The medical marijuana space in Canada has been crazy for the last year.
From the sudden emergence of a corporate medicinal cannabis supply system to court cases allowing formerly registered users to continue growing their own product, to the crazy profligation of unregulated dispensaries in Vancouver while other cities shut them down as soon as they appear, the mining-to-marijuana rush, the crazy share price spikes and crashes, the suited brokers shoving through barbed wire fences to do deals with motorcycle club employees, the boardrooms with baggies of samples being passed around… nobody could have foreseen the madness.
But out of madness, eventually, comes sanity. And the Canadian weedspace right now is verging on the sane.
Gone are many of the early share price rockets. Companies like Green and Hill, and Growlife, and Enertopia, and Creative Edge Nutrition, which had market caps as high as when they launched, now scrape bottom. The ticker symbol plays like BUD and THC are nowhere to be seen. And investors that, formerly, played all day, bouncing their cash from play to play depending on what was being promoted, are now butthurt, poorer, and looking for where to go next.
That’s the bottom end.
At the top, some serious wheels are turning. I’ve looked deep into the soul of many of these companies and I like what I see. Canadian medical marijuana is a mess of bureaucratic regulations, to be sure, but that torturous process has effectively allowed the market to be filtered through a sieve that has left only the high quality, the well-funded, the professionally run and the well supported companies standing.
Companies like Bedrocan, the Canadian subsidiary of a Dutch parent that has the monopoly on European medical marijuana and has earned $1m in revenue just reselling imported product from its parent. And Tweed, which two licensed facilities and a big war chest, the first mover in the market that stands tall on its effective marketing campaign and US investor base penetration. And Mettrum, a new player that keeps it cards close to its chest while it quietly connects registered patients to its product. And Supreme, which is marching towards its license with a plan to grow medical marijuana in a massive Ontario based facility, and sell it on the cheap to feed the low end of the market.
These are all fine companies. There are others, earlier in their licensing process, that may add to the roster. But there’s one that, right now, to me, has demonstrated it stands tall.
That company is Organigram.
You’ll find it in the Canadian markets under the ticker V.OGI. In the US, it’s OGRMF.
Why do I like this company? How much do I like this company?
Let’s get into that.
Organigram is not selling more weed than anyone else. It’s not got more name recognition than anyone else. It’s not sitting on a billion square feet of growing space. But it has something REALLY important in Canada, and North America proper.
It has a deal.
That deal is with Trauma Healing Centres (or THC), a group that is opening a series of clinics across Canada aimed at treating people with post-traumatic stress disorder. That means, largely, military veterans and first responders.
The deal promises to bring Organigram as much as $22m over the first two years, and to expand outward from that. But while that’s nice, it’s not the most important thing.
The deal also promises to give Organigram a bankable off-take arrangement upon which it can plan ahead. Instead of fighting for every patient, the THC group will bring the patients to them. But that’s not the most important thing.
The deal will embrace Organigram’s certified organic product (something no other company has), and will take advantage of the company’s truly bilingual structure (something, again, no other company has, and which gifts the company Quebec as a virtual monopoly).But, again, not the most important thing.
The important thing is veterans in Canada have government-backed health insurance, and medical marijuana is an accepted treatment for PTSD.
This means Organigram has a deal that, as a first in North America, will be insurance-backed, to serve a large segment of the population exclusively.
Anxiety disorders, or which PTSD is one of the largest segments, cost the US health system $42.3 billion annually, according to the Sidran Institute. Around half of that is spent on drugs, and those drugs are significantly more expensive – and less effective – and have more side effects – than medicinal cannabis.
Currently, Health Canada puts the potential market for medical marijuana at $1.3b per year in 2022. So if Organigram can be the go-to place for Canadian veterans and first responders to turn to for their PTSD relief, the market radically dwarfs the expected registered medical marijuana user for all other ailments.
This won’t happen tomorrow. It won’t happen next month. But when it happens, when the healing centres open and the veterans groups, which are behind THC, start moving their brothers into that system, Organigram won’t have time to scratch itself for all the business it’ll be handling.
And that’s why the company, right now, is working feverishly to expand. All the money it has raised in previous months, all of it is going to expansion of its present facility – something it can do because it just purchased the building next door and worked with the municipality to merge the two properties into one address. No need for a new MMPR!
I own Organigram stock. I’m not selling. I’m going to have to make that disclosure every time I write about this company for a long time to come because I have no plans to cash in my stake. I’m waiting for dividends, and I’m very happy in my belief dividends will one day flow hard.
There are several great investment options in medical marijuana in Canada. You should seriously consider them and invest where you think your money will be safest and most productive.
For me, that’s Organigram. V.OGI. Get in.
Written by: Chris Parry
NOTE: The author of this report has been paid for its production and dissemination and owns Organigram stock. Please do your own due diligence before making any investment and speak to a licensed professional for investment advice.