes with being a public company, but the vast majority of cannabis companies at the moment aren't actually public. So what are the disclosures like? What what is the financial um or corporate governance like the corporate

government needs a lot of work in my mind. There are some more professional companies like Constellation coming into Canopy I I think was hugely important for them. I think it provides a lot more rigor to their operations, which I haven't been fond of. Quite frankly, Constellations with with four or seven board members, they're professionalizing that firm. And

I think till Raise another good example. Till Ray, by the way, is the only one that does not report in under I f r S because they went right to the US markets with NASDAC and they're using good old U S gaps. So I love chatting with those guys. It makes it a lot easier to look through their company. Afreya is a very solid company. Aurora interesting company, they have a lot of They've done so much vertical integration.

And you know, it's really fascinating about the industry is there's so many different races being run and I'm amazed at the different race as they are being run. Who knows who wins? But on a corporate governance seriously lacking in the in the mid caps and small caps there that there's some questionable stuff out there. Well, explain that. What do you say multiple races being run? Let's get a little more granular. What are the different specific opportunities

that people are competing for here? Well, let's look at the three let's say main players, although till race market cap would put them in a main player. Let's look at Canopy, Aurora and Afria. Canopy wanted to be the biggest. They were first to do a lot of things. First to go public, first to acquire a new company, first expand into Europe, first to get on the New York Stock Exchange or US listing. So Cannopy was about getting big, and it's big on both the adult youth side in Canada.

But medical medical globally is gonna be huge, and I don't think a lot of people appreciate that. And all these companies are looking at medical globally. Aurora, on the other hand, uh one very massive facility that they've they've completed as guy in Edmonton. They have some smaller facilities and they've acquired a bunch of companies. They acquired Seemed, they acquired med Relief, and both of those are I

think Semed was a billion plus. Med Relief was three and a half billion dollars for companies with ten million and quarterly sales fifteen million and quarterly sales, which is nuts. Then you have Aura, who have largely until this year really built to scale, and all they cared about was we're gonna build our own facilities in Leamington, Ontario, the greenhouse capital of Canada. We're gonna build them to scale. We care about EBITDA and as a traditional credit guy,

EBA does my drug of choice. UM. I really like their management and that's where I put a lot of my capital in. And I've revolved it around, but they still aren my largest holding. And what I like about them they are a bit of the tortoise versus the hair with canopy, But I care about building scalable businesses. To me, there's a lot of hints that you can get from from management, even in even when revenue hasn't scaled.

There's a lot of things you can pick up, and I just like the executive over there a little bit better. So when you look at the cannabis industry, is there a parallel conventional industry that you think it's most similar to. Is it, you know, maybe drug developments like the pharma industry, or is it potentially something more recreational. It is agricultural,

it is pharma, it's consumer package goods. It's unlike anything I've seen, quite frankly, because you're gonna be producing for a recreational market as you try to develop patentable strains and drugs for for medical avenues. And to me, again, the medical side of this is the big plus. And once the US takes the wrap so often, let's farm. I really dig in and analyze the plant and analyze the hundred plus minor cannabinoids and what each one of those is capable of. I think that's the big story.

It wreck is flashy, wreck is fun, It's it's the party cruise. Medical is a longer tunnel, but uh, in the endgame, health science and wellness is can be huge in this industry. Speaking of recreational marijuana, here's something that I've been curious about for a while. So right now, when it comes to alcohol or tobacco, people have some conception of brands that they like. Maybe I have a favorite beer and I drink at the most, but I certainly don't drink it every single time I drink beer.

