The Cannabis Bull is Back

If you’ve been wondering whatever happened to the cannabis revolution, here’s good news.

After the market rout that shook out weak companies, the industry is coming back stronger than ever. 

The North American Marijuana Index is up 118% over the three months since mid-March.

In the same three months, individual stocks are up as much as 176%…252%…and 456%.¹

• More and more states and countries are legalizing cannabis.
• More and more consumers are trying it.
• More and more companies are introducing cannabis-based edibles…beverages…health and wellness products…and pharmaceutical drugs.

Which is why analysts are forecasting the legal cannabis market will soar to a whopping $194 billion by 2025.²

That’s not the far-fetched fantasy of some fly-by-night fortuneteller either. It’s the careful analysis of the starchy 203-year old multinational investment bank, Bank of Montreal (NYSE: BMO).

With the global cannabis market valued at just over $15 billion today, the path to $194 billion gives companies and their investors a lot of room to run.³

But there is a problem that’s holding back companies large and small, from mega-billion dollar producers to single-state operators.

And without a solution, it could hold back the promise of a $194 billion market revolution.

A problem that costs growers $2.3 billion a year

The truth is…

The cannabis revolution will never reach its full potential until the industry sheds the primitive practices that are a holdover from the days when cannabis was grown by hippies in hidden plots cleared from the backwoods.

Surprisingly, many cannabis producers still rely on a cultivation method that dates back not only to the hippies, but thousands of years earlier: planting a seed and hoping it will grow.⁴

More progressive growers have adopted a technique almost as old: cloning, which is simply taking a cutting and planting it in a growing medium.

But neither way is foolproof.

The sad fact is that cannabis crop failure is a widespread and very costly problem, whether grown by seed or clone.

Industry journal Greenhouse Grower reported that “the 2018 and 2019 [cannabis] seasons were plagued by crop failures associated with unpredictable seed and stock.”⁵

Crops planted in seed failed to sprout. Crops planted in clones were plowed under when they tested too high in pesticides.⁶

In Southern Oregon, growers lost from 30% to 100% of their crops.⁷

In 2019, just in the CBD segment of the cannabis market alone, roughly half of the crops failed.⁸

That amounts to a loss with a market value of around $2.3 billion.⁹

As a result, nearly every market has suffered significant supply shortages:

• Michigan suffered a supply shortage so severe that dispensaries were forced to close.¹⁰
• The supply shortage is so severe in Illinois that it could last into 2021, industry analysts warn.¹¹
• In Washington, a supply shortage caused wholesale prices to shoot up 143%.¹²
• In late 2019, Colorado’s largest grower lost half its crops, causing a shortage in an already scarce supply.¹³
• In Florida, growers have not been able to keep up with consumer demand.¹⁴
• Canada has seen persistent supply problems caused by crops lost to pests, mildew, mold, and other plant diseases.¹⁵

Now one little-known biotech company is introducing advanced solutions that could transform the entire cannabis industry.

Growers thought that clones would solve the problem

Clones are plants that are grown from cuttings clipped from a “mother” plant. This is supposed to ensure that the new plants have all the same characteristics as the mother plant, including hardiness, yield, and chemical content.

Plants grown from clones also reach maturity faster than those from seeds, allowing producers to maximize output and reduce labor.

That’s why many cannabis growers switched to cloning, hoping to eliminate their massive crop failures.

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened.

Clones are prone to “genetic drift,” which is the corruption of a plant’s genetics over successive generations. This can result in cannabis plants that contain lower potency, less disease resistance, or loss of hardiness.¹⁶

The online cannabis advisory Cannabis Tech says, “As any farmer will tell you, clones are prone to disease, pests, and infections.”¹⁷

And because cloned starter plants lack a strong taproot, they can be both smaller and weaker than other plants. That failure left growers with the same costly problems they hoped clones would solve.

Solving the #1 problem in the cannabis industry

Now one undervalued company has developed a revolutionary technology that puts the cannabis industry on the leading edge of agricultural science.

The technology gives growers almost total control over plant genetics, and can dramatically increase plant consistency, quality, and yield.

When the technology is deployed to the growers who are responsible for producing billions of dollars worth of cannabis, the industry could potentially:

• See total crop yields explode ten-fold
• Achieve CBD levels 27 times higher
• Eliminate costly crop failures caused by undesired plant traits, pathogens, or weak stock

The technology is an advanced form of “tissue culture” plant propagation that marks a new era in agricultural science.

Tissue culture is a method of plant propagation that uses as few as several cells of a selected plant to create literally thousands of identical plants.

