Yoko Miyashita, Leafly CEO, joins Cheddar News to discuss the fallout of the 2022 midterm elections for the cannabis industry.

Yoko Miyashita, CEO of Leafly, joined Cheddar News to discuss election results regarding the legalization of cannabis. “The road to legalization is never linear,” she said.

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Discussing the Cannabis Industry in Wake of the Midterms With Leafly CEO Yoko Miyashita

now let's shift gears here. Another election cycle means cannabis is back on the ballot this time seeing some mixed results across five states. Meanwhile, leading online cannabis company leaf lee acquiring third quarter announcing third quarter earnings yesterday, beating on earnings while revenue coming in line with estimates joining me now, Yoko Miyashita Leaf, li ceo, Yoko, thanks so much for joining us. Welcome back to the show. I want to start with the election because obviously that's the topic on everyone's minds this week. It wasn't a sweep likely we saw in 2020, but we did see some wins cannabis, legalization passing in Maryland and Missouri but failing in three of five states, given that these three states were historically Republican, historically voting red. Did this outcome surprise you at all? You know, I think we always learn something with each new election cycle and I just want to talk about the states that we are welcoming the legal cannabis Missouri and Maryland comprising over 4% of the US population 18 and over. And you know, that's just a another big milestone for this industry. I will say the row to legalization is never linear and we've seen about measures fail. We've come seem to come back in following years. I think one of the learning lessons is how do you drive that popular support and right funding behind these initiatives? And also the substance of those initiatives matter. One of the, you know, one of the comments around, um, and that in the Dakotas, the legalization measures didn't provide for an actual legal market allowed to legalize, decriminalize that. You wouldn't be a crime to have cannabis, but you've got no legal market set up. The other thing I'll say is that with the three states that did not opt into cannabis, they now border states that well, legal rec markets and we're going to see a lot of that spend moving into neighboring states. Yeah. Yoko and obviously, you know, a win for the industry that we will have, you know, more members of Congress coming from two new states, you know, that have legalized cannabis of course, heading to Congress in the next session. Now, there has been quite a bit of speculation, speaking of the federal level that we might see some legislative change in Congress in the lame duck, we have heard Senate Majority leader chuck schumer saying that Congress, Congress is quote very close to releasing introducing and passing some version of safe banking but of course control Congress is still hanging in the balance for next session. So looking ahead to the lame duck and even the next Congress, what are you expecting to see? You know, I think we're all waiting with bated breath. I would turn to just a couple of weeks ago when president biden made history in terms of the the clemency and action to pardon all federal offenses of nonviolent possession crimes. That's huge. Why is that huge. The president has never done that before. So we take that as a really strong and positive signal. We all understand that safe and access to banking is a key issue for industry momentum. And I think there's general consensus around the table and we've seen that bill passed numerous times in the house, it's time to get something done on this front. So we are all really eager and excited about how safe can really propel this industry forward and it really is a both consumer and crime prevention issue for all citizens. Let's turn to your quarterly results now. We obviously saw revenue coming in to meet Wall Street expectations rising 8% since last year earnings actually outstripping expectations. But we did see operating expenses surging 21%. Gross margins, narrowing slightly. What's driving these results? Yeah. In terms of operating expenses, I'll just remind you that, you know, we raised and started investing in the business in the second half of last year, we've really been in growth mode over the last 18 months. Obviously, the industry for any one part of it is volatile. And we started to just see some of the challenges that our retailers and brands are facing. That's no different than any other company in the macro environment. So for us, it's been, you know what you'll see is that we're just continuing to tighten our belts, be super efficient and you'll see those numbers come down in terms of gross margins, you know, that's really a function of our allocation of internal engineering resources to platform expense. We really do expect it to stay in the steady range of 80 70 88 over the next several quarters. We'll see that level out Yoko. Unfortunately, we are out of time. There will have to leave it there. But thank you so much for your time for insight today. We love you have to have you back on the show, especially to talk about, you know, future legislative measures and updates with your Uber eats partnership to Yoko Miyashita Ceo of lately. Thanks again.