The COVID-19 epidemic has affected businesses of all kinds. But CBD-based businesses have seen an unprecedented upsurge in demand for their services, as more and more leaders and lawmakers declare CBD business an essential service. These tacit approvals plus the sheer realization of the value of CBD products have seen the market for CBD products soar.

It is still early days, but Aurora Cannabis Inc. appears to be steering itself toward calmer waters. 

Only three months since announcing a major corporate restructuring that led to the retirement of its founder and chief executive officer Terry Booth and a massive $1-billion write-down, the Canadian pot giant is showing signs of a turnaround. If it succeeds, it could place the company on track to finally achieve its long-stated goal of attaining profitability by the end of the year. 

"We're turning this ship around, and it's a big ship," Michael Singer, Aurora's chairman and interim CEO, said in a phone interview with BNN Bloomberg. 

A “huge chunk” of Canada’s 383 licensed cannabis companies will face bankruptcy this year, as many now divest their assets and go down to a skeleton crews to survive frozen capital markets during the global pandemic.

That’s according Aaron Salz, chief executive of boutique cannabis investment firm Stoic Advisory in Toronto, who’s been following the global cannabis sector for almost seven years.

It’s been well-documented that Canada’s legal weed industry hasn’t lived up to expectations since its Oct. 17, 2018 inception.

Years of reckless spending, along with slower-than-expected growth, excess supply and a still-thriving illicit market, left many companies with depleted stock prices and almost no access to capital — even prior to the COVID-19 crisis.

May has been a challenging month for marijuana stocks. Despite only being two weeks into it, we have seen some steady instability amongst some of the leading marijuana stocks to watch. But, the cannabis industry is resilient, and there have been some days of large and consistent growth. Overall, however, it does look like we may have a long way to go before we can see gains on a very regular basis.

“The writing was on the wall,” says Harrison Stoker, vice-president of brand at Donnelly Group, a 20-year-old company that owns nine Hobo Cannabis stores across Canada. “We knew businesses were going to shut down, even if that didn’t happen right away, there was bound to be a cultural shift that would lead to the inevitable.”

Ontario cannabis consumers hoping for easy access to legal marijuana seeds may finally be getting their wish. Even though the seeds page on the Ontario Cannabis Store (OCS) website says it is currently out of stock, the expectation is that this will soon change.

OCS is set on providing a wide variety of cannabis seeds and that goal will be advanced thanks to two new deals — with ANC Cannabis in Alberta and British Columbia-based ProgenyBio Agricultural Services — according to Merry Jane.

P.E.I. will reopen its four cannabis stores May 22, Steven Myers announced Thursday at a media briefing on COVID-19. 

The province shut down the pot stores along with provincially-owned liquor stores March 19. 

Liquor stores began to gradually reopen but pot stores remained delivery-only. Government waived the shipping costs and set up a phone-in option to make ordering easier.

In announcing which public services would reopen under Phase 2 of the province's ease-back from coronavirus restrictions, Myers said all P.E.I. Cannabis stores will reopen May 22, with what he called limited access.

For those who don’t know, dividends are essentially payments made to investors from the company that they are investing in. If a company is posting profits, oftentimes they will pay those profits back to investors in the form of dividends. Dividends mostly apply to mutual funds or ETFs, but in the cannabis industry, there are some companies that pay dividends, that are not listed as funds. Dividends are usually paid out based on how many shares an investor owns of a given company. Because of this, the more shares that one owns, the more dividends they will see. The importance here and as always is the underlying business model. If a company is not successful, it will not pay dividends.

The cannabis industry has seen two major upward surges in the last 5 years, the first came with the national legalization of cannabis in Canada which was subsequently followed up by many states in the United States and the second has come during this COVID-19 pandemic.

While this time has been a hard time for the U.S. and all other countries currently impacted by it, cannabis has helped ease anxiety and stress for many people. The consistent affirmation of cannabis businesses as essential services during this era has done wonders for the industry. 

The cannabis industry is a dynamic industry that is used to operating in times of uncertainty. Over the past decade, a widespread stigma around cannabis and regulatory limitations have slowly eased to produce a growing industry that is expected to hit nearly $74 billion by 2027. Despite what appeared to be an unstoppable run in recent months, the cannabis industry has not been immune from the economic impacts of the COVID19 crisis.