By Chloe Aiello
Shares of Tilray jumped in extended trading on Monday after the Canadian cannabis company reported a doubling of annual revenue.
The Canadian company reported $43.1 million in revenue for fiscal year 2018, which was 110 percent higher year-over-year. Its performance was boosted in part by its sales during the first few months of adult-use legalization in Canada. For the fourth quarter of 2018, Tilray reported $15.5 million in revenue, more than 200 percent higher than the previous year, and up from the $10.1 million in revenue the company reported in its last quarter.
Green Market Report's Debra Borchardt, however, was not as impressed as investors with the result.
"My concern here when you look at the last quarter, they did $10 million in revenue, so now we've added another five with adult use sales, and this is their first full quarter with adult use sales," Borchardt said. "I kind of would have liked to see that be a real blockbuster number."
Tilray also reported a higher average selling price. Average price per gram jumped to $6.61 from $6.52 year-over-year. The company also announced revenue growth in "extract products" versus dried cannabis flower, which may bode well for other products, like edibles and beverages, when Canada looks to legalize those next October.
"What I thought was good in the middle of this was that the price per gram number went up, so that's certainly a very positive thing for them and for the market in general," Borchardt said.
Aside from holiday sales and adult use legalization, Tilray also announced several major partnerships within the past quarter. It expanded a strategic alliance with Swiss drug giant Novartis to distribute medical cannabis worldwide, announced a joint venture with AB InBev, and also made a foray into U.S. hemp with the acquisition with hemp-based food company Manitoba Harvest.
Jefferies analyst Owen Bennett wrote that investors may be overemphasizing the impact of some of those major partnerships, in a March note that kicked off coverage of the pot company with an "underperform" rating, Yahoo Finance reported.
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