Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us here today. We have a great presentation for you this afternoon. Our management is going to provide a brief company overview in the first session. We'll start with Kim Rivers, our founder, chairman, and CEO. Our CFO, Alex D'Amico, will then provide a financial overview, followed by a brief overview of our strategy by our president, Steve White. We'll take questions at that time, and then there will be a very brief pause for about 10 minutes. Then in the second session, we'll be providing additional detail on our operations, starting with our Chief Production Officer, Kyle Landrum, followed by our Chief Sales Officer, Tim Morey, and then Gina Collins, our Vice President of Marketing, and then Nilyum Jhala, our Chief Technology Officer.
At that time, we will have a second question and answer session, and then we'll conclude the event. With that, we'll get started. I'd like to welcome Kim Rivers.
Thanks, Christine. It is such a pleasure to be with you guys today. Thank you, in particular, to folks who traveled to Tallahassee. It's not always the easiest place to get to, so appreciate your trials and tribulations to get here and to join us on our, hopefully, informative tour this morning of one of our cultivation sites out of our 22 sites that we have across the nation, along with our primary production and manufacturing site here in Florida. Thank you again for your time. My name is Kim Rivers. I have the distinct honor and privilege to serve as Trulieve's Chief Executive Officer and Chairman. I've been with the company since the company was founded.
I was there for the 2000-page application submission that we did in the state of Florida. I still have some paper cut scars to prove it, and am just very excited today for you all to hear from our expanded management team who really are the heart of this company and who really make us the company that we are today. My role today is just to provide a quick overview in terms of who we are and what the opportunity is ahead. Really, Trulieve at a glance, as many of you know, we are a leading U.S. multi-state operator. We were founded in 2014, as I mentioned, here in our home state of Florida.
Really, our business thesis, people ask me all the time, you know, "How did you get out so quick? You know, how did you become this first market mover?" Really, the answer is very simple, and it also is foundational for how we look at the world continuously in Trulieve, and it's that we do what we said we were going to do. We actually had a business plan which is unique, I guess, in cannabis, sometimes in application processes, where we literally laid out a business plan in terms of how we were going to launch the company, the investments that we were going to make, and then how we were going to achieve scale from there on out. When we were awarded the license, we moved very fast.
We had our first production facility open within the first 80 days, actually, after receiving the license, and we opened our first store in 2016. Fun story, when we opened our first store here in Florida, we had to medically transport in the first patient because there was not a market in Florida. It was fantastic for photos and to get that media, but then we looked at one another and we went, "Huh? Okay, now what?" This team and this company is about building, and we're about grinding, and again, we're about sticking to a plan. We knew that we had a lot of work ahead of us, and we set out to do that work, and of course, we are still doing that work today across the U.S.
You know, we went public back in 2018. That's when I got the opportunity to meet many of you in this room, from in terms of where we started. Some of you, it's been really interesting to have conversations around you coming and touring our facilities then to see where we were then and where we are today. Of course, now we're a company that has over 4 million sq ft of cultivation and production, along with an industry-leading retail presence of 168 dispensaries. Tim, that's right? We didn't open any today? Okay. 168, I always have to check, dispensaries open across the U.S. today. We have over 9,000 employees, which is just phenomenal when we think about where we started.
We started this company, it was myself and a team of 10. My office used to be the cultivation conference room back in our original cultivation business. My, how far have we come and really how far is left to go. We are one of the few companies who have reported guidance in this industry, and we're very proud of that. Again, that's our commitment to being dedicated to a plan and to doing what we say we are going to do. That guidance for this year, which we recently reiterated, is between $1.3 billion and $1.4 billion in revenue and $450 million-$500 million in adjusted EBITDA. Our revenue growth has been very impressive over the years.
106%, or I'm sorry, 146%, 106%, and 80% in 2019, 2020 and 2021 respectively. That really speaks to the fast growth and fast-paced nature not only of this industry but also of our company and how we, which I think is one of the most interesting aspects of our team, continue to scale and build while operating at such a fast pace and continuing to operate that scale. You don't just scale and then leave, right? You have to actually operate that scale and continuously improve on your existing operations while continuing to build at really an incredibly fast rate. We've announced very, you know, methodically our regional hub strategy. That was announced to the market back in 2020.
We've executed on that strategy, again, doing what we say we're going to do. This is just a quick map to show where we exist today and how those regions and that hub strategy is playing out. We're in three regions now, the Southeast, Northeast, and Southwest, with a meaningful footprint across each region. Over, well over 30% of our retail footprint, as an example, is outside of our home state of Florida at this point. True focus on diversification, but in a very strategic and strategy-first way. What defines us? You know, what makes us us? We are known for operational excellence, I believe, and this team is very, very proud of our commitment to execution.
We have a proven track record, again, of actually doing what we say we're going to do. We have a purposeful approach to growth. We are not a grow-at-all-cost company. We are a growth with underlying strategy company. We're very financially disciplined, and we hold our dollars accountable, making sure that we understand, are able to communicate both internally and externally, what that return on those investment dollars looks like, and again, not chasing every shiny object. I appreciate everyone in this room and all of your input and suggestions in terms of where we should focus and what we should be doing.
Oftentimes, it's also important for us to make sure that we've got a long-term view on making sure that we're executing and we're investing in long-term investments that create long-term shareholder value that are strategically backed. I think that is something that we're known for as well. We have a track record of profitability, which has allowed us to reinvest into both our markets that we're in today, as well as to fund additional future growth. What makes Trulieve different? Our ability to tune out the noise. I think that this was most on display back in 2019 when it really became this concept of going deep, quite frankly, which I think now everyone likes to talk about, was not a thing in 2019.
It was all about the map, right? It was all about the total addressable market and your breadth as opposed to your depth. You know, for us, during that time, we've kind of always thought that it was a little interesting to talk about things in terms of total addressable market. We think about things in terms of the market that we can serve through our footprint. Because really, those are the dollars that you can bring and the customer relationships that you can cultivate through any type of network are those folks that we can actually see in our doors. In other words, it doesn't make sense for us to say that one store in California equals market penetration of the entire state. Those are the types of things that we were seeing in 2019.
Also, it was important for us to have a true strategy before we expanded. We took that time to say, "You know what? We're gonna stick to what we know. We're gonna continue to build out and to scale in the markets that we're in, generate profit, and develop a strategy, make sure we have the foundation in place so that when we are ready to diversify, we can do it in a meaningful and an impactful way." That's what you saw from us, again, with the communication of our hub strategy as well as now our execution of our hub strategy. Our ability to tune out the noise, stay true to who we are as a company and our skill set, going deep, building authentic and reciprocal and repetitive customer relationships, and then building purposefully over time.
In addition, we've had a number of market firsts. We love to be first, right? We were first in Florida, we were first in West Virginia. We were the first company to have over 50% female representation on our board, the first company to put out an ESG report, the first company to have a number of firsts in product development, across certain markets. We like to position ahead of catalysts in a meaningful way.
When we think about huge catalysts that are coming, such as the catalyst and the rec flip in Maryland or in Pennsylvania or in Florida, building that scale, again, in a meaningful way so that we are best positioned to take advantage of more than our fair share of that market opportunity when it presents is again a hallmark of Trulieve. Of course, being able to be opportunistic in our ability to evolve in a dynamic industry. Because of our discipline and our ability to have profitability for 16 consecutive quarters, that has made us an attractive investment for folks as we think about having access to capital, even in downturn markets.
