Canopy Gwth Q2 2027 Earnings Call Transcript

Canopy Gwth (TSX:WEED) reported second-quarter financial results on Friday. The transcript from the company’s second-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

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Summary

Canopy Growth Corporation reported a 22% year-over-year increase in consolidated net revenue to $81.4 million, driven by a 30% rise in cannabis revenue.

International cannabis business was a significant growth driver with a 141% year-over-year revenue increase, bolstered by strong market expansion in Europe.

The company is focusing on improving cultivation practices and expanding its EU GMP-certified facilities to enhance product quality and yield, expecting full benefits by fiscal 2028.

Operational highlights include the relaunch of the Tweed brand in Germany, expansion into the UK medical cannabis market, and efforts to bolster international distribution networks.

Management expressed confidence in achieving positive adjusted EBITDA in the second half of the fiscal year, underscoring disciplined cost management and strategic initiatives for future growth.

Full Transcript

Luke (Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you, John. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Our second quarter of fiscal 2027 results show continued momentum with another quarter of strong year-over-year top line growth across most of the business. Consolidated net revenue increased 22% year over year to $81.4 million. Cannabis revenue increased by 30% to $66.2 million, reflecting our ability to produce and supply high-quality flower to meet the demands of the Canadian and European markets.

The biggest driver of growth was our international business, where net revenue increased by a tremendous 141% over Q2 of last year and by 28% sequentially from the first quarter to $12.3 million. International growth was enabled by strong availability of flower and a strengthened route to market that increased our reach to patients in our core European markets. Canada medical net revenue grew by 18% year over year to $25.8 million. Similar to last quarter, we benefited from ongoing increases in patient counts, including through the addition of the MTL medical business.

Our team is building from the new baseline following the VAC reimbursement cap implemented at the beginning of April, continuing to add patients and providing best-in-class service experience for our patients. We believe our position as the number one medical cannabis provider with Canadian-owned and Canadian-grown supply will remain an important differentiator. Canada adult use net revenue increased 17% to $21.8 million. We are seeing the benefits of a strengthened product portfolio as well as the addition of MTL brands, which performed well in Quebec and are building momentum in the rest of Canada.

We’re confident in our ability to continue to grow this market and recently made the decision to build out an internal sales force fully dedicated to growing our brands in Canada. Our growth in cannabis revenue has been made possible by our ability to provide a more consistent supply of the right flower to consumers. Elevating cultivation has been a core focus for Canopy Gwth, with efforts accelerating since we acquired MTL Cannabis at the end of fiscal 26. We’re applying the expertise of MTL’s master growers to improve cultivation practices and drive increased yield and flower quality. At our EU GMP facility in Kincardine, our team has been busy implementing new grow methods and adding new strains.

Early results are encouraging. We’re taking steps to further increase yield and continue building on these results. We expect to see a noticeable increase in yield and flower quality as we exit the third quarter of fiscal 27, with the full impact felt at the start of fiscal 28. We believe there is the potential to increase flower production at Kincardine by at least 25% to 30% within the same physical footprint. We expect increased yield and quality to drive both revenue growth and per-unit cost improvements.

Improved cultivation is a key foundational element of our global supply chain. In addition, we’re also focusing our efforts on strengthening our global distribution and manufacturing networks and improving our access to patients across Europe. On that subject, we recently received EU GMP certification at our Smiths Falls facility, as well as a renewal of the EU GMP certification at Kincardine. This makes Canopy Gwth the only Canadian company with end-to-end EU GMP certification covering its entire supply chain from cultivation to the manufacturing and primary packaging of softgels, oils, and dry cannabis flower. Our European sales have historically been limited to flower. The Smiths Falls certification creates a path to expand into additional categories of high-quality, patient-ready products, broadening our addressable market and creating new growth opportunities.

Our team is actively working with existing and new channel partners to prioritize these avenues for growth, and we expect to provide updates on this in future quarters. These capabilities are increasingly important to European customers and regulators. They enable us to maintain the highest quality standards with fewer third parties handling our products. This is clearly part of our promise of product integrity in action. Other steps we have taken to strengthen our international capabilities include relaunching the Tweed brand in Germany with MTL Cannabis genetics, strengthening our commercial and operational leadership team in Germany to accelerate growth, broadening our product offering in Australia, and entering the UK medical cannabis market. We see international markets as a key driver of growth, and we’re very excited about our prospects.

