Marijuana Stocks Still Have Legs
Momentum Public Relations
Blog: June 1 2018
Marijuana Stocks Still Have Legs
Bryan, Garnier & Co: Global Marijuana Market to Hit US$140 Billion by 2027
Canadian Licensed Producers Expanding Abroad
The exact date when recreational marijuana will be legalized is still uncertain. The Trudeau government has repeatedly said that it will be legalized this summer. When that great day comes to pass it may be the only time in Canadian history that the government has created an economic stimulus package that actually works: the legal marijuana industry.
Not content with only being valued in the billions of dollars in Canada, our domestic marijuana industry is also hell-bent on international expansion.
On January 28, 2018 the CBC ran a story quoting Bloomberg that said there were 87 publicly listed marijuana companies on the TSXV and that collectively they were worth US$37 billion. In January Statistics Canada estimated that almost 5 million Canadians spent $5.7 billion dollars buying marijuana, with only 10% of that going to legal medical cannabis.
On May 28, 2018 Aurora Cannabis announced that it had signed a distribution agreement with German plant based pharmaceutical distributor Heinrich Klenk. Klenk distributes its products in more than 25,000 drug stores across Germany and Europe. Klenk is a trusted name and Aurora has launched a new brand that will be produced in Canada named Cannabis Klenk which the company will distribute. Medical cannabis is legal in Germany.
Aurora has been making international plans and putting them into action for some time. It owns Berlin-based Pedanios, the leading marijuana importer, exporter and distributor of medical marijuana in the European Union as well as 51% of Aurora Nordic which plans on constructing a one million square foot greenhouse in Denmark. To round out its diversified activities the company also owns two companies that specialize in building greenhouse lighting systems, BC Northern Lights and Urban Cultivator.
Aurora is not alone on the international stage, Canopy Growth, which has Snoop Dogg as a spokesman, has operations in seven countries on four continents. Aphria Inc. has operations in more than 10 countries on five continents. It recently created a joint venture, Canninvest Africa with the South African Verve Group of Companies that will see it gain an interest in Verve Dynamics, a licensed producer of medical cannabis extracts, which it believes will become one of if not the lowest cost producer in the extract field.
Driven by economies of scale and the desire to have all the pieces to the puzzle in one place the industry has been consolidating for some time. The most recent example is the merger of Aurora and MedReleaf, which has created the largest marijuana company in the world.
If you think the market is now too high to buy in, you may want to think again. A story published in Forbes on March 1, 2018 predicts a robust and growing legal international marijuana poised for exponential growth.
The story is based on a report by Arcview Market Research which predicts that by 2027 spending on legal recreational and medical marijuana will hit US$57 billion with a 67% market share for recreational marijuana and a 33% share for medical cannabis.
The lion’s share of the revenues will be generated in North America where the largest recreational market is expected to develop with sales going from US$9.2 billion in 2017 to US$47 billion in 2027.
All of which means that serious investors should start doing their due diligence on the marijuana industry now, if they haven’t already. That due diligence should also include bio-pharmas that are developing cannabis- based drugs for regulatory approval and for the over the counter market.
If you still think that marijuana stocks are overpriced you may wish to consider this, investment bank Bryan, Garnier & Co have just predicted that the global marijuana market is poised to grow by a 1,000 percent to hit US$140 billion by 2027.
One of the more interesting set of statistics put out by Statista is that in America, medical marijuana will take a larger slice of the pie than recreational marijuana. The company predicts that by 2025 cannabinoid-based pharmaceuticals will be valued at US$13.2 billion and the legal recreational market at US$10.9 billion.
Whether or not cannabinoid-based pharmaceuticals will surpass the legal recreational market is as yet unknown but predictions like the one above are a sure indication that bio-pharmas launching successful drugs will be lucrative.
A rising tide raises all ships. When Canadian recreational marijuana legalization takes place marijuana stocks are expected to jump and by association so will those pharmaceutical companies developing successful cannabinoid-based drugs.
Tetra Bio-Pharma, (TSXV: TBP) is one such company with a pipeline of cancer chronic pain, and other products under development. Its lead product, PPP 001, trademarked as RX Princeps has started Phase 3 clinical trials and stands to be the first cannabinoid therapy that will have its efficacy and safety proved.
Once that happens, PPP 001 will very likely become the first drug to be given Health Canada and American FDA approval. This achievement will be marked by a Drug Identification Number, DIN, which means that it can legally be prescribed by doctors and eligible for insurance plan coverage. TBP already has distribution agreements in place in Israel and in Europe.
The above does not and should not be taken as investment advice. Investors have the responsibility of performing their own due diligence. In the interests of transparency, Momentum PR represents Tetra Bio-Pharma.
- Published in Blog
A Bitcoin Primer
Momentum Public Relations
Blog: March 26 2018
Some of us know a little, some of us know a lot, but most of us haven’t got the foggiest notion of what a Bitcoin or a cryptocurrency is.
If you follow the news, you will have noted that media coverage is increasing. On Thursday March 15th, CNBC reported that the value of global cryptocurrencies fell from US$372.9 billion to US$310.4 billion. According to Digital Trends there are 1,300 cryptocurrencies in existence. Among them are Dash, Ethereum, Litecoin and Plasma.
