Cronos Group (CRON) Standout Quarter Breakdown

If you are not familiar with Cronos Group (CRON) I really recommend reading my Cronos Group deep-dive from last summer here.

They are a cannabinoid company that cultivates, produces, and markets cannabis and cannabis-derived products in Canada, Israel, and Germany.

Cronos reported their latest quarterly results a couple weeks ago. It was a very solid quarter, and they continue to buyback stock.

Q2 net revenue grew 58% year-over-year ( YoY), the 10th consecutive quarter of record net revenue growth. Net revenue grew 51% on a constant currency basis.

Not only did they have record revenue, but they also had record gross profit, and adjusted EBITDA.

They expect the CanAdelaar acquisition to close in the second half of this year. It's waiting on regulatory clearance in the Netherlands.

CanAdelaar has a 540,000 square foot greenhouse facility and does cultivation as well as processing, production and packaging of all CanAdelaar products.

CanAdelaar holds the #1 market share position within the Netherlands' Wietexperiment pilot program.

This quarter, Cronos Group really showed what they are capable of. Even my expectations were surpassed. Canada and Israel were solid. In Canada, they had record net revenue, generating 25% year-over-year retail sales growth relative to industry-wide sales growth of just 1% according to Hifyre.

Gross margin was an impressive 53%, up from 43% YoY.

Net income was $0.09 per share.

There was $22.1 mil in free cash flow or $0.06 per share.

They have an industry leading balance sheet with $827 mil in cash and short term investments.

The stock is remarkably still just slightly over NTAV. Net tangible asset value is $1.05 bil. At $3.19 a share the current market cap of the company is $1.17 bil. Keep in mind they have $827 mil in cash! 70% of the market cap is cash.

In the conference call, there were just four analysts. In the call they said the impressive gross margin was helped a lot in part from seasonally good growing conditions and higher yields. They said growth was tremendous in Canada vape, which is the highest margin product.

The 96% gross profit growth YoY was also from a mix shift to Israel and other countries, which carried no excise taxes, and higher sales volumes.

CEO Mike Gorenstein also said a contributing factor to the great quarter was simply having more product from the higher yields available to sell. The demand for their product is really out there, and they had ample supply this quarter.

The 96% gross profit growth YoY was also from a mix shift to Israel and other countries, which carried no excise taxes, and higher sales volumes.

In Canada, their Spinach brand held its number one position in vapes for the second consecutive quarter, with total vape market share expanding to 10.6%.

In edibles, Spinach remained Canada's number one brand for the eighth consecutive quarter, with market share steady at 20.8% and gummies at 22.5%.

CEO Mike Gorenstein said they expect to launch Spinach in the Netherlands with CanAdelaar. My thoughts on this as a cannabis industry tourist are Netherlands seems like a mature, tough market to penetrate. I’m sure they are setup for success though. I would never bet against the CEO, Mike.

Mike said GrowCo is now fully online, and he expects more efficiency gains in the future as they dial it in.

Cronos continues to execute and remains a great value to me personally as a long-term position.

Full Disclosure: I am long CRON