It also positions us uniquely to be able to take advantage of opportunities such as distressed assets, companies that maybe don't have such a strong financial footing as more and more of those opportunities present themselves, which we're already starting to see, and we think will become more of our best opportunities over time. Look, no one's happy with the current market, myself included. I'm a very large shareholder here, as well as my fellow panelists, every single one of whom just bought shares in the open market. We are a very shareholder-aligned team. At the same time, we're very excited about the opportunity that we see during this economic volatility for Trulieve, specifically vis-à-vis our peer set. With that, why don't we zoom out a little bit and remind ourselves why US cannabis is such a fantastic opportunity. Cannabis is increasingly mainstream.
We all know that. Although it's sometimes interesting to just sort of remind ourselves, right? Recent Gallup poll shows, again, continued increasing support for US marijuana legalization between 1969 and 2021. We know that, but certainly the polling has never been better as it relates to acceptance and willingness to accept cannabis within the U.S. population. Legal cannabis is expected to almost double in five years to $46 billion. Truly, even the markets that we're in today is expected to grow by 67%, representing half of that 2026 forecast at $22 billion.
What's interesting there is, like I said, we like to scale, we like to go deep, we like to take advantage of more than our fair share of that opportunity and that piece of the pie, that we see coming down the pipe. Again, how are we uniquely positioned? One, we have a growing distribution network, and we have scale and depth in markets. The team that you're gonna meet today are unique in that many of them have been with us for a long time, and they've helped build this scale in cannabis in the industry. When you think about other companies and where they're going to be pulling talent from, and you think about companies that have scale currently, very few of those companies are actually also concurrently building, right?
Companies that operate in mass scale typically are slow growth companies, growing less than, call it, 5% year-over-year. You add in the rapid pace of scale, it's a really unique skill set, and I'm very proud to have with me today, folks that have a proven track record within this industry of building an operating scale within the cannabis landscape. We have significant industry know-how, which again, you'll hear from, market experts today. We're focused on building long-term brand value in multiple channels, whether it's the corporate Trulieve brand, whether it's our retail brand or whether it's our product suite. You know, again, having the ability and also the focus, to build out brand equity. I can't say it enough, our access to capital to fund future growth.
Again, thank you so much for being here today. I'm really excited for you to learn a bit more about our company. With that, I'm gonna turn it over to really, someone who is one of my right hands in this industry and on this journey, Alex D'Amico, our CFO.
Thank you, Kim. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us for this fantastic event, the first of its kind for our organization. I'm Alex D'Amico, Chief Financial Officer here at Trulieve. I've been with the company for just over two years now. Like I say, I've seen some things, right? A lot of change, tremendous amount of growth. I always laugh when I came from tech directly before here. I thought that was fast-paced until I got to cannabis. You know, when I think about my earliest conversations with Kim, she was talking about this notion of hubs and this regional hub network.
It's been a fun ride to partake in developing those strategies with her and seeing them play out and come to fruition, help building out the infrastructure and the internal teams to support that vision. We've done a tremendous amount of deals, I think seven last year, I think nine in total since I've been here, highlighted, of course, by the largest US cannabis transaction to date in Harvest, closing last October. We're sitting here today, you know, Kim and I talked about in our earliest conversations, but now we're sitting here today with three real regional hubs that we operate in a meaningful way. Just to be on that ride has been a lot of fun for me. It's not just about the expansion of our footprint, I think it's really about the diversification of our company.
You know, of course, in states through organic growth and acquisitions, but revenue streams, the development of our wholesale channel and the launch of that, cultivation and processing facilities, and you saw a bunch of that today, and product lines and SKUs. Then I think what doesn't get mentioned enough, Kim referenced that we have over 9,000 employees, but the tremendous amount of talent we've brought into this organization over the last few years, the depth of leadership that allows us to execute across this regional hub network. All of that's been happening with a lot of outside noise, right? We had COVID, we came off of COVID, we had the second wave of COVID, we had various macroeconomic challenges the back half of last year, and definitely what we're going through right now.
As you all know, our regulatory hurdles that we live with day in and day out. Through all of that, what makes me most proud to be a part of this team is everyone you'll hear from today and all of the 9,000 employees that support them, they just continue to answer the bell time and time again. Laser focus on execution and the speed of execution just blows me away. Kudos to everyone that's on this panel today. Quick look at a financial snapshot. You know, it was through strategic growth, organic growth, strategic acquisitions that we grew top line by 80% from 2021 over 2020, and adjusted EBITDA by 48% over that same time period. That includes a full quarter contribution from the Harvest acquisition, which closed on October first.
If you look at Q1 in 2022, which we just completed, it was our second quarter post-Harvest close. We grew top line by 64% over the same period the prior year, and adjusted EBITDA by 16%. I'm particularly proud of Q1. We were able to grow over 4% sequentially over Q4 2021 during a particularly challenging macroeconomic time, all while integrating a large MSO acquisition. Again, kudos to the operational teams that you'll hear from in a bit. It's through our execution capabilities and our financial diligence that we've developed a strong financial profile. It's that financial profile that allowed us to do an acquisition like Harvest in the first place, and it's what allows us to take advantage of opportunities as they arise. We're focused on generating cash flow from operations and investing back into the business.
Strategic acquisitions, CapEx investments in core markets, and the build-outs of new markets ahead of catalysts. In Q1, we generated $45 million in cash flow from operations and ended the quarter with $267 million in cash. Our cash balance and our operational cash flow allow us to fully fund our 2022 CapEx plans, which has tremendous flexibility built into it. We could throttle that back if necessary, as we assess market conditions and the timing of catalysts. Earlier this year, as you heard Kim mention, we issued financial guidance, and we reiterated that guidance during our Q1 earnings. Top line revenue, $1.3 billion-$1.4 billion. Adjusted EBITDA of $450 million-$500 million.
This includes the opening of 25-30 new dispensaries and the relocation of up to six Florida dispensaries. Core to our strategy in 2022 is the build-out of our infrastructure and supply chain, particularly in our acquired markets of Pennsylvania and Arizona. We're building out that infrastructure to support the leading retail in those markets, and we are going to increase our throughput of branded product through the branded retail channels, an effort you'll hear more about from our operational teams in a bit.
It's through that process that we anticipate improved second half performance off of first half baselines, and we will leverage that in support of our long-term model, that we have noted for three years out of 60% margin, 40% adjusted EBITDA, the timing of which will have ebbs and flows as different market conditions take place, and we make investments in newer markets. You may have heard me say in the past, I always talk about entering a new market or a new opportunity. It's along a spectrum of, call it optimization, right? So wherever we are in that kind of spectrum will dictate how that long-term model flows out from a quarter-to-quarter basis. Speaking of execution, a deeper look at the Harvest acquisition. We announced it in early in May of last year.
We closed it on October first. Technically less than five months from announcement to close, which still blows me away. We have now printed two full quarters with Harvest in the fold. We immediately retired $275 million of Harvest debt—short-term and high-interest debt with change of control provisions. Really one of my favorite operational wins to date is we sold through all of the acquired inventory in just two quarters. We eliminated a lot of the noise within our financials from the deal, from the transaction. My favorite topic, the fair value step-up of inventory, has been eliminated through Q1. We're now in the process of repositioning assets across the platform.
Again, with the notion of cultivation and processing facilities to support our leading retail, which will lead to improved second half performance and again, support our long-term model. With more on the Harvest acquisition and other strategic initiatives, I'll hand it over to someone that I'm proud to call a friend and colleague on this wild journey, our president, Steve White.
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Steve White. I'm the president at Trulieve. Before, I've been at Trulieve since roughly October first of last year. That doesn't mean that I'm a short-timer in the industry. For about the previous 10 years, I was building a little company called Harvest. We started very early in 2011, 2012, built the organization up to be one of the largest multi-state operators in the country before ultimately deciding that an alignment with Trulieve made more sense than going it alone.
