Canadian cannabis company The Green Organic Dutchman (TGODF) reported fiscal Q1 2019 earnings late Tuesday. It’s Friday now and, if this is the first you’ve heard of the news — don’t be surprised. “TGOD” didn’t exactly make a lot of headlines with its earnings news, and investors mostly slept through the report.
TGOD stock was up a mere 1.4% on Wednesday after the report … flatlined on Thursday, and today it’s slightly higher — no change at all.
Why so little fanfare? After all, didn’t TGOD grow its sales 28% year over year in Q1?
Well, yes, it did. However, even that strong growth rate still left TGOD selling little more than a corporate-scale dime bag of product for the quarter — $2.4 million, to be precise. And TGOD didn’t even make a profit on the transaction. To the contrary, TGOD reported a $14.1 million net loss in Q1, “as it continues its preparation for commercial production and entry into the recreational market later this year,” said management.
So how did Wall Street analysts react to the report? Well, let’s see here. Seaport Global’s Brett Hundley, which has taken a keen interest in Canadian pot stocks of late, opined that TDOG’s miniscule sales were at least “in line with expectations for Q1,” while the company’s “EBITDA loss … was slightly worse than anticipated.”
“No matter,” though, said Hundley (his words, not ours). Because in the analyst’s view, “reported results are largely immaterial and much of the forward focus for this company remains on the potential for forward commercialization and consumer adoption.”
Hundley, it seems, is viewing TGOD not so much as a business (which is, you know, supposed to make sales and earn profit) as his is seeing the company as a story stock — which only really needs to tell a compelling tale to attract investor interest. And in this regard, the analyst sees TGOD as succeeding:
- TGOD “remains on track for its build-out of facilities.” (Translation: It hasn’t built a lot of facilities yet).
- And TGOD “intends to enter the Canadian adult-use market in ON and BC during Q4, before expanding nationally in 2020.” (Translation: It hasn’t yet managed to break into the Canadian adult-use market — nationally or otherwise).
- Perhaps most tellingly of all, Hundley notes that of the $2.4 million in sales TGOD did make during the quarter, these sales were “primarily derived from the company’s HemPoland subsidiary, consistent with Q4.”
And if you recall, TGOD bought HemPoland last August, so most of the sales the company made… came from another company that it bought.
If all of the above has you wondering what it is, exactly, that Hundley sees in TGOD that merits a “buy” rating (and the analyst does indeed recommend buying TGOD stock), well, you’re not alone. A lot of investors yesterday and the day before seem to have wondered the same thing. That being said, there is one small factor to consider that may shed a ray of hope for TGOD bulls.
To wit, TGOD operates in the high-margin “organic” segment of the marijuana market, and Hundley says it’s been successful selling organic marijuana flower for as much as $12 a gram (and other pot companies have gotten even better prices). Considering that TGOD eventually hopes to produce organic marijuana for as little as $1 a gram, that seems to offer a lot of room for robust profit margins.
Whether those margins will ever be robust enough to justify TGOD’s current valuation of 247 times sales, of course, remains to be seen.
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