I'm curious what the expectation is on cannabis. Are people going to have brands that they really like, that they identify with something that they are going to use all the time that will be difficult for smaller brands to enter or or consume. Were expected to be more promiscuous, so to speak, and making it difficult for the various sellers to really establish large moats around their strand that's that's a great question. Um. Buying cannabis isn't like entering

into a cell phone contract. You're not locked in for an extended period of time. So I expect a lot of brand hopping at the beginning. Uh, people settling in, they'll they'll be the cores light of cannabis out there, and there also will be the Johnny Walker Blue label. We recently toured Broken Coast Cannabis, which after you've purchased for almost a quarter billion dollars earlier this year, and we have a video out on it, and they're by far the highest quality LP that we've ever toured, and

we've toured quite a few. I think they given their their history and uh, their medical side, patients just love them. I think that's going to be that's getting Broken Coast Cannabs because it's not big facility is gonna be like getting Hamilton's tickets on Broadway. So good luck to everybody who can actually get their hands on some of that stuff. But there's gonna be the cores light. There's gonna vape pens aren't going to be legal in Canada for another year.

Edibles won't be legal in Canada for another year. All we're going on for the first year for consumables is flour and oil, and it's not the oil that you're used to it where you can vape in the States. It's it's diluted oil in a carrier oil form, so you can use it in baking and stuff like that, but it isn't what you fill your vappens with in the US, and and vape off vapens are gonna be enormous and that's why all the greenhouse capacity is coming online.

So I have a related question, which is about the notion that one of the defining things about weed at the moment is just the sheer number of strains that are out there, and there are always new ones being created, Like that's pretty much what growers do is constantly cross

breeding different strains. And at the moment, if you're at least a recreational consumer, you probably base your choice on you know, I like sour diesel or I like Girl Scout cookies, and your options are probably limited to whatever your dealer happens to have available. So how does the sheer number of strains interplay with this brand loyalty that

we were just talking about. Well, you know, I think the strain, the sheer number strains is gonna be a lot different in California than it's gonna be in Canada, because we're going to have these ten provincial buying authorities that are purchasing, and you have to have enough volume to fill your skews with them. So I like for to give you an example, Broken Coast is only going to have five strains. That's it the skew level though I've been to Organagram and I think that their skew

level is somewhere around forty two to fifty two. Excuse to one province, but that skew level because there's loose roll single loose rolls probably in half gram and gram size. There's a a flower in a graham probably an eighth and a quarter uh. There might be a complementary oil to that strain. So you're not going to get the strain selection that that you see, I think in California, because you have to fill the pipe and then you

have to continually fill the pipe. And the problem is like from genetics to to product, you're probably looking at a year uh if they find something good, and we found that finding something good in genetics is one in a hundred and one in a thousand chants, you get something very unique. So I think the strain selection unfortunately is gonna be limited until we see some of the craft producers, which is the next round of reg's allowing the small batchcraft guys into the market, and then it

might fracture a little bit. But still these monolith uh provincial buying authorities, they think different. They think I think alcohol and uh and will they have will we have hit records of strains for the summer? I sure hope. So I think that would be fun. But you need a market that can react quickly, and then I don't think Canada is going to be that market because of those monolithic buying entities that are between the the grower

and the consumer. God. I have so many questions right now and I don't even I'm trying to think which way to go. But I really want to drill down on that last thing you said, because I think this is really crucial for people understanding the market structure of Canadian cannabis. So they're gonna be the LPs, the licensed producers who grow the stuff you mentioned a few of their names. They're going to be private retail outlets who

sell the stuff out on the street to people. But then in between them there are these state run or provincial run warehouses that ultimately are where the buyer and seller meet, Can you explain how that works? I get asked this a lot, and I always tell people, do not think like a retailer, Do not think like a consumer. Do not think like the company selling cannabis and growing it. You have to think like a greedy finance minister and

a greedy provincial finance minister. And if you think like a greedy provincial finance minister, a lot of this makes sense because if the LPs don't grow in your province and all the profits are going to land in the LPs laps and other provinces, how do you really relocate profits while you insist on being a nanny state and uh and centrally warehousing the product such that you can dispense it within your rights in province, because every every

province has different regulations on this. Not only that, these greedy finance ministers are also taking on the all the online sales. So if you're a retailer like Medmen, which you're probably familiar within the States and Canada, the model is gonna be very very different. You're going to buy from just one source, so you don't get to compete out all your sources in order to drive down your prices. Then that that source that's selling to you is going

to compete against you online. To me, you've got to be very careful entering the retail space in Canada. There's a lot of people very anxious to do it. I'd be very cautious to do it because I think this is gonna be You're gonna have to have a high volume, low margin business. Maybe it changes when edibles and the secondary products come in, but I really worry for for those companies that I think they're going to do really well.