Turning to Storz & Bickel, we reported revenue of $15.1 million, down 4% from the second quarter of last year. Storz & Bickel is managing through waves of variability in consumer spending in the face of economic uncertainties in various markets, as well as evolving trends in the space. We continue to refine our product portfolio and go-to-market strategies to maintain our leadership position. Storz & Bickel is known for innovation, as demonstrated by their recent recognition by Safe Access Now for recent product advancement with the Whole Flower Vaporization Innovation Award.

Consistent with prior years, we expect a seasonally strong quarter in Q3 driven by the holiday season. Overall, our financial results are showing what better execution across Canopy Gwth can deliver. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but we’re sustaining our momentum in the right direction. We continue to strengthen our foundation and our capabilities, which gives me increasing confidence in our ability to accelerate growth into profitability in the coming quarters. I will now ask Tom to provide more details on our second quarter financial results.

Tom (Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you, Luke, and good morning, everyone. Canopy Gwth delivered strong second quarter performance driven by accelerating top-line growth and disciplined bottom-line execution. Consolidated net revenue climbed 22% year over year to $81.4 million, anchored by a 30% increase in our cannabis segment, reflecting broad-based momentum across every channel. While MTL continues to be an engine for our fiscal 2027 performance, organic growth in international cannabis was equally important, offsetting headwinds faced in Canada medical.

Sequentially, the business is demonstrating stronger underlying earnings. We held consolidated gross margin firm at 31% for the quarter despite not having the U.S. tariff refunds that supported Q1. At the same time, we drove meaningful reductions to SG&A and narrowed our adjusted EBITDA loss. This strong execution reinforces our confidence as we remain on track to deliver positive adjusted EBITDA in the second half of this fiscal year. Let me take a moment to elaborate on each of these points. A key growth driver for our business has been international cannabis, which typically delivers favorable pricing on average relative to the domestic market in Canada. This makes continued growth in our international markets an increasingly important contributor to our overall performance and our strategy to drive improved shareholder returns. We expect the ongoing growth of the international business, along with the improvements to our cultivation operations Luke described, to contribute to margin expansion going forward.

For the cannabis segment, adjusted gross margin was 31% in Q2 2027 compared to 33% a year earlier. The decrease is primarily due to the reduction in the Veterans Affairs Canada reimbursement rate, which has had a major impact on our cannabis segment gross margins compared to the prior year. The Storz & Bickel segment reported a modest increase in gross margin from 38% in Q2 of last year to 39% this year, despite a decrease in revenue over the same time frame. This result was due to cost efficiencies realized under the new management team. We are pleased that S&B margins in the first half of fiscal 2027 have been well above the 33% we reported in that segment for the full fiscal 2026 year. As previously mentioned, S&B benefited from a one-time tariff refund in Q1, which positively affected our consolidated gross margin by approximately 2%.

Turning to operating expenses, we continue to see progress. SG&A expense increased $3.4 million from Q2 2026 even as we absorbed the full MTL business, which typically incurred SG&A expense of approximately $6 million per quarter. The combined company is operating more efficiently, reflecting not only a lower cost base and integration synergies, but also improved execution across the business. We remain on track to reach our target run rate of $10 million of annualized synergies within 18 months of the March 2026 closing of the MTL transaction.

On a sequential basis, SG&A expense in Q2 was approximately half a million lower than in Q1, reflecting our ongoing financial discipline and cost-saving actions. To date, adjusted EBITDA loss was $2.9 million in Q2 2027. That represented an improvement of $0.4 million from Q1 2027. Again, we achieved a sequential improvement despite the absence of the S&B tariff refund recorded in Q1. Turning to our financial position, we had $320 million of cash and short-term investments as of September 30, 2026. In addition, free cash outflow for Q2 improved by $3.7 million from Q2 2026 to $15.6 million, despite an increase in capital expenditures of $1.8 million to invest in our cultivation facilities. Last month, we held a successful annual meeting where shareholders approved all resolutions, including authorization for our board to complete a share consolidation, also known as a reverse split.

As a reminder, it continues to be our intention to only complete the consolidation if it is necessary to maintain compliance with Nasdaq listing requirements. In terms of our ATM program, we have not sold any shares since December 2025. Given our strong cash position, we would look to the ATM selectively in support of strategic opportunities, including M&A, where we see a compelling path to shareholder value creation. In summary, Canopy Gwth has the liquidity, the discipline, and the strategic runway to fund both organic growth and potential M&A opportunities. With $320 million in cash and investments, we have the flexibility to pursue accretive, high-impact growth opportunities in a disciplined manner. The track record we established with MTL demonstrates that we have the capability to integrate acquisitions efficiently and realize meaningful synergies. We enter the second half of fiscal 2027 with strong momentum, stringent cost controls, and line of sight to positive adjusted EBITDA.

