iAnthus Capital Holdings Inc (CSE: IAN) announced their quarterly financial results as well as their post-earnings conference call on Tuesday. These figures, which represented both Q4 and the full year unaudited 2018 financial results, saw strong revenue gains as the company reported an impressive pro forma revenue of $14.8 million this quarter, or $49.3 million throughout fiscal 2018.
The company is known for owning a variety of operations spread across 11 states in the United States. While these figures were impressive in and of themselves, iAnthus ended up operating at a net loss of $62 million across fiscal 2018, although around $44.1 million of this was from non-cash charges.
“The iAnthus team was busy in 2018 putting in place the foundation for rapid growth going forward. We made significant investments in expanding our footprint and scaling our operations, while maintaining a prudent balance sheet in the process. Our operational momentum is strong. We opened eight dispensaries in the past seven months, including flagship stores in West Palm Beach, FL and Brooklyn, NY, and plan to nearly double the pace of openings throughout the remainder of 2019,” said iAnthus CEO Hadley Ford. “We are now revenue generating in nine of eleven states and ramping quickly. Managing growth is challenging, particularly in an emerging industry. Fortunately, we have also built an impressive operating team that combines cannabis expertise with crucial professional skillsets from outside the industry. With the foundation we have built in 2018, both organically and through the acquisition of MPX, iAnthus is poised for a transformative 2019.”
The news announcement was followed by a conference call where the company revealed several tidbits interesting to investors. Most significantly, management went on to say that they expected themselves to become a $30 billion dollar company in the years to come with a stock price of around $100.
iAnthus also announced today that they had agreed to acquire a nationally recognized CBD product brand “CBD For Life,” which are available in over 750 retail stores across the country. “Developing a strong CBD strategy is mission critical for cannabis companies to compete on a national scale while simultaneously entering the consumer product and retail marketplace,” added Ford. “With the acquisition of a name brand like CBD For Life, iAnthus is well positioned to increase our market share with greater exposure to patients and customers across the country.”
While the addition of 750 retail locations from CBD For Life’s seems paltry in comparison to some of the larger retail announcements recently made in the cannabis sector, it does put iAnthus into the retail game as some analysts expect they will try to entice CBD-interested conglomerates to partner with them. Overall, this acquisition cost iAnthus around $13.7 million, a relatively small figure for the number of retail stores the CBD For Life brands operates in.
Overall, this announcement was a relatively benign event for the company’s stock price, especially since these figures didn’t include the results from iAnthus’ recent MPX acquisition, which likely would have changed these figures for the better. In response to the news, shares were relatively unfazed, inching up only 2 percent.
