Congratulations to Kelowna-based Northern Lights/DOJA (SG.V), which today learned it has been approved by Health Canada for its marijuana cultivation license.
In a wide-ranging livestream interview with Equity.Guru a few weeks back, Northern Lights boss Trent Kitsch talked up his expectation that the license would be granted soon, but few would have predicted the swiftness in which it arrived. Other companies have waited for months – even years – to get to this stage, whereas the Kitsch team nailed it first try.
The big question for many, however, is will the upcoming transition to the public markets be affected (that is, revalued) in the wake of this news?
Kitsch told me today he had no intention of doing that, and though he has a board meeting Monday to discuss the RTO, his stance is that the deal is done and will move to the public markets shortly.
“My understanding is no, everything is still the same, the value of the company and such,” said Kitsch. “This just makes all of us want to make that investment to come quicker rather than sit around our table trying to change the deal. We just created the value that makes the deal worth doing.”
“We’ve done what we said we would do,” he added. “We’ve already had one delay on the way to the listing, so we’re just looking to move it forward and get a return for our investors.”
Kitsch was in his front yard teaching his son to ride a bike when the big email dropped, and says he subsequently spent the morning calling major investors to ensure they were first to hear the news.
“Next steps, we’ll get the genetics into the building immediately, and continue on the quickest path to the highest quality cannabis we can grow. We’ll test batches as fast as we can, and as soon as we get the genetics in the building and get a sense of what we have, we’ll set a target to move towards our license to sell.”
Kitsch is cautiously optimistic that his run to a sales license will be quick, especially as he’s been hearing rumblings that Health Canada may soon streamline the process, with a license to cultivate perhaps being changed to allow sales of some sort, right out of the gate.
“That’s just the buzz,” he said, “but we’re hopeful that’s how it will play out by the time we’re ready for the sales cycle. We’ve been on a 1400-day long trail, and we finally made it to the valley, so a little more waiting and work won’t hurt.”