Green Thumb Industries Inc. navigated a more uncertain economic environment and managed to beat Wall Street estimates with its eighth quarterly profit in a row.
The cannabis company active in 14 U.S. states said late Wednesday it earned $24.44 million, or 10 cents a share in its fiscal second quarter, up from $22.05 million, or 10 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter.
Revenue rose 14.6% to $254.31 million from $221.87 million. The company’s revenue grew 5% over the first quarter.
Green Thumb beat the Wall Street earnings target of 4 cents a share and the revenue estimate of $248.9 million, according to FactSet estimates.
The U.S.-listed shares of Green Thumb Industries
GTBIF,
GTII,
rose 2.8% in morning trading Thursday.
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“The U.S. cannabis consumer remains strong” despite economic headwinds, Green Thumb CEO Ben Kovler told MarketWatch.
The three months ended June 30 marked the largest quarter in U.S. history with about $6.6 billion in legal cannabis sales.
Green Thumb’s results were helped by adult-use sales in New Jersey, which continues to ramp up.
Looking ahead, Green Thumb expects a boost to results in late 2022 from adult-use sales in Rhode Island, and potentially Connecticut.
New York adult-use sales will likely take longer than expected, Kovler said.
It’s difficult to predict when the New York market will turn on for Green Thumb, but the company is projecting some time in 2023, he said.
“You have a lot of enthusiasm when these programs are introduced but then the regulations come out and it takes longer than expected to implement,” Kovler said.
New York also faces a health threat from illegal cannabis sales all over New York City and other areas, he said. The cannabis and edibles being sold have not been tested. Kovler compared the product to offerings of bathtub gin or illegal moonshine.
Green Thumb is working on completing a grow facility at a former prison in Warwick, N.Y., for the Empire State market.
Cowen analyst Vivien Azer on Thursday reiterated the outperform rating on Green Thumb Industries, but cut her price target to $20 a share from $45.
Despite the “healthy” quarter, she lowered the company’s price target to about 4.2 times her fiscal 2022 sales estimate of $1.2 billion.
The price target also “contemplates a lack of regulatory catalysts coupled with macro headwinds,” Azer said.
Alliance Global Partners analyst Aaron Grey reiterated a buy rating on Green Thumb and lowered his target on the company’s Canada-listed shares to C$25 ($19.44) from C$40.
“Amid a challenging competitive backdrop with pricing pressure, a difficult capital markets environment, and structural hurdles due to illegality, we view GTI as among the best positioned to weather the storm given its strong balance sheet, focus on premium via indoor growing, as well as positive operating cash flow,” Grey said in a research note.
Prior to Thursday’s trades, shares of Green Thumb Industries were down 56.2% in 2022, compared with a drop of 54.1% by the AdvisorShares Pure US Cannabis ETF
MSOS,
and a loss of 19% by the Nasdaq Composite Index
COMP,
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