And what we call it, we've been calling it is boxed in retail because you're boxed in by the seller to you, who's competing against you. It's it's an odd Canadian phenomenon. So just to be clear, when people are trying to wrap their heads around who's going to make the profit, it's really important to realize that the provinces have inserted themselves as essentially monopsony buyers of the product from the growers and monopoly sellers to the product to

the retailers. So just from a pure echo one on one standpoint, you could sort of figure out who's going to take a huge slice of the profits in the whole thing. Plus they're they're layering on an excise tax and in a sales tax, so yeah, you could figure out who's who's making the problems. And I love the folks in the States too. I find them far more honest about why cannabis is going to be allowed. Eventually,

it's about jobs, it's about taxation. In Canada, we've been saying it's about saving little Timmy from from getting his hands on cannabis at the local high school. We're gonna regulate it. It's it's been very health driven, which is a nice liberal message that that resonates a lot more. And I can see why it works better in Canada quite frankly, But at the end of the day, I'm a capitalistic nature and I find uh taxes and jobs really speak more to me than the health benefits. But

they're they're are there. There's demonstrated drops in youth use when it becomes regulated, so we'll see. But yeah, they don't mistake Canada for the US. So when it comes to selecting a successful Canadian cannabis company, is the thing you want to look out for then just first move or advantage and economies of scale and efficiency. I think it's low cost production. I think it is can be very key. Uh, this is gonna be commoditized. It was very sexy when people were like these LPs with very

little competition. We're selling medically because on the medical stream, just just to make the point, medical is still federally regulated. Medical only is sold from an LP online to a medical recipient who has a script, so that's not going to change when adult use comes up. That medical system, the direct delivery medical marijuana. We're not in pharmacies yet. Strapper's Drug Marder largest pharmacy chain, has a license, but they're gonna act like a central warehouser as well and

ship to all their their customers of the pharmacy. So it was really nice selling things at nine dollars a graham that we're costing three dollars a graham. That's a heck of a margin. But when the provinces come in and compress that margin, that sales price down to four fifty three fifty a graham. You better be selling producing sub dollar in order to compete. So even if you if you want to farm it out and compete. So these first movers are all scaling large sets of production.

But their cost structures are wildly different. And so even with these large greenhouses coming online, it's gonna skew the cost program of all these companies. But even if you don't want to grow it yourself, if you want to be big, you need acts as to enough and enough I'll put in really hard quotes there, low cost, good supply. So this is going to eventually be a branding game when it gets to edibles and vapes and and and the medical products. But you need access to the supply,

good premium, good quality supply at a good cost. And so first movers are important because they've scaled the most, they've got access to all that capital, and they've built out. They've had a longer runway to build out. I'm very cautious about it, all the new entries, new entries in Canada,

extremely cautious about all. Right, So we've sort of danced around this in the beginning and during this conversation, but we need to talk about the accounting treatment of gain on biologicals because this is the first time that I actually tried to really work through the P and L statement of a cannabis company. And I forget which one I was looking at maybe Chronos or something right up at the top of the income statement. I ran into

this thing. I didn't understand this profit from gain on biologicals. And then you and I went back and forth and DM for like thirty minutes, and you try to explain it to me. But for anyone in the US investing in a Canadian company that doesn't use a GAP, but I f R S explain what this line is and how crucial it is to understanding this line in order to sort of judge the true profitability of the company. Yeah,

first of all, it's ludicrous. It's uh, it's meant for think of a tequila producer where they're at gave A takes years and years to grow. Cannabis grows in at twelve into fourteen a week cycle. So this is an agricultural phenomenon and it's also in livestock as well. And what it allows the the producer to do is and I'll just talk about at harvest because it also impacts the growing plants, but the at harvest is the big dollars.