The Washington Post calls tissue culture a “revolutionizing achievement.”¹⁸

There are tremendous advantages of tissue culture propagation over cloning or seed:

• Tissue culture propagation generates far more new plants from one mother plant than traditional cloning.
• Tissue culture propagation requires a fraction of the laboratory space as cloning.
• Plants grown from tissue culture are more genetically uniform, and maintain exact desired plant characteristics.
• Plants grown from tissue culture are more vigorous and productive, free of pests and diseases.
• Tissue culture propagation leads to higher yields, lower production cost per pound, and higher profit margins.

And not only is this junior bringing a much-needed propagation biotechnology to cannabis, they are improving it even beyond current science.

10 times higher crop yield using this advanced biotechnology

Standard tissue culture propagation involves four stages:

1. Initiation, 2) multiplication, 3) rooting and 4) hardening.

The entire process can take up to three weeks before the cultures mature to planting stage.

By combining two of those stages into one, it can result in dramatically lower production time and cost.

This proprietary process was developed by the renowned Dr. Fawzia Afreen.

With a PhD in botany, Dr. Afreen  is widely recognized as a pioneer in advanced tissue culture technology.

She holds three international patents for tissue culture propagation and metabolic engineering of plants to achieve rapid maturity.

Using Dr. Afreen’s breakthrough biotechnology, this company can propagate cannabis starter plants that have the potential to increase crop yield by up to ten times more, acre for acre, than standard methods currently achieve.

Higher profits and higher yields can be generated for example from 10 acres with than from farming 1,000 acres using standard cannabis from seed.¹⁹ 

The proof is in a revolutionary new tissue culture-generated proprietary cannabis strain called CBD Dana.

The plants have been deployed on a number of test farms throughout Canada, and have achieved remarkable growth, health, and yield.

Cannabis biotech complex to be industry’s most advanced plant laboratory

Altogether, tissue culture biotechnology has a wealth of advantages for growers, including speed to harvest, plant health, lower footprint, higher yield, and secure genetics

• Less time for plants to root
• Healthier plants
• Faster growth to maturity
• Requires less space for propagation facility
• Better plant reliability
• Disease-free starter plants
• Disease resistance during growth
• Precise duplication of desired plant genetics
• Greater per-acre yield
• Propagation tissue can be stored longer and in a smaller area

The company is currently commencing construction of a 63,000 square foot cannabis biotech complex that is expected to supply the industry with more than 10 million tissue-cultured starter plants per year.²⁰

The facility is designed as a medical-grade, state-of-the-art laboratory that will allow almost complete control over plant genetics.

This ensures that all plants will consistently feature superior genetic traits, better disease resistance, and faster time to maturity than the current industry standards.

Tissue culture technology could help stabilize the cannabis industry

The cannabis industry will never reach its $194 billion promise until it solves the production problems that are devastating growers.

Over the past few years, growers could not produce either the quantity or the quality cannabis they had promised to their suppliers. Rumors spread that the world’s biggest cannabis producer suffered a complete crop failure.

And they weren’t alone.

On the other side of the country, Northeastern producers lost nearly their entire crop investment after finding that the starter stock they purchased and grew to maturity produced only a small fraction of the CBD content that was promised.²¹

And in Hawaii, more than half the crops cultivated had to be destroyed due to THC levels above federal limits.²²

A January 2020 report from the Arizona Department of Agriculture’s Plant Services Division found that 41% of the state’s cannabis crops tested higher than the legal limits of THC.²³

The consequences are severe. Every plant testing above legal limits must be destroyed, resulting in millions of dollars in losses.

More than just about any other commercial crop, cannabis must be produced to exacting quality standards.

If a cannabis plant is too low in THC, it is unusable.

If a cannabis plant is too high in THC, it is unusable.

In November 2019, federal agents seized 10 million cannabis plants from one California producer, after the field tested too high on THC, causing a loss of about $1 billion in product.²⁴

That means a loss of $2.3 billion in market value in that single market segment.

This company’s biotech propagation innovation could prevent many of the problems that led to those and other ongoing quality and supply issues, helping to stabilize the entire industry.

Not the least because the company’s tissue culture innovation can potentially lead to crops that are many times more productive and profitable than with any other method today.

Year one revenue could top $78 million

At their anticipated production level, this junior could capture just over a 6% share of market, which is a very reasonable expectation.²⁵

The cannabis biotech complex is expected to be completed and production-ready by July 2021. At production of a million starters per month, and assuming a premium price of around $6.50 per plant wholesale, they could reach revenue of just over $78 million in their first full year of production.

Currently trading at around $0.049, that gives the stock a tremendous way to run as the company ramps up to $78 million in the next 30 months till they reach full production.

At this price they are an attractive target, giving potential investors yet one more reason to look closely at this dynamic company in the new cannabis bull market.  Sign up to receive more information about this innovative young company that is poised to take the lead.