Aurora Cannabis Inc. (NASDAQ:ACB) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Miguel Martin: Welcome, Andrew. And I think I’m going to start with your last question first, and then absolutely not, we are strong believers in global cannabis as a macro movement and strong believers that medical cannabis in a regulated, reimbursed, compliant manner is going to be the first mover of all of that. And we are one of the leaders, if not, been leaders in that globally. So clearly, the valuation and where we see ourselves we don’t think is representative of that opportunity. But we don’t have complete control over that. The medical business that was built in Canada and now is finding its way all across the globe in key markets is wonderfully portable, wonderfully defensible and has extremely high margins, as I’ve talked about.

And as we see new markets coming on, like Australia and Switzerland and Austria, those are tremendous opportunities that only a small subset of companies will take advantage of, and how people value that. So the genetics piece and the science piece has been sort of sitting there on the side all along and with having what may be one of the largest cannabis genetic libraries and what may be sort of possessing some of the most important IP around bio synthetics and others, there’s going to be value in that, particularly as you get into clinical research and more value. And we’ll have to see, but I clearly think our value overall. Now the rec piece, can you make money in rec as a standalone is sort of a tough question, because we see so many efficiencies and learnings and having both and it would be an easy sort of answer to say, Well, why don’t you just get out of rec and focus on medical, which is really a strength for us?

What you’re starting to see that when you’re in a market and you have both, there are significant advantages. And we see that with product lines, we see that with innovation, we see that with production. And I think really importantly, you will see that in Germany, and we’re very bullish on not only the opportunities in the progression of medical, but also in rec and having that key learning facility and others and being able to be there at the beginning in medical, and then transition in rec will offer significant advantages. And so I get it’s easy to sort of take the pieces of the business and compare medical and rec, but for us, particularly as the manufacturer, working with science and genetics, we see significant efficiencies and advantages in being in bulk, even if we’re not going to be a market leader in every market, say in rec where we would be in medical.

Operator: And our next question comes from the line of Pablo Zuanic with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please proceed with your question.

Matthew Baker: This is Matthew Baker on for Pablo. Thank you for taking our questions. I have a two part question. Firstly, what explains the stickiness of your market share in the Canadian medical market? And then on the other hand, why is your medical market share in Germany so much less sticky? And then as a follow-up, what are your latest thoughts of when German rec sales will begin? And do you still think imports will not be allowed? Thank you.