Investing in them may be a dangerous gamble, even Venezuela has floated a cryptocurrency, the Petro. Financial Post columnist Diane Francis has ranked them on a par with the Bre-X scandal, Canadian Tire money and has advised investors to avoid them like the plague.
The reason for the recent fall in value was mainly twofold, the threat of increasing regulation and the actions of the trustee for Mt Gox a bankrupt Japanese bitcoin clearing house, who flooded the market with bitcoins in an attempt to pay off creditors.
The slide in value was also pushed along by the news that first Facebook in January and then Google in March banned advertising for cyptocurrencies, wallets and ICOs. Highly volatile, the value of bitcoins fell from US$20,000 in 2017 to US$8,219 a bitcoin on March 15th.
Cryptocurrencies are a digital currency. They aren’t backed by any national bank or regulated by any government or financial regulatory agency. Their only value is what you think it is and that may end up being nothing at all or a great deal.
Bitcoins are generated by solving complex mathematical puzzles. A process which makes seeing any real value in them difficult. It is a process which consumes a great deal of electricity. Wallets are applications that store cryptocurrencies on your computer and ICOs are Initial Coin Offerings which take place when a new cryptocurrency is launched.
Along with last week’s fall in cryptocurrency value, other recent news headlines include Plattsburg, New York’s decision to stop selling cheap electricity to bitcoin miners because they have driven the cost of electricity up for other residents and the arrival of a bitcoin mining operation in Sherbrooke, Quebec where Sherbrooke Hydro offers cheap electricity.
Quebec-based Bitfarm says that its Sherbrooke operation will employ up to 250 people. The company has operations in several communities in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. Bitfarm is reportedly spending $250 million to set up its Sherbrooke operation.
Bitcoin miners from as far afield as China have been reported as eyeing Quebec because of its comparatively cheap electrical rates.
All of this was topped by the announcement by Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard that bitcoin miners were not welcome in the province because they didn’t provide any added value for Quebec. Quebec may even decide to deter bitcoin operations by increasing the amount Hydro Quebec charges them for electricity.
It appears that while we were napping and concentrating on real stocks with real products and real business plans that the business of cryptocurrencies has become the object of intense speculation.
American financial regulators have allowed the trading of bitcoin futures. There is even a company, HashChain, trading on the TSXV and OTCQB that along with being an active bitcoin miner, offers tax software targeted at the fast and exciting world of cryptocurrency.
By their very nature cryptocurrencies are shadowy and elusive. Murky because we don’t really know who bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto is, or if he actually ever existed. Nakamoto has said via internet posts that he lived in Japan but the internet server he used was a free one located in Germany.
Even the name is a little confusing. Merriam Webster defines crypto as a “person who adheres or belongs secretly to a party, sect or other group.” The word was coined in 1946 and most commonly used in a compound form, crypto-communist, crypto-fascist, etc.
Crypto in cryptocurrency, instead refers to the fact that transactions on a cryptocurrency network are encrypted, safe and secure.
In 2008 Nakamoto posted a paper on the creation of a cryptocurrency on a cryptographers message board. During 2009 he launched bitcoin. By 2010 Nakamoto had handed bitcoin over to another developer, Gavin Andreson who had helped develop bitcoin technology. Nakamoto stopped posting on bitcoin forums in 2010 and hasn’t been heard of since.
The benefits of a cryptocurrency or rather, the technology behind it could be very large. Blockchain technology promises to make transactions faster and ensure privacy. Bitcoin was initially developed during the 2008 banking crash and subsequent recession.
Some supporters see cryptocurrencies as a cure all for economic woes because cryptocurrencies are not state regulated. Because they are not regulated they can’t be used to provide economic stimulation that in turn devalues currency. Others believe they can eliminate credit card fraud, provide a financial safe haven for people living in war zones and the ability to provide people without bank accounts a safe way to transfer money.
While most of these are laudable desires, the true value in cryptocurrencies probably lies in the development of blockchain technology that allows cryptocurrencies to make fast, safe and easy transactions.
Cryptocurrencies had been dreamed of and worked on since the 1990s but Nakamoto was the first to solve the basic problem which had held development back, how to prevent people from simply cutting and pasting their digital currency again and again. This is called the double spend.
To put it a little more simply, he developed a system that would prevent digital currency fraud. He did this by creating a central registry or ledger that would be maintained by members of the bitcoin community in a variety of locations. Because every ledger entry is checked against other nodes in the network fraud becomes impossible.
The central registry and bitcoins themselves depend on blockchain technology. Cryptocurrencies are based on the idea of making transactions quicker and simpler by bypassing government control of currency. It does this by storing information across a peer to peer network, a blockchain. This can be better understood if you think of the blockchain as an operating system and bitcoin as the application that runs on it.
Bitcoins and for the most part other cryptocurrencies are generated by what is called mining. This is a computer intensive activity whereby a series of computers are strung together to solve a mathematical puzzle. The first “miner” to solve the problem is rewarded with a set number of bitcoins. The amount of electricity this uses globally is equivalent to all the electricity used by Ireland.
Wired has an excellent guide to bitcoins and cryptocurrencies which you can read by following this link. Next week this blog will explore the reasons behind calls for an intense regulatory regime for cryptocurrencies and some of the reasons why some investors won’t touch them with a ten foot pole.