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People are buying marijuana products, but opting for lower-priced options, Green Thumb’s CEO says.
Dreamstime
One place consumers can find refuge from inflation is the cannabis dispensary.
“The cannabis industry isn’t experiencing inflation,”
Green Thumb Industries
chief Ben Kovler told Barron’s after the marijuana vendor reported earnings Wednesday. “It is experiencing price compression.”
Green Thumb (ticker: GTBIF) is the first of the multistate cannabis operators to report. Like other state-licensed operations, the 74-store chain is seeing consumers shift their purchases toward lower-priced products. So while Green Thumb’s June quarter revenue rose 5% sequentially and 15% year over year, gross margins narrowed to 50% of sales in June, compared with 55% in the year-ago quarter.
Disciplined spending allowed Green Thumb to continue as one of the few multistate operators that reports net income. The company earned $24 million, or 10 cents a share, compared with $22 million and 10 cents in June 2021.
The federal illegality…