High Tide Inc. (NASDAQ:HITI) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Matt Bottomley: Yes. Good afternoon. Raj, just wondering if you could expand a little more on your outlook with respect to just the retail landscape. I understand the element of potential closures on some of these five-year leases coming up. But maybe just on the top part of that assessment in terms of just the overall ability for the market TAM, regardless of how it’s allocated between stores. Its ability to continue to grow, it seems like it’s been – it’s growing still, but sort of stuck in the $4 billion to $5 billion opportunity set for a while now. And I imagine there needs to be a lot of right changes up from the federal government first and foremost. But just curious on where you see the overall TAM going in the next year or so and what needs to change in order to re-accelerate that?

Raj Grover: Hi, Matt. Thank you for your question. So Matt, you’re absolutely right that a lot of the brick-and-mortar landscape here has been shaking up and many of these leases that are coming at this five-year anniversary because most of these were signed upon legalization, they may not be renewed. We are hoping that many of these are not going to be renewed, and some of these foregone sales will disproportionately come back to us. Because we have the best brand in the country, we continue to increase our same-store sales growth. And a lot of the reasoning behind the increase in our same-store sales growth is a lot of the neighboring stores around us, they just cannot keep up with us in terms of competing with us and a lot of these dollars are already flowing back to us.

So now when you have the double whamming of these leases not getting renewed, I think our same-store sales growth will continue to increase. Now, mind you, our same-store sales growth is naturally slowing down after seven straight quarters of meaningful gains. But we anticipate continued same-store sales growth although not in double digits anymore. And also the second point that I’d like to highlight that the market still remains strong in Canada. March data from statistics Canada showed total retail sales in Canada, excluding Quebec was up 12% year-over-year. And our goal is to have our same-store sales growth consistently exceed industry growth over the long-term.

Matt Bottomley: Appreciate that. And more on the – maybe on the macro front. So if we look at, call it a $4.5 billion to $5 billion opportunity set. Now what is it that needs to change? Whether it’s regulations or otherwise in order to get to what historically, some of the estimates might have been $7 billion to $9 billion of an overall cannabis opportunity six, seven years out from legalization. And we’re not there yet, but we’re sort of inching along. And I’m just curious if there’s anything you think is meaningful in order to see the overall TAM expand for the [indiscernible] today?

Raj Grover: Yes. So look, Matt, it’s no secret that illicit market in Canada has remained strong, although fortunately it has been coming down at a rapid pace, but it’s still quite a big chunk of the market. I would still put it at around 20% to 25% of all retail sales going to the illicit market. Now that’s a massive number. You take $5 billion where we currently stand today, you could potentially go to $6 billion, $6.5 billion, if we could get that share back from the illicit market. Now it’s happening, it’s not happening fast enough for my liking and I believe other operators in the industry. But it’s heading in the right direction. So I am positive over the next two to three years that industry sales will continue to expand.