British Columbia-based Tilray is still a private company, but it’s an important indicator of where the marijuana industry is headed in Canada and beyond.
Tilray operates a marijuana research and production facility in Nanaimo, British Columbia, and like many other companies in the space, it’s aiming to change the way the world views pot. That’s a tall order — as Tilray Vice President Philippe Lucas recently told The Canadian Press, changing the conversation around marijuana involves fighting back against decades of propaganda and “reefer madness” rhetoric.
To do so, companies in the space are using rebranding strategies to try to give cannabis a new image. For example, Mettrum (TSXV:MT) uses a color-coded spectrum to identify its products. “We came up with a responsible dialogue for talking about cannabis that doctors would want to use, versus talking about strains like purple kush or super lemon haze,” Mettrum CEO Michael Haines told the Press.
Similarly, Tilray is working hard to overcome that stigma and bring the benefits of medical marijuana to the masses. As per blastingnews.com, Lucas recently headed up a study of 473 adult therapeutic cannabis users that found that 87 percent had given up using other medications in favor of cannabis. Tilray has plans to launch a larger, multi-site study, and is also funding a $400,000 clinical trial to look at the effects of medical marijuana on post-traumatic stress disorder.
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Meanwhile, the company has also teamed up with the government of New South Wales, the University of Sydney and Chris O’Brien Lifehouse to formulate a cannabis-based treatment for nausea and vomiting in chemotherapy. The trial, which is expected to begin later this year, will use capsules formed by Tilray containing cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
It’s also worth noting that Tilray is owned by Privateer Holdings, a company in which Paypal (NASDAQ:PYPL) co-founder Peter Thiel made a significant investment last year.
That said, Tilray has seen some troubles as it’s blazed its trail. In the middle of 2015, the company had to lay off 61 employees from its Nanaimo plant. It said at the time that it was making changes to its operating model to more efficiently serve patients.
However, since then the company has hired back 15 workers, and CEO Greg Engel recently told the Nanaimo News Bulletin that Tilray is back in growth mode. Furthermore, along with Whistler Medical, owned in part by PharmaCan Capital (TSXV:MJN), and Canopy Growth (TSXV:CGC) subsidiary Tweed, Tilray recently got the okay from Health Canada to sell fresh cannabis and cannabis oil in addition to dried marijuana.
#MedicalCannabis Drops available this week! Tomorrow morning we will release more #Indica and 3+:1 #CBD Drops. pic.twitter.com/YDMPm3Wk1e
— Tilray (@tilray) March 21, 2016
As Alan Brochstein of 420Investor explained, “[t]he ability to sell cannabis oil is beneficial to the licensed producers because it not only expands the market beyond those who wish to smoke or vaporize the cannabis to those who prefer to ingest it but also allows the companies to use the trim that was previously destroyed due to sales being limited strictly to the dried flower.”
Certainly, medical marijuana companies — and legal marijuana stocks in general — appear to be gaining traction among investors. Mentor Capital (OTCQB:MNTR) recently reported that its Cannabis Index for Value Investors had gained 22 percent so far in 2015. That was largely due to a boost seen by GW Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:GWPH) after it received a green light from the US Food and Drug Administration for its marijuana-derived drug for children with epilepsy. Still, other stocks in the index have seen increases in share price this year as well — Hemp (OTCMKTS:HEMP) is up 14.78 percent year-to-date at $0.05.
All in all, there’s no doubt that marijuana investors will want to keep an eye on both private and public movers and shakers in the space in the near term. For now, there’s been no news of an IPO on the horizon for Privateer or Tilray. However, Privateer CEO Brendan Kennedy has stated that there would be “opportunities for Privateer Holdings to go public and for individual portfolio companies to go public” once marijuana regulations change.
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Securities Disclosure: I, Teresa Matich, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
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