So at harvest they get to treat it like they hold it and they get to capture the profit less any selling expense, So that would be like going into a ACE Hardware in the States, and ACE Hardware has already taken profit for everything that sits on their shelves less the selling expense. That's ludicrous. So there's two items that you have to look for, and I always use

gross margin when I do my trend analysis. In my line analysis, I use gross margin before I f R as voodoo as I call it, because there's two items. There's the gain on biologicals, so that's all the growth in the the plant material the unharvested plants which is smaller than the harvested plants, um so they're taking profit as they grow, not as they sell. And you only get to take profit once you don't get to take

it multiple times. Then the other line item is fair value increment on good sold in that quarter, and what that is is showing you how much profit they took when they actually harvested it versus when they sold it. So I'm always looking at management. And we talked about

management earlier. If their production costs plus their fair value increment is greater than their quarterly sales, it means they were far too aggressive when they took the gain on biologicals in the first place, and it tells you a little bit about the company if they're gonna be that aggressive taking all the profit at harvest. You look at canopies, Vault Canopy has a hundred million plus in cannabis, all

the profits gone. So everyone who thinks, oh, they're gonna sell the all that cannabis in the quarter one and quarter two of recreational and they're gonna make gobs of money. No, no, no, they already took all that profit. So it's very important when you're looking at this. I always use adjusted even that that is my drug of choice. It takes a lot of noise out of the equation, including gain on biologicals and fair value increment. But it's insane to actually

accept even when it was just medical. The product gets harvested, it has to still pass q a QC quality Assurance, Quality control, and that takes four to five weeks. And unlike other agricultural goods, there's no futures market, so how do you actually figure out what the selling prices? So that was all left to management and it was all over the place, and UH to me that that there's a way too much noise in that to UH not

back it out when you're doing your analysis. So I wanted to ask you about how the cannabis industry fits into the existing financial infrastructure. You mentioned there's no futures market at the moment. There also isn't a lot of analysts discussing the cannabis industry at the moment. UH and Joe alluded to this in our intro. But that's one of the reasons why the Canalysts is so interesting, because you guys are doing this analysis in a lot of detail, in a way in which Wall Street just isn't at

the moment. Why do you think Wall Street is sort of behind on this one? Is it purely a question of the legality of the industry. I think they just found religion until Canopy and UH and Chronos listed in the US Canada was an afterthought. And so you get Canopy listing and UH and Jim Kramer UH talking it up. Then you get Chronos and then you get Till Ray and my, my, my mind, what a story that was.

And you know how, I'm flattered that you think we're doing it well, because I gotta tell you, the people that I'm watching on the business shows in the States are doing it so poorly. They are uh, not talking about fundamentals. They're they're they're not talking about the fact that like till Ray, for example, the last quarter they ended the quarter with a finished goods inventory of eighty nine thousand dollars in flour and four and sixteen thousand

dollars in oil extracts. No one's mentioned that. But if you're about to ramp up for ACT and it takes you four to five weeks after your harvest and you're sitting on under a day's worth of sales of finished goods, you've got some issues. And I love the til Reay guys, and they'll they'll get it figured out. They're very professional and executive. Their executive is fabulous. But not one mention of something like that, Not one mentioned in the media

about waste. Even the Canadian media has been sadly lacking. Like I said, you can measure management without the financials in certain aspects. If you follow waste and you track through and dig through the m d na's management discussion analysis and the financial notes like we do, you can sometimes pinpoint how much waste these companies have and uh, some of them are over twenty six that's that's a little high if you're going to be at a consumer

packaged goods industry. So I really think the listings in the US created the interest. I think the talking heads are talking heads. They they really don't know what they're looking at. They're fueling hype. And I got into this industry because, um, I didn't want to see Joe retail get taken advantage of. And that I have for or asked me was people getting taken advantage of. And so some of the the the cheering that's going on to

me is a little irresponsible. It's bringing people into the market because it's hot and topical, not because it might be a good investment for their portfolio. Alright, So quick comment and then two very quick questions. First of all, I take that as a personal challenge as a as a business TV show co host to not be one of the talking heads and to actually live up to your standards. So I appreciate that comment. I'm it's something

to strive towards. As for the two questions, one is a what is the future of the catalysts and where are you going to take it next? And be I just have to go back. You were talking about like what's going to be the hit strains, So like, is there a career where people can smoke pot and say, Okay, this is really fantastic stuff. Wow. I'll answer the first first.