During that process, we had a lot of different conversations, and I think it's important to remember, you know, there was all of the public conversation where you take a company who, despite some stumbles, built an incredible base of assets, and you marry that with, on the Trulieve side, an incredible balance sheet, unrivaled access to capital in the industry, and with similar strategy about profitability and how to address markets, and similar strategy. As we were going through this process, there were a few things that I was trying to figure out when we were determining whether or not this acquisition or sale, in our case, made sense. When you go through one of these processes, you have advisors and you have lawyers, you have this bevy of people who are giving you advice.
We were starting the due diligence process, and I was making, I guess it was really my second trip out, but I really needed to get into and visit a number of the assets, some of which you saw today, for those of you who are here. I was asked by our board and by those advisors, "Okay, what is it? What's the agenda? What is it that you're trying to see? What do you wanna know about Trulieve that's gonna determine whether or not that makes sense?" When you think about what the relative positioning of the two companies were, it was a question about whether or not the team at Trulieve was the right team to optimize the assets that Harvest was gonna vend into the transaction. You take the trip out, and you go through
You guys saw, for those of you that are here, you saw a glimpse of it today, right? You saw cultivation at a scale and with innovation that you probably haven't seen before in indoor cultivation. But what you didn't see is all the other places that we visited when we were here, right? You're looking at innovation, and you're looking at the advancements that in R&D and in retail and in the various other parts of the organization. There were two things that happened. The conclusion I came away with was, we're not catching that organization on our own. It answers the question about the team because what you saw when you see that result, that result doesn't come about by accident.
That's the result of qualified, competent people trying to address tomorrow's problems ahead of time. They're thinking about where this industry is going and planning and executing. When we were there, it's actually kind of funny. I didn't come alone. I had other people who were with me, one of whom kept complimenting everybody at Trulieve. Every time we went someplace, it was like, "Wow, we haven't seen this before. This is way better." I was like. Finally, I had to pull him aside and say, "Man, you gotta shut up." "This deal is not done, and you're not being helpful right now. I understand that the depth and the scale is super impressive, but let's save that for later, like post-close.
We can have that conversation. So you guys saw a glimpse of what we saw when we were entering into this transaction and, you know, we. There's the thing that you can explain to people, and then there's the thing that you can only really understand when you see it. Hopefully today's tour was helpful to give you insight into what's behind the organization and also give you a better understanding of what we were looking at when we decided that Trulieve was the right transaction for us. While we went through that transaction, Alex mentioned that we closed really quickly. The reason we closed really quickly was because we had people who were uneasy throughout the process.
We decided, because we were able to close quickly, we executed really well on getting licenses transferred and things that have. The number of assets that transferred at that speed, you're not gonna see that again in cannabis. We decided that we needed to get people, Harvesters and Trulievers, shoulder to shoulder in building the organization for the future, and we needed to do that quickly. We pushed for a faster close, which we then executed on. Four strategic priorities for this year. We've shared them in different ways. You're gonna hear a lot more about them from our operational folks who are gonna talk to you after the break. First, delivering exceptional customer experiences and building brand loyalty.
To me, this is pretty simple, and you may have seen it in one of the facilities you were in today. Trulieve grows one customer at a time. You'll also talk about people being customer-obsessed. What we realize is that if you take care of customers, the customers take care of the business in some really important ways. For me, I think of it pretty simply. When you have an unrivaled base of transactions, you need to be able to learn from those actions and then take your learnings and turn them into actions. Underlying that, you'll hear from Nilyum about the systems that make us able to do just that. Growth via the hubs. You heard both Kim and Alex mention it.
Contextually, when you go back a few years, Trulieve was predominantly a Florida-based organization with incredible depth in the state of Florida, did something really unique, said to the world, "Hey, we're going to become a national organization, and we're gonna grow. And we're gonna tell you exactly how we're gonna do it, and then we're gonna go out and execute it." At the time, what was told to everybody is there are going to be five, potentially five hubs across the country. Why does that matter? Well, there's a handful of reasons. First, it goes to the point of saying what you're gonna do and going out and executing it. More importantly, once you develop infrastructure in a particular hub, it makes additional acquisitions in that hub easier. It facilitates tuck-in acquisitions, and you can. It's not.
It makes them more successful because you already have a base in that particular region. Secondly, and we don't talk about this a lot because we don't really know how this is gonna play out or when it's gonna happen, but if you think about how cannabis companies should be governed in the event that you have full interstate commerce, it looks a lot like a hub strategy. Third, what we talk about internally is branded product or branded retail. The reason why we talk about developing both our brands, our partnership brands, and our retail brands is it drives traffic and increases margins for the organization. Fourth, talk about the focus on profitable growth and the creation of shareholder value. You saw today an example of intelligent capital expenditures, when you went to the Jefferson County cultivation facility. You can see from that facility that you...
The automation that you're seeing at the scale that you're gonna see a different operational cost associated with that facility than probably any indoor facility you've seen in the United States. There are a couple of ways that we grow as an organization. One, Trulieve has developed a successful license application team. It's been reflected in wins in West Virginia and Georgia. In addition, the company's been involved in a significant amount of mergers and acquisitions. For a company that has a reputation or that I always heard the reputation of Trulieve being cheap, we actually closed seven transactions last year. By the way, thankfully, we should be thankful to have such, I would consider, good reputation in the industry.
Partially because, as Kim mentioned, there is going to be a time in the not so distant future where we're gonna see a lot of distressed assets. When you look at cannabis companies across the landscape, what you see is a number of companies that you're gonna really struggle to model how they survive. It's gonna leave less opportunities for them or less alternatives. If you have a company that has a strong balance sheet and a track record of execution, that's the company that's gonna be there when it's time to do something with those assets. What's also important and kind of underlies what we've all been talking about and what you're gonna hear from the operational folks later is what we don't do as an organization.
To us, it's just as important to talk about the things that we skip than talk about the things that we actually accomplish. There are so many opportunities in cannabis. I've talked to a lot of you over time about what is your CBD strategy? What are you gonna do about New York? The answer for us is if it does not align with our strategy, that we don't have to do it. We can be unpopular for a short period of time because we know as a business we are building a sustainable and profitable business. That dictates certain decisions that maybe at certain times won't be popular. When we talk about our M&A criteria, they don't change despite market conditions. Does the particular opportunity align with our strategy?
What are the assets that we're looking at in the context of the market that they sit in? Are we acquiring talent in that acquisition? In some instances, if you're entering a mature market, and it's your first entrée into that market, you would need to acquire a team in order for that to make sense. The timing. Is the timing right for our organization? If we've just completed the largest transaction in U.S. history, probably not the time to immediately, a month later, announce a number of additional acquisitions. Now that we've started to digest that acquisition, as Alex talked about, now we're in a position to potentially do something if the right opportunity comes along. Sometimes, most importantly, what is the price that we're paying for a particular asset?
As we see industry consolidation dictated by macroeconomic conditions, think about Trulieve as somebody who is going to do what we say we're gonna do, and importantly, choose to skip certain things. As we always say, we lead with strategy, we follow with execution, and we go deep in markets like our profitability depends on it. With that, we'll open it up to a Q&A session, based on what you heard from Kim, Alex, and I.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Okay. Yep, we're gonna open it up to questions. If you guys will just queue up. Remember that we'll have a second Q&A at the end of the ops section. I would just encourage you all, if there are, like, very specific operational questions, to maybe hold until I may signal that. Just know that we will table it and come back to it, if there's an operational person that I think might be more appropriate to answer that question. Okay. Derek.
