The
The company recently completed its acquisition of
Trulieve’s latest expansion bid comes as more states allow sales of marijuana in some form or another.
Adult recreational use of marijuana is now legal in 19 states, with
Even so, the cannabis industry remains constrained by legal impediments to accessing capital and other challenges stemming from marijuana being illegal at the federal level. The industry is hoping
Q: You’ve referred to your company’s expansion plan as your “hub strategy.” What does it entail?
A: What that means is dividing the country into five regions: the Southeast, Northeast, Southwest, Central and Northwest. And to capitalize not only on near-term catalysts that will likely happen at the state level, but also thinking about how our distribution platform will look as federal change potentially occurs. We started down the path of developing out the Northeast. We acquired two companies in
Q: How does the Harvest acquisition fit in?
A: Harvest expands on that national hub strategy by increasing our footprint in the Southeast with additional cultivation, production and retail outlets in the state of
Q:
A: There are significant increased costs for those of us participating in capital markets right now. But maybe more importantly is the fact that a lot of small businesses that are cannabis businesses can’t get loans at all because they don’t have that pool of capital available to them. At this point, it almost seems kind of ridiculous that a majority of our states have cannabis programs but banks that absolutely want to participate in the industry are not able to and don’t have protection because of the federal position on the industry.
Q: What impact has the pandemic had on your business?
A: We did see consumption trends increase quite significantly. We had record growth, posting like 25% quarter over quarter, so it did have a significant positive impact on the business. What we’re seeing now is a normalization, of course, post-COVID. And what’s really exciting, I think for many of us, is that we’re still seeing growth even off of those highs.
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