First of all, I hope you you dig deeper at the end of the day until it's until it's about the investor and not about the hits and the clicks. I think there it behooves us to to educate the investor because they're at such a disadvantage compared to the institutionals.

Now I'll deal with your second one. It would be great and I think there's a lot of gamers out there that that would say, hey, it would be a nice adjunct to gaming if I can also comment on strains UH, and there is some strain review out there. What I can't wait for is for the myths to get busted and there there be actual like pepsi coke challenges where it isn't just preconceived notions. I can't wait for that. I think that's gonna be very interesting as

to the future of the cannabis UH. In a year, we actually have a trade conference that we're doing in Leamington, Ontario, which is a small Hamlet just outside of Windsor, Ontario, which is about forty five minutes from Detroit, and we're actually doing a trade conference there with Grant Thornton. Uh this is within a year. Like we just released a

video last week. And I can tell you if I told my partners back in last November, Hey, by the end of the year we'll have videos released and we'll be doing a trade conference, they would have hung up on me. So we're gonna go as far as our imaginations can take us and as far as our community will allow us to go. We're we're really focused on providing content to our community and making sure that they like what we do. And uh So, I don't know

where we're going next. Quite frankly, it's it's very flattering that people like you, Joe, that that listen to me. My wife and my kids don't listen to me. But it's nice to know that there are some people out there that that find what I say and what Andrew and what Graham says as valuable in their investment decisions. Well, we wish you luck and I really appreciate you coming on and I, like I said, I do think it's important that the media moves beyond the hype and actually

helps to educate people about what these companies are. So really appreciate your explanation. Freig Wiggins, thanks for coming up. Thank you very much for having me. It's been a pleasure, Trazy. I thought that really was like the perfect blend of my and your interests. You know what, I was really surprised about. We managed to go through that entire podcast without I think making a single uh marijuana pun. You

know what. I'm so I'm so proud of us because I'm so tired of marijuana punt and I think it speaks to the uh, the degree of seriousness which with which we take it, and the maturation of the industry. And I I just I'm trying to kill marijuana punts every time I see them entitled or articles or so now they're they're bad. So I think that really does speak well of us that at no point in the

conversation did occur to me to make one. Right, Um, There's one other thing that I was thinking throughout that discussion. Obviously we were focused on the financial and the business aspects of an entirely new industry, but if if you take a step back, it's also just really interesting to watch cultural and societal norms basically changing in our own time. You know, think back to twenty or thirty or forty or fifty years ago and the way people talked about

pot marijuana, you know, reefer madness. People honestly thought that marijuana was something that was going to destroy entire societies. And now we're talking about the degree to which it should be legalized and basically incorporated into some people's daily lives. It's pretty amazing. Well, literally, n y C listing for a marijuana dealer is like about the pinnacle of cultural acceptance.

I would say, so you think of like, nothing could be more normally and conservative than NYC NYC listing, And so I think there's something even though it's not fully legal, we're not legal across the United States, yet it's almost

like that's even more striking. It's it's fully arrived by that point, right, or quality control for a Canadian provincial government, Yeah, or like I f r S treatment of how you account for from when you plant the marijuana to when it's sitting his inventory, it's pretty uh, it's pretty entrenched. It's here. Yeah, all right, Well this has been in another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway, and

I'm Joe Wise though. You can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart, and you can follow our guest Craig Wiggins on Twitter. He is at Go Blue c d N. And you should follow our producer top for Foreheads at Foreheads T, as well as the Bloomberg head of podcast, Francesco Leaving at Francesco Today. Thanks for listening.