Okay, thanks. Derek Dley, Canaccord Genuity. Just wondering if you could talk a little bit more in depth about some of the newer states that you're looking at or some of the less mature states, particularly Georgia and West Virginia and just what the opportunity set looks like in those states.
Sure. I'll take that one. Georgia is and West Virginia are both really exciting markets for us. You know, Georgia, we have started the build-out in Georgia. We're one of two top-tier licensees in the state of Georgia. Obviously CBD as it relates to ramp of that market, and we know that, of course, there is an established patient base that is growing ahead of product availability. We're also currently sourcing retail locations in Georgia. Again, we have every intention of making a strong entrance into that Georgia market. We see that market as very familiar and that it really does mimic a number of the aspects and characteristics that Florida had in early days.
As a reminder, again, for those that may not be as familiar, Florida actually started as a CBD-only market and then transitioned into a right to try, meaning that THC was only available to folks that were terminal or had significant cancer or spasticity conditions. It was a very small market that then evolved over time. It's very kind of hallmark, if you will, in our mind of how, you know, many Southeast markets could evolve. We're very comfortable and excited about Georgia and that evolution. West Virginia is going really well. We just opened a couple of stores in West Virginia. We have more on the horizon. Also we just completed a cultivation expansion in West Virginia.
Feel free, Kyle and/or Tim could give you additional details in terms of how that from an operational perspective market is going. I think that speaks, Derek, in a broader sense of what we were talking about earlier, the fact that we as an organization have to wear a number of different hats in terms of where these markets are in their life cycle, right? We have startup markets, we have early entry markets, and then we have markets that are scaled markets, right? Like markets here in Florida and everything in between. This team's ability to walk and chew gum at the same time from an operational perspective is really second to none. It's not just a single strategy, it's you're balancing and you're really pushing those markets that are at different evolutions in their growth cycle, simultaneously.
Thanks.
Thanks, Derek.
Hi. Mackenzie Boydston, BTIG. Just a question on your home state of Florida. I know last quarter you guys saw a nice rebound in March, particularly on margins as well, and just the promotional environment. Any kind of update you can give quarter to date on trends in this market, particularly on the margin side, would be great.
Yeah. We're not gonna do any Q-QTD today. Sorry. We're only gonna be able to speak on available public information. Alex, if you wanna talk about kind of what we saw in Q1 and any color commentary on that, and you just need to take the mic and stand up.
Yeah. I think in Q1, what you saw was a pickup over Q4. You know, obviously, Florida is a big part of our footprint, so a driver there, right? I think, you know, we look forward, again, we're not gonna give QTD information, but we look forward to pick up in the second half from a margin perspective, as we build out in other markets and also leverage Florida, which should also flow down to our adjusted EBITDA.
Yeah. I would just say, also kind of listen in the second part of the conversation where, with both Gina and Nilyum are gonna talk a bit about our strategy and our focus on, just in terms of how we think about promotions and how we really are driving personalization efforts. We launched in Florida in Q1 our CDP, customer data platform. I think there's definitely a focus by the team to make sure that we are delivering that right product, right price, right time, right store, which of course adds to insulation of margin across different product lines. Yeah.
Thank you, Kim. Kenric Tyghe, ATB Capital Markets. Just looking at the Jefferson campus this morning, night and day compared to what we'd seen a couple of years ago. Can you speak to how you're positioning both in terms of availability, consistency of availability, frankly, just the operational excellence we're seeing out of that facility has actually served to not only differentiate, but essentially provide some sort of a moat through the last year or 18 months. It's been a particularly tough and competitive market.
Mm-hmm.
Yet few, if any of your competitors have made the inroads that were expected, frankly. I think that obviously speaks to a bit of a fortress Florida type of approach. Anything you could speak to that would be really useful.
Yeah. Again, you'll hear from Kyle, who you guys heard from a bit this morning, in terms of the specifics around that site and kind of our thought process around cultivation, in terms of a national strategy. Here in Florida, though, it's funny, and I kind of always laugh a bit because I remember when we were going public in 2018, you know, we had 50%+ share, you know, that every single question was around, "Well, I need to model this going to 20% in the next three years." You know, here we sit today, and it's a testament to the team and what we do every day in terms of our ability to maintain position in Florida, in a competitive environment.
I think that the main message is that we're not slowing down. We've never slowed down. We don't slow down in any of our markets. We're continuing to innovate. One of our themes at Trulieve is incremental improvement. You may have heard that today. We're constantly evaluating, we're constantly pushing the envelope, and our biggest competitor is ourselves. That's also something that we say often. I think that to your point, our ability to have scale in Florida or in any market absolutely provides insulation to noise and to you know, volatility in the market. You know, our ability to gain efficiencies, drive down costs, it makes us again have the ability to be more inquisitive as it relates to R&D, pull out more products without sacrificing existing product lines, right? It's not an either/or analysis for us.
We're able to offer both to the consumer, do true A/B testing, and then either scale or not, a particular product line or innovation based on customer response and reaction. It absolutely provides us, you know, flexibility and optionality, which is something we're always looking for in the cannabis space. Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi, Vivien Azer from Cowen.
Hi.
Recent commentary from retailers like Target and Walmart suggests that, you know, the price-sensitive consumer is continuing to weaken. What kind of trends can you talk about in terms of consumption you're seeing maybe in the mainstream and value segments?
Yep.
Recently?
Yeah. Again, if you can ask that question again on the next section, because I definitely want to give both, Tim Morey, our Chief Sales Officer, as well as, Gina Collins, our Vice President of Marketing, an opportunity to answer that question more specifically. What I can tell you and what we've continuously said is that we continue to see increased activity in both the value segment and the premium segment. I think, you know, we are embracing that data. I mean, we're embracing that data. We're a very data-forward company. When we talk about doing things like product innovation or, and sometimes that means a whole new form factor, other times that means repositioning within an existing product line or category.
Today you heard from us as an example, with our ground product, which is squarely a value product. It's a Roll One brand. We've rebranded that under Roll One under our flower portfolio, our combined Harvest and Trulieve portfolio of products, that every two weeks we offer a single strain ground launch, right? That is speaking directly to that value customer, treating them with a bit of a premium, a more premium product within that ground segment. At an attractive price point.
I think for us, it's as much of, you know, certainly being strategic with promotions and being thoughtful in terms of how we're speaking to a customer, but also, again, that personalization that you're gonna hear about and leaning into, and creating a bit of a differentiated experience or a differentiated product offering among and for that value customer. You know, we don't want our value customers to feel like they just get the leftovers, and then it just becomes kind of this race to the bottom or, you know, this non-differentiated strategy. For us, it's important to have a differentiated strategy at each tier of our products.
Hi, Andrew Partheniou from Stifel GMP.
Hi.
This is a two-part question on, focused on M&A, thinking about the past and looking to the future. For the past, could you talk a little bit about lessons learned or the things that both Steve and Kim, you've learned from each other's organization-
Mm-hmm.
That you found was unmatched in the industry? For the forward part of the question, thinking about M&A, which seems like the commentary has definitely turned, or had a different tone now than in the past. Thinking about your capital position, do you have a certain optimal leverage that you look at? You know, how are you thinking about the balance sheet, and are you thinking about funding things internally or looking towards capital markets, even though we are seeing a challenging period now? Thanks.
