John SchroyerExecutives with The Cannabist Company Holdings Inc. (Cboe CA: CBST) (OTCQX: CBSTF) during the company’s quarterly earnings call said they’re about halfway through a “turnaround” plan to make the company profitable, but didn’t mention the financial filing this week which reported a $205 million net loss for the business last year.
“We are currently at the midpoint of our eight-quarter restructuring plan,” CEO David Hart said during the call. “We continue to operate in a challenging environment with uncertainty of timing of rescheduling, ongoing pricing pressures in key markets, and challenged liquidity across the sector.”
But, Hart emphasized, demand for legal cannabis continues to grow, and industrywide sales are up 9% year-over-year, as more states legalize medical or recreational marijuana.
“Despite the uncertainty at the federal level, this industry is here to stay,” Hart said.
The Cannabist, however, has been deliberately pulling back on its national industry footprint to “right-size” the business, Hart said. That’s included divesting from Arizona, Florida, Utah and parts of Virginia, he said, and closing “underperforming assets” in Colorado, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.
At the end of 2024, The Cannabist had shrunk its cannabis retail footprint to 59 dispensaries, down from 73 at the end of the third quarter last year and down from 86 the prior year. The Cannabist has already closed three more shops this year, leaving it with 56 dispensaries, Hart said.
Not only that, but The Cannabist has been busy cutting staff as well. The company shrank its headcount by roughly 20% last year, Hart said, which saved the business about $23 million.
“Liquidity management remains of paramount importance and is a central focus for 2025,” he said.
To that end, CFO Derek Watson noted that The Cannabist filed an amended tax return with the Internal Revenue Service to claim exemption from 280E for the 2020 tax year, through which it expects to receive a refund of $5 million from the IRS. He also said the company is likely to file more amended returns in coming years for additional tax refunds.
The tax strategy was pioneered last year by Trulieve Cannabis Corp. and has since been adopted by several other multistate operators in the cannabis trade.
The closest that anyone on the earnings call came to mentioning the nine-figure net loss from 2024 was when Watson said The Cannabist expects “continued noise in our results until divestitures are fully complete” and until other new markets are fully operational, such as recreational marijuana sales launching in Delaware and The Cannabist getting permission from regulators to start adult-use sales at its dispensary in New Jersey.
Otherwise, everything seemed rosy to Hart and company.
“While we are not yet finished with the turnaround, we are (a) very different company today,” Hart said at the outset of the call. “As a result of these efforts, adjusted EBITDA on an apples-to-apples basis for the 12 remaining markets was essentially flat year-over-year, despite the challenging pricing environment.”
