While cannabis stocks across the board suffered on Friday as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) held their hearing on the use of CBD as an ingredient, there was a major announcement that slipped under quite a few peoples radars.
Aurora Cannabis (NYSE: ACB) had a piece of good news with two well-known billionaire investors having bought shares of the Canadian-marijuana giant.
According to an article by Yahoo Finance, a recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing revealed that investment firms Renaissance Technologies and Citadel Advisors, which are run by multi-billionaires James Simon and Ken Griffin, bought a number of Aurora shares in the first quarter of 2019. Worth $12 billion and $21 billion respectively, Simon and Griffin join other well-known billionaires who have gotten involved in the company in one way or another, such as Nelson Peltz.
Griffin’s Citadel Advisors bought around $11.2 million worth of Aurora stock, while also buying 1.4 million shares of call options, significantly upping its bet in the company from the previous quarter.
Simon’s Renaissance Technologies had no prior position in Aurora, so Q1 was the first time it bought into the stock with $7.1 million worth of purchases. Aurora also is the only cannabis stock in the firm’s portfolio.
Aurora already has been a popular stock, with recent data indicating it was the most widely owned stock among millennial’s, beating out previous companies like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL).
At the same time, Wall Street’s top cannabis analyst, Vivien Azer, picked Aurora as the best pot stock in the entire market, edging out it’s closest competitor, Canopy Growth Corp (NYSE: CGC). One of those reasons comes down to Aurora’s industry-leading production capacity in a time when companies are struggling to find reliable sources of high-quality cannabis.
While this was a great piece of news for Aurora, there was no way that it could overpower the downward trend seen on Friday as stocks worried about the FDA’s hearing on CBD.
Shares of Aurora fell by almost five percent on Friday, which was the largest single-day drop for the company in the month of May. Other cannabis giants weren’t spared either, with Canopy Growth Corp) dropping 4.34 percent, Tilray (NASDAQ: TLRY) dropping 2.85 percent and Aphria (NYSE: APHA) falling 4.29 percent as examples.
Regardless of the decline, things have never been better for the cannabis company, with shares having risen around 70 percent so far in the year, despite having a valuation smaller than some of its other rivals. Few other companies are as well as regarded in the cannabis space as Aurora.
Aurora Cannabis Company Profile
Aurora Cannabis Inc is a Canada-based company engaged in the production and distribution of medical cannabis. The Company is vertically integrated and horizontally diversified across every key segment of the value chain from facility engineering and design to cannabis breeding and retail distribution.
The Company’s purpose-built facilities which integrate technologies across all processes are defined by automation and customization. The Company has a funded capacity of more than 625,000 kilograms per year as well as sales and operations in 24 countries worldwide. – Warrior Trading News