Yeah, that was like a three-part question with subparts. I'm gonna do my best here, and you're gonna have to keep me honest. I'll lead off. Guys, this is what we're gonna do. I'm gonna lead off with the lessons learned from my vantage point, at least on the Harvest Trulieve transaction. I'll kick it to Steve to give his thoughts there and then also maybe take us through kind of high-level M&A. Then, Alex, we'll end with you around the financial positioning and how we're thinking about funding sources. I think that's all the parts, right? Okay. All right. Lessons learned from Harvest. I would say a couple of key lessons. One, really, it was our first foray into a market that had recently transitioned to recreational, right?
The team's execution and their excellence during that transition was extraordinary. I mean, it was very, very impressive, and we certainly are excited to have that level of expertise on board as we position ahead of those catalysts coming in key markets. I think that was a really you know, fantastic to have a front row seat to what happened there because our talks had started quite frankly prior to that actual execution happening. We really did have a like I said, a front row seat to that. Second, I would say that as a result of Harvest, we now have a different organizational structure, which is huge for us. I mentioned this to some of you earlier, the fact that we have
I'm very passionate about a flat organization and a matrix organization, particularly in a high-growth industry because of our ability and really focusing on the entrepreneurial spirit and our ability to pivot with new information, which is important. We were organized, Trulieve historically was organized with deep levels of expertise across different skill sets that then cross-communicated. Harvest was organized in really a state-first structure. We blended those two strategies into the current Trulieve organization. We've maintained our deep levels of expertise so that we can have cross-collaboration across departments, if you will.
The cultivation teams from Arizona are talking to the cultivation teams and sharing best practices with the teams from Pennsylvania or Maryland and Florida, right? All of that knowledge and very specific deep information can be shared, yet at the same time, allowing decision-making to happen in a very meaningful way at the state level because it does matter the regulatory structure you're in. It does matter, and it's very important to understand what the trends look like and, where the market's headed at that state level. Blending those two together, I think has, had a huge impact on our organization to the positive and again, is repeatable as we continue to scale across hubs, and across states.
Kind of overlaying that now, we have this hub team that really takes the best of that and blends it together. I think that's a pretty meaningful fallout, if you will, from that transaction. Steve?
Yeah. I would say that Kim actually identified the most important one, which is that blending of two different organizational structures and how to do that right, the right way. I think in terms of lessons learned, I think all of that goes back to your integration process and being really deliberate about thinking through and understanding the new assets that you're gonna be operating and what's the best way to do it.
It's really hard if you're digesting a company the size of Harvest and closing inside of five months to fully understand the intricacies of how Western Pennsylvania works relative to Eastern Pennsylvania, when you are taking on a number of additional states. It's really about setting up a process that Kim talked about and a way to digest new assets, and then a way to be very intentional about how you do integration and how you understand the targets that you're acquiring.
Okay. In terms of, I'll just answer it like, yeah, we're not gonna be using stock to purchase anything soon. Before anyone says anything differently. You know, it's gonna be a minute, I think, on that front. Alex, do you have any other additional points?
Yeah. I'll take the balance sheet question. In the last seven months, we just raised $425 million clean, right? No OID, no warrants, at industry-leading rates. I'm comfortable where we are in our debt position right now. If you look at our debt to adjusted EBITDA, we're under 1.5. If you look at net debt, we're under one, right? I think we have the ability to even take on more for the right reasons. We're starting to see some additional funding sources open up, some bank-type financing at even lower rates, right? As long as you're working within reasonable covenants and ratios, which we are, to me, it's not so much about a debt number, it's about what you're doing with it.
Are you optimizing assets? Are you using it for a strategic acquisition like we did following the Harvest acquisition, right? Repositioning the balance sheet and then optimizing those assets and building out, like I said, that infrastructure to support the leading retail. That's why we did it. It's not a keep the lights on thing, it's a pivot point for strategic initiatives.
Yeah. I would just say that obviously, we've since the very beginning, I mean, we were founder funded. That's how we started. That's in our DNA as a company. I mean, it's a regular view of cash and cash flow and how we're investing that cash. You know, again, I've said I love being in this position. I love and feel very humbled and proud to be the CEO. But the day that I'm concerned about how we're going to pay bills and keep lights on is likely the day that I begin that exit transition. That's just not how we've built this company, and that's not how we're going to run this company. Okay.
On that note, I think we are at a point where we're going to take a quick 10-minute break, and then we'll get you guys ready for the main event, which is our operational team. Okay? Thanks. All right. We are going to continue our presentation. Now we're gonna pivot to our operational team, which I'm very excited for you to have the opportunity to meet and hear from today. We are gonna start with Kyle Landrum, who is our Chief Production Officer. Kyle is one of the OGs of the Trulieve team.
He started with us when we were at our single cultivation and production site in Gadsden County, out of an old tomato packing plant, and has literally been with us all the way through to what you saw today and with who we are today. Kyle has a reputation of working shoulder to shoulder, and his very, I would say, interactive and engaging management style earns him always top praise from his peers among the executive team, but also in with his managers and his employees. It is my absolute pleasure to introduce you today to Kyle Landrum.
All right. Thank you, Kim. Yeah, as mentioned, I'm definitely one of the OGs, so I've started with Trulieve in October of 2017. To put a little bit of perspective on that, Kim mentioned that we've got 22 different production sites across the nation now. We only had just two here in the state of Florida. To say that we've had a little bit of expansion and growth, for sure, definitely an understatement. Few of the departments that I manage now is all of the cultivation and processing assets across the nation, the facilities and engineering teams, the research and development, and most recently, the construction and expansion departments. Oh, let's get my little baby here. All right. Cool.
What did everybody think of the Jefferson County campus and the 750,000 sq ft building? Yeah. Thumbs up. I see I got two thumbs up. Yeah. That's, it's been super impressive to see what the design and engineering teams have been able to do with that building, and really just the operational execution to bring that facility up to the phase of what you saw today. You know, plants buzzing, trays moving, cranes grabbing things, super interesting stuff. Really, that's just frankly, you know, one example of the innovation that we've got going on throughout the organization, and particularly just in my area.
Some of my other cohorts, like Tim and Gina, they'll be able to speak to what's going on in their area as well. Through the different M&A activity that Kim's put me on the road for four-plus years now, I've been able to view, vet, and look underneath the hood of all of these different cultivation and processing assets, really throughout the country. You know, we keep going back to, there's not a better build than the 24K model for right time, right place, at the right cost.
You know, then ultimately, what falls out of that is really a quality build that we can become super lightning fast to the first harvest and really deploy it in several markets depending on what the strategy is for that particular state. I would say early on, you know, the Florida market was really the incubator for that particular building type. What we've now been able to do is recognize that we needed two different models. After we determined that 750,000 sq ft building is what fell out of that. That's our secondary production facility. What you can really see with the level of automation, it's a true production plant, right? It runs 24 hours a day.
It runs seven days a week. Runs the holidays, doesn't take vacations or PTO. It is extremely low touch from the standpoint of human interaction. We use cranes to remove the particular grow pods and really bring that work to the station and the particular employee to help reduce their production costs ultimately. Let's kick over here. All right, let's transition and talk a little bit about more of the cultivation different types, nationwide across our different network and all those different 22 different sites. We've got an array of indoor, both single stack like you saw today. Also multi-tiered, so double and some triple.
We've got a greenhouse sector along with the outdoor operations as well. These purpose-built facilities harvest hundreds of thousands of pounds per year. What they do is they feed our internal network of branded product with our strategy of pushing the branded product through branded retail. Let's talk a little bit about the National Cultivation Leadership team. It's comprised of a diverse amount of folks with different growing experiences in basically any type of different climate, both that come from traditional cannabis and then also classically trained through university programs and large-scale agriculture.
