Cannabis: Pinchme hoping for better reviews with US pot marketing deal

Pinchme (ASX:PIN), a company that matches businesses with individuals who write reviews for free stuff, has snagged Canopy Growth as a client.

Canadian business Canopy Growth is the world’s biggest cannabis company.

In doing so Pinchme has lost a director, Wal Pisciotta, who said other obligations forbid him from being involved in any company that operates in the cannabis space. Pisciotta is the founding chairman of Carsales.com.

Pinchme has a 12-month contract with Canopy Growth, which is using it to launch a range of hemp-derived cannabidiol (CBD) products into the US market as a way around advertising restrictions that prohibit social media or online marketing.

It’s not clear how much the contract is worth, but the company said the first order was negligible in terms of revenue.

Pinchme said it was hard to say how much “total revenue” for the contract would be because it depended on future orders.

ASX investors not giving good reviews

US-based Pinchme has struggled to convince Australian investors since it listed in late 2018 that sending free samples in exchange for customer details and a review is a good bet.

It came under fire from the ASX this time last year for not naming a ‘secret’ new customer, and was forced say the customer was in fact Nestle, which had already been named in Pinchme’s prospectus just months earlier.

The company was required to issue a supplementary prospectus including information that CEO Jeremy Reid, former Young Rich Lister and hedge funder, received a two-year ban in 2013 for providing financial advice.

ASIC found that during the global financial crisis, he’d ensured redemption requests in 2008 to his hedge fund Everest Financial from himself and his family were accepted before other members’.

And although the company has slashed its cash burn and even had a single cash-positive quarter, cash receipts were down to $1.8m in the September quarter, a dip from the $2m-plus it was making in all of the quarters since listing in October 2018.

At the time of listing it was also paying the three non-executive directors, the CEO, president and CFO a total of $US1.4m ($2m).

The company did not include a remuneration report with its full year accounts last year, but did make a loss of $US4.7m in calendar 2018.

In other ASX cannabis news:

Ecofibre’s (ASX:EOF) December quarter receipts fell 17 per cent from the prior quarter due to a higher balance of receivables as a result of the increased use of distributors. However, full year profit guidance of $6m is on track.

Stemcell United (ASX:SCU) shares doubled this week from 1c to 2c, but the company does not know why. It was pushed into a trading suspension however, before it was able to return an answer (“we know nothing”) the ASX could live with.