Week 15

 Update for Cannabis Industry between February 23rd and February 27th.

There were no major M&A activities in past week for the Canadian market besides BC Supreme Court approving the acquisition of MTL Cannabis by Canopy Growth Corporation.

So I decided to look more into Canadian market as there were some new data that came out on Statistics Canada. 

With December being completed, we can finally see the revenue distribution for 2025 per province.

Not surprisingly but we can see that Ontario is the biggest player as always. At the same time, it seems that the top 3 provinces which are Ontario, Quebec and Alberta keep growing their market share slightly in Canada. I believe it is due to restrictions that other provinces have towards the cannabis industry. 

It is also important to note that the biggest players in Canadian market have a way higher population than other provinces, which also impacts the results. 

To better compare it, we could use the total number of authorized cannabis stores in each province and compare them on those basis.

I have found the following statistics as displayed in the image:

We can see that number wise, Ontario opened about 80 additional stores, followed by Alberta with 38 additional locations. Meanwhile Manitoba had opened 24 locations and Quebec only 8 locations.

If we compared percentage wise, New Brunswick's locations grew by 22.5%, meanwhile for Manitoba it represents almost a 12% growth, which is quiet important.

Overall, provinces have opened an additional 177 locations which is an overall increase of 5%. Meanwhile, sales have grown by 4%.

Is the growth followed by sales?

We can say that, even though I believe that more stores do not necessarily lead to more sales. From a business perspective, we should focus on opening fewer stores to ensure that sales outperform store locations, especially when considering inflation. Essentially, we can conclude that cannabis sales have not increased, even as we open more stores.

So, how much each stores on average roughly generates per province?

From this data that I gathered around the internet, here is what I have concluded for now:

• Newfoundland and Labrador: $1,864.10

• Prince Edward Island: $5,584.60

• Nova Scotia: $2,697.22

• New Brunswick: $1,992.14

• Quebec: $6,958.25

• Ontario: $1,230.76

• Manitoba: $1,071.13

• Saskatchewan: $1,092.24

• Alberta: $1,329.72

• British Columbia: $1,471.26

• Yukon: $2,641.67

As we can see, Quebec leads the pack with an impressive sales per store of nearly 7 million dollars, while Prince Edward Island comes in at 5.5 million dollars. Surprisingly, Ontario averages only 1.2 million dollars per store, which is likely skewed by the presence of many small mom-and-pop shops.

To conclude, I believe it is fair to say that the cannabis industry in the Canadian market has reached a level of maturity for now, as a 4% increase is not significant. Meanwhile, it would be very interesting to analyze how international sales and wholesale growth compare to the local industry.