I'd say it's safe to say from your tour today, that we're unmatched when it comes to the level of cultivation scale and operations that we have amongst our peers. That really just comes down to the different horticultural techniques, the top-tier plant inputs, and really just overall the management team in which we have placed to operate all these assets efficiently as we do. Think about the cultivation division in really four main categories, or this is how we think about it. Genetic portfolio or curation, crop performance, fertilizer manufacturing and optimization, which everybody was able to see today, and we talked a little bit of the TruBlend and how we use it nationwide now. Then really the integrated pest management program, along with the plant pathology team.
Let's click here. Okay. All right, so one area that we were not able to see, well, one of many, we were not able to visit the tissue culture lab, which is located right here in North Florida. It was about an hour or so from the facility you saw today in at the Jefferson County campus. But it's led by Dr. Zapata, which has roughly 20 years of tissue culture production. What she's been able to do is advance us forward the fastest among our peer set in the realm of the tissue culture lab. What we do with that is we use it as a genetic database for all of our production cuts, along with them being inside of our actual production facilities.
It's essentially our safety stock, and we talked a little bit about the different strains and quantities that we had on the tour today. All right. Okay, one thing that you saw today among several is we are not going to compromise on the use of automation where it makes sense and technology to be able to drive that production cost down that everybody is so anxious to ask me about. You know, what that's done is basically led us to increase quality, lower production costs, and really we use it in other facets of the business more so than you just saw today as well. All right. Okay, let's hop over to the processing a little bit here. Simultaneously, we're building this massive grow system and scale.
We've gotta have the processing assets and the supply chain distribution network equally matched, to be able to get all these different products, to our customer bases in an efficient manner across these markets and hubs. Really we're able to create these innovative products, with some of the top experts in our particular field for multiple levels and different types of extraction technology. You saw the large ethanol extractor today. We've witnessed the CO2 extractors along with our hydrocarbon product and our mechanical separation was at a different site.
Really having these experts allows us to be able to develop and deliver these innovative products across our network. They ultimately really don't do it just by themselves of the teams that you saw or witnessed today. We've got continuous improvement teams that focus on optimization, one piece flow. We've got design and engineering teams that you know systematically lay out these large production lines across the country. Really, and then also in addition, reliability uptime engineers, quality assurance programs, it really starts to paint the picture of a complete production system that you witnessed today. Supply chain. We're able to through our long-term and short-term planning deliver the products, the right products to the right customer at the right time, at the right price.
That really is not just a strategy in which you can generate half-heartedly, if you will. Through thought, the thought process of really understanding and getting down to what creates production issues, delays, non-conformances, et cetera, you can really then start to optimize, reduce waste, and then ultimately put that product at the right place, at the right time, at the right price for our customers to purchase. All right, so everybody's probably wondering what's on the screen. A funny anecdote. I found Steve one day at the end of my cookies line sweeping them off. No, I'm just kidding. He thought about it, I know he did. Yeah. This is product coming off the line in our Tampa facility, our Tampa processing facility as well.
Down there is housed a full array of high-speed automated equipment for gummy production, chocolate production, and confections. This particular one just happens to be a set of chocolate chip cookies going off the line. All right. Research and development. Co-located with our tissue culture lab, we have decided to invest in an innovation center in a big way. This has been a multi-year product or project for us. It's currently operated by the Trulieve research and development team.
It's really a set of teams and folks that have an array of diverse background all the way from your legacy cannabis innovator, entrepreneur, all the way up to PhD chemists and formulation engineers that helps drive these innovative products through our retail networks. Let's think about how the center operates. It's really in kind of three main tiers. First is that new product innovation and development coupled with the new product commercialization and actually bringing those products to market. Second, it houses a full analytical lab with full capabilities as well, which you can do clarity compounds, work on minor cannabinoids.
All the instrumentation in which you would need to be able to do that is located inside of our innovation center. Finally, the innovation center also allows us to concentrate the knowledge here at the center, document the processes, and then deploy across the different hubs these new products when we're ready to bring that particular item to market and the customer demand signals that we do. They offer more. It's process support and optimization. I wanna walk everybody through some of the different products that we saw today and that we offer in our portfolio. It's a full array of different live butters, live diamonds, live meringue, live resin.
What that ultimately means is it's the closest to the particular plant that we've been able to replicate. It's been a huge hit in not just the Florida market, but those brands and products have also been deployed across the other hubs. Another very popular one has been the TruTonic drink powder in our Florida network here. We're still seeing the demand increase for that particular item. RSO tinctures were a doctor recommendation and a doctor ask for us. We developed a strain-specific RSO tincture that actually tastes really good.
Some of the other types of items are, you know, gonna be our Primo buds and some value and different value-sized edibles, both in our brands and also brand partners. All right. With that, I wanna hand it over to Tim. He's gonna talk to us a little bit about the customer experience. Then really everybody today that came out, thank you. I hope you saw the passion amongst the team to be able to share their craft with you and what they're able to, the experiences they're able to bring to our customer base across Florida and our nationwide network. Tim.
Thank you, Kyle. I appreciate it. I guess if Kyle's an OG, I'm just a G. I've only been here now for three years at Trulieve, on the retail side of the business. When I got here, we actually had 21 stores. I had 687 employees. Today, fast-forward three years later, I have 168 stores, as you heard earlier, and I have over 4,000 employees that report to me in the different departments across the company. I have over 20+ years experience in the retail sector, a lot of it in operations, retail sector as well, and then, you know, large scale team building and operations multi-state. Here at Trulieve, we're really passionate and obsessed with the customer experience.
I think that goes to say that in most, you know, retail operations, a lot of people will say that. You know, I've like I said, 20+ years in the industry, I've never seen a group that's as passionate as it is in the cannabis space. It's really great to be able to take a customer on a journey. We have three different journeys and paths that we really focus on here at Trulieve, and that is the delivery at the home. It's also our express or order online pickup in store.
Our walk-in, which is really, you know, you see a lot of the customers coming in that are new to the space that need a consultation, a little bit more knowledge, and you get to spend a little bit more time with them and really start their journey in cannabis the right way. You know, several years ago, Alex kind of talked about COVID and how it hit. It hit, you know, a lot of people really hard, but I think it was interesting for us to be able to look at how the path and the journey automatically changed, what the consumer was looking for, right? It went what was totally mostly walk-in business, what we started with, and it all moved over to delivery and then the express pickup.
In a six-week period of time, we were able to gather our leadership team and say, "Okay, how are we gonna do this differently? How are we gonna change the path? How are we gonna make things better and continue that great experience?" Within a six-week period of time, we were actually able to double our delivery fleet, flip what our employees' job descriptions were for some of them, add technology to the in-store pickup process. We were able to text the individuals. They could put themselves in line. We would text them to come in, so we could add speed, efficiency, right, and keep the environment safe for them.
that just kind of shows you that the scale and the pivotability that we have here at Trulieve is we were able to really make that adjustment in a very short period of time without skipping a beat on the overall experience for the consumer. Our frictionless returns. Our customers love our frictionless returns here at Trulieve. Our return percentage is under 1%, but it's one of those that it's a benefit to the customer. If you think about, you get a product, and it just doesn't have the effect or doesn't work the way that you want it to, bring it back, right? You'll talk to one of our individuals, our budtenders, and they'll figure out, "Let's try this one. I think this is going to get the effect that you're looking for," right?