I will now turn the call back to Luke for his closing remarks.

Luke (Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you very much, Tom. The results we reported today represent another important step forward in Canopy Gwth’s growth journey to build a profitable, leading global cannabis company. Financial momentum, such as the accelerating growth of our international business, is certainly a big part of that and is reflected in our top-line results. Perhaps even more importantly, our teams—our employees—understand the power of the strengthened capabilities we’re establishing as a company. Our international business now has a unique competitive advantage through our end-to-end EU GMP supply chain for both flower and manufactured products. Canada adult use has clear sight lines to improve market rankings on the strength of our best brands. Canada medical is solidifying its leadership position and becoming a much stronger business as they work to overcome significant external challenges.

Cultivation yields at Kincardine are steadily improving, and the end result is within our grasp. Storz & Bickel continues to innovate and sharpen its focus on improved competitiveness. As I look across the business, I feel that all cylinders are starting to fire in unison. This is turning our foundational discipline into sustained and compounding velocity. It is the driving force uniting the entire team around a shared strategic purpose, and it is beginning to deliver tangible results. I would like to thank our team for their continued hard work and commitment to achieving our goals. Operator, we will now take questions.

OPERATOR

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. If you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the headset before pressing any keys. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question.

You may press star one again should you have any follow-ups. First question from Erin Gray with Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead.

Erin Gray (Analyst)

Hi, thank you very much for the question here. Just want to dive a bit more into path to profitability. Luke and Tom, obviously been a big focus since you guys came into your respective seats. Pressure, we talked about it being within reach. You got some seasonally strong quarters coming in and some of those cost savings starting to flow through as well. Just more color in terms of the timing of EBITDA profitability and then maybe bigger picture, what type of profitability or margin profile we could start looking at, you know, come FY 2028 and beyond.

Thank you.

Tom (Chief Financial Officer)

Thanks, Erin. Good morning. So, for our path to profitability, a lot of that, as you’re saying, we do expect to have a stronger back half of the year, some of that driven by seasonality in the S&B business, which does carry more favorable margins relative to our Canadian—or our cannabis—segment. I would say for us, a lot of the cultivation enhancements that we’re talking about on the call, that Luke mentioned, we’ve yet to see those benefit the P&L. The changes are being made—we’re seeing positive indications early on—but it likely won’t materialize in the P&L until as we’re exiting FY27. So I think we still see a pathway to get to positive adjusted EBITDA in the back half of the year. But a lot of the cost savings, synergies and whatnot, that work is ongoing. And the cultivation enhancements you wouldn’t see yet in the P&L. I don’t—Luke, anything?

Luke (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, for me, listen, we’ve been attacking the P&L since we started, and so we started with addressing the SG&A. We over-delivered on our targets there. Second, we said we would address cultivation. We did the acquisition of MTL, we did integration as swiftly as possible, brought in the MTL master growers. We’re proceeding with the transformation of our main cultivation facility, Kincardine. Think about it: we’ve got 24 rooms there. We transition one room at a time to new cultivation practices and new strains.

We’re 10 rooms in of 24. We do one a week. So by the end of, you know, middle of Q4, we’ll probably be fully transitioned. Takes 12 weeks to harvest a new batch of flowers. So these things take time, and you’ll start seeing the full impact at the beginning of fiscal 28 as well. And we didn’t really talk a lot about this on the call: we are starting as well the streamlining of our manufacturing and distribution efforts squarely around our Smiths Falls facilities. We just kicked off the project. We have line of sight, we have a series of initiatives that are going to be implemented in the back half of fiscal 27, and these will reap benefits on the margin lines, and we’ll start seeing these happening in the later part of this fiscal with full benefits in fiscal 28.

So there is quite a bit of fuel in the tank here ahead of us, and we have line of sight on all these initiatives, and they’re well managed, and, you know, we’re building confidence.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Next question from William Kirk with Wath Capital Partners. Please go ahead.

William Kirk (Analyst)

Good morning, everybody. Luke, I was hoping you could keep going on some of the new products, the new markets commentary of what you can do out of Smiths Falls and, in particular, maybe like what types of products in which market and what the timing is for some of that.

