Weed Week: Have you been keeping up with the cannabis companies?

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The average cost of a cannabis script in Australia is $415, up over 11 per cent on the last six months.

That’s because although prices are coming down, the size of the doses people having increased by 11mg a day, says a report by Fresh Leaf.

Australia investing app Stake says Gen Ys (a.k.a millennials) are investing in US pot stocks you may not have heard of. The top pick is Aurora Cannabis, followed by Hexo Corp, Cara Therapeutics, Corbus Pharmaceuticals, and Innovative Industrial Properties.

Still in stocks but moving to China, hemp stocks in that country plunged and hit the 10 per cent movement cap last week after a surge in speculative buying. Marijuana is illegal in China but industrial hemp is not.

On Tuesday, the SAFE Banking Act in the US moved to the House of Representatives. This Act is seeking to allow legal cannabis businesses to access financial institutions and regular merchant banking services.

As the industry is still federally illegal, banks have refused to service businesses in the space.

And sorry guys, but one of the first blows to the increasingly idealised “entourage effect” has come from the Lambert Institute: six important terpenes in marijuana have no effect on the way two key cannabinoid receptors in the body react to THC.

The entourage effect is the idea that a medicine that uses all of the elements in a plant, rather than a refined extract of one, will be more beneficial. This research suggests there isn’t as much, or any, cumulative effect when it comes to how marijuana works inside the body.

Keeping up with the cannabis companies

Ecofibre (ASX:EOF) did as everyone expected and hit the ASX with a stag profit of 61 per cent.

As the ASX’s first cannabis listing of the year and bringing with it actual revenue — increasingly a prerequisite for jaded pot investors — it’s unsurprising Ecofibre took off as it did.

Women, says Elixinol (ASX:EXL) managing director Linda McLeod, are naturally drawn to cannabis.

It’s a generational thing — younger people are keen on cannabis — and that’s where McLeod is seeing more of an even gender spread on boards and in management.

The company is still making lots of money, as we covered in their preliminary results, and as the annual report issued in late March shows it’s remunerating the board and management handsomely too. Total pay and benefits rose from about $525,000 in 2017 to $2.2m in 2018.

Lifespot Health (ASX:LSH) is also paying around the half a million mark for its board, but it also only took $377,308 in revenue, as compared to Elixinol’s $37m.

And THC Global (ASX:THC) is paying its directors and management a pittance — which is good, because there are eight directors and six senior managers.

The company took $2.7m in revenue and paid out $850,000 in salaries. It’s not doing it for love or kindness though as the remainder is being made up in stock, $1.5m worth in 2018.

eSense (ASX:ESE) unleashed its accounts which show 12 months of revenue totalling $27,000. The full year loss was $2.2m, slightly more than the cash it has. It’s unclear how much of the $2.3m in spending is going on directors, because it didn’t include a remuneration report.

Not a week went by in March without Croplogic (ASX:CLI) hyping something about its Oregon hemp trial. This time it was talking about how the trial will use its agronomics software and will serve as an example for how it will service the $22bn US hemp market.

As we’ve pointed out before, they clearly have very, very high expectations for this trial.

Cann Global (ASX:CGB) put out its 13th supplementary prospectus saying it’s not coming back onto the ASX, surprise surprise, until April 30.

*Affinity Energy (ASX:AEB) and Cann Global, formerly Queensland Bauxite, have both been suspended for months.

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