We'll take that back for them and send them home because our goal is to make sure that when they leave, they leave happy, and they leave with the product that they're looking for to get the experience and the effects that they want. If they don't, we'll try it again. We'll make sure that we take care of them, and they get what they need before they leave one of our stores. Our loyalty program, we've got rewards, perks, you know, veterans programs, some really great things in our loyalty program, and Gina's gonna talk a little bit more about that, in part of her segment. Our retail footprint. You know, I talked earlier about building large teams.
One of the things about, you know, that I am glad that I had the past experience over these 20 years, 'cause in my year one, we went from 21 stores to 48. We doubled the fleet, doubled the team, and didn't look back. The next two years, if you can think about it right in the two-year period of time, 48- 168. So fast-paced, really a lot of strategic planning and making sure that I had the right leaderships and the right hubs that can support the overall organization and drive the expansion that's needed. 30% of the stores are located outside of Florida, and again, that's a testament to that hub, and being able to have the right leadership and tuck in, right, a new opportunity wherever it exists out there.
This year, we are opening 25-30 new stores. We're very strategic about how we do our stores. We have a great team that I work with that we select locations, we look at opportunities, we determine the metrics that are needed, right, and the profitability. We make sure that when we put it all together, when that site is agreed upon, right, the entire team, finance to real estate to, you know, my retail teams are all in alignment that it's the best thing for the company. I think Steve talked about we're gonna relocate 6 locations here in Florida. You know, the main reason we're going to relocate those is early in cannabis, as most of you know, the opportunity for site selection was not as vast as it is today.
It was a little bit more of a challenge. Some of those deals you had to get early on to get a site wasn't necessarily what you were looking for either. We've got an opportunity to relocate six stores. When we relocate those stores, you know, or reposition them, it's all about the customer experience and the profitability and doing it for the right reason. Our product strategy. You know, our product strategy really is been since I joined the team, first and foremost, listen to the customer. It's our priority, right? The customer is going to tell you exactly what they're looking for and the types of products and the demand and the quantities.
You know, I got a great partner in Kyle that, you know, we can take that data that's provided to us, and we look at it, and we assess it, and we determine the needs, and then we go make those and deliver them to the right store at the right time at the right price. That really just makes things kind of flow through, which is, you know, all about our national pricing strategy as well, making sure that, you know, we have that value, we have that premium. Then, you know, you have a mid-tier that is needed in that process as well. There's really three different things that are three different levels that are needed in the product mix out there. That again comes from the customer demand.
We're really big on gathering data, as Kim talked about, and then using that data to have the customer tell us. We do a fantastic job, I think, with our feedback loops and, you know, listening to our team. You know, we have all these 9,000 employees out there. What are they hearing, right? I have a customer care center that listens to the customers, and they call in for different reasons or need help, consultations, right, or needs a different product. Listening to all of them. We've got an online digital team, listening to them as well.
When you think about all of the resources we have to determine what the product is that's needed and goes market by market, you know, we've got a tremendous array of data to make sure that we get that right. In our national pricing strategy, you know, we look across the country. We try to find market-by-market analysis, talk to the teams on the ground, right? What fits the market, and where do we fit in there with our value proposition? Right products at the right price. That's the key, is making sure that we have that for our customer. Somebody had asked the question, I think earlier, and Kim talks about it all the time, is premium and value. We call it the barbell effect.
That is really or I mean two distinct categories where the customer's telling us they want to be right now, is in that premium and that value. We spend a lot of time working on our competitive analysis by markets, reviewing the information by state, by hub, right? It's all about what is the customer demand, and are we delivering on what the customer is asking us for. Wholesale. We took Harvest and we took Trulieve. Trulieve was just getting into the wholesale business. Harvest was already there. We were able to take those two teams and combine them into across seven states and really focus on taking them right to the hub strategy.
Now we have leadership, right, in each of the hub strategies, not only for retail, but we also have it for the wholesale side of the business. We make sure that, you know, we're listening to what the customer is telling us on the wholesale side of the business as well. They want differentiated items, right? We can do some gap analysis. Where is the opportunities in the marketplace? Where are the things that will set us apart? Pulling our brand portfolio, which Gina will talk to, right, a fantastic conversion of the two companies, has created this great brand portfolio that we have, not only for the retail side, but for the wholesale side as well.
We believe in really working through reciprocal relationships with our partners throughout the state and throughout the country, and making sure that, you know, we have fair value in what we take from them and they take from us, and that we drive the business in what the customer is looking for. Our success factors. You know, this was so hard to kinda think through as there's so many of them. But one of the ones that really stood out to me is, as you think about what we've accomplished, right, in six short years since the first sale in this company to where we are today, absolutely unbelievable. You know, it all started with, you know, Steve said, right, it's about the customer, right? One patient at a time or one customer at a time.
Our reciprocal and authentic relationships that we create with those customers. We're out in the communities. We're working with the individuals. We're trying to make sure that when you visit one of our locations, you walk away feeling great about the service you receive, right, and that the products you got were at a great value, right, and they were what you wanted. It's about the quality, broad selection, and the value that we have in our products. We've got dedicated leadership in each one of these hubs. You know, I've got a fantastic leadership team in each one of them. You know, the hub, then it's down to the state and, you know, great teams across all of our complement of stores out there, and states.
We focus on our hiring is about that customer-first mentality and making sure that, you know, you have a servant leadership. You're in the background and thought of a service industry, hospitality. It's about creating that journey, that path, and that great customer experience when you walk into a Trulieve store. We spend a lot of time training our employees, making sure that they're customer-centric, that they have the product knowledge that's needed to ensure that they deliver, right, and answer the questions that the customer is looking for. I think, you know, one of the biggest things in the success factor is this group right here. It's amazing. I've worked in several companies, and this group right here is a tight-knit team. We cross-collaborate all the time.
A problem comes up, it's not Kyle's problem, it's not Tim's problem, it's not Nilyum's problem, it's our problem. We sit down in a room, and we solve it together as to what's best for the customer. Always putting the customer first at everything we do. With that, I'm gonna turn it over to Gina to talk to you a little bit about our marketing and brands.
Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Gina Collins. I'm the newest member of the team. I joined in first quarter of this year, and prior to coming to Trulieve, I started my career in big corporate consulting, where then I transitioned to CPG and spent over a decade at The Coca-Cola Company. From there, spent another decade in retail for which then transitioned to helping smaller and larger cannabis companies. I share that with you, number one, so you can get to know me a little better, but most importantly, it's why did I come to Trulieve and what do I believe is truly the differentiating factor of Trulieve in this amazing industry and space. That is the focus on customer. Everybody here has talked about it today, but for a marketer, it's a dream.
Everybody talks about the use of data and how we'll get there. Trulieve really started from the beginning, and I think that builds the basis of a true competitive advantage. I'm gonna tell you about some of the priorities of the team today. Oops. Wrong way. That would help. There we go. When we talk about branding in cannabis, we have to first think about the relationships between the brand categories. We have the corporate organization and the corporate brand. This exists to provide stakeholder value. How do we do that? We invest wisely. We have really strategic M&A, choice-ful partnerships, and the track record of profitability again that Alex and just about everybody talked about today. What does that lead to? That leads to the retail brand. This is where it happens for the customer, right? We've talked about the customer all day today.
This is where Trulieve comes to life. We offer them amazing products that have been driven by their need states. We do that with exemplary customer service, as Tim discussed, and we bring that together in a constant and a consistent education about the plant, which is truly differentiated. Product and development, of course then, are led by the customer. Innovation drives demand, and if you think about it that way, the demand is driven by the need. If we're meeting the customer's need, at the end of the day, we're satisfying them. That builds customer loyalty. It builds differentiation for us to use looking forward, right? For all the exciting things that were mentioned here today. Got it right that time. Brand hierarchy and our in-house brands. Everybody talked about this a little bit today, too. Again, coming back to what's different about Trulieve.
