![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() That year, Aurora sold 51,441 kilograms (56.7 tons) of cannabis – only one-third of t he 152,740 kilograms of marijuana it grew that year.Īnd among those 11 sites, only four are in use today. In early 2020 – before Martin was CEO – an investor presentation boasted that the company’s cultivation capacity was 150,000 kilograms per year, spanning 11 sites in three countries. The transformation’s initial phase involved fixing the company’s supply-demand imbalance. In a previous interview with MJBizDaily, Martin described the circumstances leading up to that point as a greenhouse “arms race.” The company was doing so in costly greenhouses scattered across many countries. In other words, Aurora, like most of Canada’s large cannabis producers at the time, was growing far more cannabis than it could sell. When Aurora announced its corporate overhaul in February 2020, a news release described the need to “significantly reduce the company’s expense base, rationalize capital expenditures, and better align its balance sheet with current market conditions.” “But going through that in 2020, as opposed to going through that in 2022 – whether it’s the capital markets, whether it’s the Canadian rec market – I’m just so glad we got it taken care of earlier, because right now it’d be a real challenge.” “There were a lot of tough things in the midst of all that downsizing,” Martin told MJBizDaily. 9, 2023, Aurora announced it had completed the transformation. 8, 2020, the company reported a net loss of CA$3.3 billion for its 2020 fiscal year – one of the largest ever in the cannabis industry.īy then, Aurora was already six months into the first phase of its own “transformation” plan, initiated by then-interim CEO Michael Singer. Two weeks after Martin took over as Aurora’s CEO on Sept. Prompting the downsizing were ballooning losses: Canopy has lost CA$2.6 billion in its current fiscal year – which ends in March – and there’s still another quarter to go. ![]() It’s unclear where Canopy’s top executives will work after the facility is closed in approximately five months. The company also was cutting more than a third of its workforce, or about 800 positions. The Ontario-based LP disclosed it was closing its flagship – and symbolically meaningful – cultivation facility in an old chocolate factory at 1 Hershey Drive in Smiths Falls. While Aurora had exited its “transformation,” Canopy announced it was embarking on its own. On that same day, the atmosphere at rival Canopy Growth was markedly different. The company had just posted a modest but positive adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) worth 1.4 million Canadian dollars ($1 million) in its second fiscal quarter of the year.Īurora also marked the completion of a painful transformation program it had begun three years earlier. 9: It was a day of contrast for two companies considered bellwethers in the early years of Canada’s adult-use cannabis industry.Īurora employees attended a virtual town hall meeting to mark a milestone of sorts. And I know rec was a maybe, coulda, woulda, shoulda, but I knew we were hemorrhaging cash on rec, and we didn’t see it getting better,” Aurora CEO Miguel Martin told MJBizDaily in a phone interview.Īurora, though still not profitable, appears to be tracking in the right direction.Ĭonsider Feb. The Edmonton, Alberta-based licensed producer zigged when everyone else zagged, putting the company in the enviable position of having far fewer competitors, a healthy balance sheet and organic growth in overseas medical markets. It’s working, and it could offer lessons to other CEOs and top executives. ![]()
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