Luke (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, the timing of those for new products will feel them more at the beginning of fiscal 28. What’s really important—our priorities right now and where we can see the biggest impact on our sales and profits—goes back to flower. We’ve been saying it: elevating cultivation is the priority in the business. It is what will drive the biggest transformation of our P&L and our profitability. And I’m very—I’m delighted with the progress that’s been done in recent quarters there.

And as we mentioned, we start feeling the benefit of this toward the end of Q3 of this fiscal with full impact at the beginning of 28. You know, what’s important as well is, in the quarter we reentered the UK market, which is the second largest market in Europe. We’ve as well done a serious investment in strengthening our access to patients in Germany. We’re strengthening our sales team there and our capabilities to win the sales. So that’s where you’ll see the bulk of the growth coming from.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Next question from Kenrich Tai with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.

Kenrich Tai (Analyst)

Thank you. Good morning. And Luke, perhaps following on your answer there with respect to Germany, how well, part one, is the Tweed brand resonating? Two, how important are the genetics that you’re bringing to market? And I’m asking that in the context of are either helping to better moat your business in Germany and increase your confidence given how noisy and, to some, oversupplied perhaps the German market is becoming. Thank you.

Luke (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, the Tweed brand—we’re very confident in our ability to win in Germany. You know, in the past, every time we were in stock, we did really well. Poland, same thing with Poland. If you look at recent surveys we’ve done about brands, our brands and our genetics resonate really well through the value chain in Germany and Poland, so not only with patients but as well with doctors, pharmacists, and players in the industry. So for us, that’s why our focus is really increasing the yield of our EU GMP Kincardine facility, because we know when we have the flower, we bring it to Germany, Poland, and we’re successful.

So we’ve really built—going back to what we talked about—the unique ecosystem that Canopy Gwth has built: EU GMP cultivation facility, EU GMP processing facility in Smiths Falls. We have our own ability to bring flower into Europe, and we’re strengthening our sales team across Europe, our access to patients. So we’re building this end-to-end ecosystem where not only can we drive integrity of the products because we handle the products all the way, we maintain integrity of margin as well.

So imagine this ecosystem with the brands, with the strains that we’re only going to make stronger with the MTL acquisition, and once we’re able to significantly increase the amount of tonnage we put through this system, I mean, we will reap the benefits.

OPERATOR

Thank you. The next question comes from Federico Gomez with ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Federico Gomez (Analyst)

Hi. Morning. I want to ask about your investments in cultivation and, I guess, improving yields. When you look at the competitive landscape, where do you think you sit in terms of cost of cultivation and quality, and do you think that with those investments how soon can you sort of catch up to some of the—maybe the leaders in the Canadian rec market? Thank you.

Tom (Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, thanks. Good morning, Fred. I think from a cost-to-grow standpoint, we’re definitely not a best-in-class from a cost-to-grow. I think what we’re focused on now, with the capital investments that we’re making at Kincardine specifically, is really using a lot of the know-how and the techniques that the MTL team has been successful at in terms of growing their business and applying it to a much bigger asset to really better utilize the assets that we have.

We do think it will make us much more competitive across the globe, but, more importantly, give us a higher amount of good-quality flower at the right specs that can service our entire cannabis segment. So that’s really—I would say we’re looking—we’re not a greenhouse grower or will likely not be a lowest cost to grow in Canada, but we have ambitions of being some of the highest-quality flower in Canada.

Federico Gomez (Analyst)

That’s great.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Next question comes from Pablo Zwanek with Zwanek and Associates. Please go ahead.

Pablo Zwanek (Analyst)

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Luke, do you want to make any comments on the proposed changes in the budget of the government relating to cannabis? We had, I think, some good news last night. Thank you.

Luke (Chief Executive Officer)

Yes, good morning. Those are very encouraging news, and so we welcome these potential changes. It will make it much more commercially easier for Canadian LPs to really, really drive their business in a much simpler and streamlined manner. It will allow greater access for Canadians for good-quality flower that is grown and distributed the right way. So we welcome those changes.

OPERATOR

Thank you. This concludes Canopy Gwth’s second quarter 2027 financial results conference call. A replay of this conference call will be available until February 4, 2027, and can be accessed following the instructions provided in the company’s press release issued earlier today. Canopy Gwth’s investor relations team will be available to answer additional questions. Thank you for attending today’s call.

Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company’s SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants’ and analysts’ statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.