They are focused on the priority of branding before I think most are in the industry. They understand what it means because it's coming from the customer lens. Our brands are not only divided by need, but they're divided by the hierarchy of need state and macro conditions. What do I mean by that? Let's talk about the value line. Value. Our value products are recognizable strains. They're consistent product offerings, and they allow new customers to enter the market in trial, right? A lot of times, cannabis can be overwhelming. It is our passion to educate. When they come in and they meet with one of the retail associates, this is the retail associate's opportunity to provide entrance into the marketplace. The mid-tier and the mass offering is just as you would expect.
This is a variety of categories that literally takes us from the flower all the way to the topical, whatever your need state may be as a customer. For the premium piece, this is exactly what you would assume. This is the true connoisseur that understands the difference between the genetics, the lights that we may use to grow, the hand-trimming nature of flower, and of most recently, as Kyle mentioned, live products. I'm gonna get this down before this presentation is over, 'cause I went the wrong way again. There we go. Partner brands. Also talked a lot about those. These are relationships that in some markets, which are super important to cannabis, local, local. We've partnered with them and we've built them from the ground up, all the way to nationally established products that we know our customers are looking for.
It basically, when you take the proprietary products and combine them with a partner, it is a mix like no other. Again, focused to serve that customer for every need state that they may have. Nope. There we go. What does that lead to? Omnichannel. Tim started to touch on this. This is all about seamless and effortless experience across all customer touch points. One thing I'll share with you that I personally found super interesting in my last several months here is in this year alone, we've had over 100 million hits to our site. Well, where does the customer journey start? Of course, in most industries today, it starts on a mobile device. From that mobile device, they come to our site. From that site, we can track them all the way through the journey.
It's from the point of entry to the point of sale. Because we have such a mature establishment of the data platforms behind it, we know where we're winning and where we can improve. Whoop. I did it again. There we go. What does that mean? It takes us to the outreach piece, right? If we're serving them through retail and we're serving them through their journey, how are we speaking to them and how are we messaging them? Because that matters, too. I think one of the most exciting things that I wanted to talk about today is three examples of where we've recently gotten to a place where we're testing different strategies with our customer base. We recently focused on a concentrate positioning, a premium flower positioning, and then we have an ongoing effort to reconnect with our customers.
For the concentrate example, we split the audience into two bases. One, any of our customers that had shown interest previously in concentrates or actually purchased concentrates. On the other side, the rest of the customer base that had simply shopped with us before. The targeted messaging piece delivered a double-digit improvement in click-to-open rates. That's impressive. The next example was Primo. You heard Kyle talk about it is one of our premium flower brands. Beautiful to look at, large buds. We went into the database, and again, scoured for those that are truly interested, those connoisseurs in premium flower. We sent one group of messages to them and another group of messages to the broader-based audience. This one was double-digit improvement of revenue over the other. Think about that in the long term.
When a company gets to a place that every targeted message is intended to increase revenue and meet the need of the customer at the same time, that is your marketing nirvana, and we've already started that process here. Again, coming back to why it's truly differentiated and why Trulieve is truly differentiated. On the lapsed guest, right? Every retailer has this, and if they have the ability to know when did they last shop? What are their shopping patterns? We can speak to them in a way that is supportive and consultative, right? So if a customer hasn't shopped in 30 days, we now have a message that goes out to them and says, "Hey, we've noticed you haven't been here in a couple of days." We also know what was previously in their cart. So we offer them some. Again, education is our passion.
Maybe some advisement on new products that might be specific to them. 60 days, same message, just a little bit of a different twist. 90 days, different message, truly re-engaging, more focused on, did you know? Right? At the end of the day, the revenue results we're getting from this last lapsed guest work is 2x and 3 x what the industry benchmark would be in any other retailer that would share their metrics with you. That is giving you an insight into where we are today. What I encourage you to think about is we're already able to do this now. Think about what we can do 30 days from now. Think about what we can do 60 days from now and 90 days. We're truly ahead of the game, and I can't emphasize that enough.
The reason why we're there is our technology team has built an amazing infrastructure that allows us to do it with ease and have access in real time. Nilyum is gonna speak to you about that today. Thought I would get there.
Okay, IT is gonna bring it home. There will be a quiz at the end, so please pay attention. Between summary and closeout Q&As, there are three slides. I'm Nilyum Jhala. I'm the Chief Technology Officer. Been at Trulieve for close to a year, and what a year it has been. I started my career over 20 years ago at a startup company. Have worked various retails and wholesale, and a combination of over the last two decades. Now for the past year at Trulieve, truly honored to be part of a team that is playing to win. I thought that I could run fast. These guys run faster.
I'm trying to figure out a way to keep up and technology to be at a place where we can work with the Kyles and the Ginas and the Tims of the world, and with Alex breathing down my neck on a SOX year to make sure our systems are representative of a publicly traded company that is running into a SOX year. I'm gonna focus on one theme and three key focus areas today. Data-driven decision-making. We're gonna talk about data-driven decision-making. We're gonna talk about SAP and technology infrastructure. We're gonna talk about stuff that Gina talked about in terms of consumer data or customer data platforms, omni-channel, hyper-personalization, and how some of these things come to life.
I will start with the theme and you have heard it repeatedly over a long period of time. Everybody touched on it, and it's our customer obsession. We are truly customer obsessed. From the product innovation to what we create in the labs, to what we manufacture, how we ship it, how the frictionless return policy works, how our marketing is staged, how our labeling is made. It is all focused on providing the best customer experience in front of our customer every time. How we do it? You know, you heard a bunch of things around data-driven decision-making. Gina talked about two examples of hyper-personalizing or targeting experiences.
You know, a couple of examples of how we have recently done it is we pick the top 1% customers, or we have the capability to pick the top 1% of customers and reach out to them in a one-on-one personalized basis to say, "Hey, you are a concentrate customer, and we have a Primo concentrate drop coming that is going to be of a limited quantity, and we would like for you to participate in that." You guys talked about margins, and you guys talked about a bunch of other things. Without sharing the numbers, when we are looking at data, the customer is telling us across all of our touch points what they want, when they want, how they want, and at what price points they want.
We have the capabilities to go out and target and hyper-personalize the experience. Gina also talked about engaging the customers who shopped with us at one point in time and then phased out because they got busy with life or another location opened close to them, or for whatever reason. We go back and touch them and we offer a personalized message to say that, "Hey, we haven't forgotten about you.
We know that you are a flower customer or you shop in a particular category and we have a big drop coming, or we have a particular deal coming that you probably may be interested in. We repeat this process through our campaigns and through our automation, 10 x a day. With the launch of the consumer data platform, I'll talk a little bit about the technology behind that in a couple of slides. That provides us the capability to look at the click-through rates just in time, so we hit them once, and if they are amenable, we will hit them again just in case if we have not seen the response come from a specific customer in a given period of time.
We made a big investment in SAP as our core backbone platform. In 2020, we launched in an industry unheard timeframe of five months from ideation to launch in Q4 2020. Kyle showed some numbers where he showed that we had 14.2 million units produced in 2020 and 25.1 million units produced in 2021. Our SAP infrastructure was able to scale gracefully to support that volume. We purchased SAP, and we continue to invest in that platform to future-proof our business. We are not just planning for today and just trying to survive or thrive in today's market.
When you talk about margin pressures, when you talk about the macro conditions that are coming into place, SAP is an ecosystem that we are doubling down on to make sure that we can size up and scale to the extent that we need to. We are also going deeper with best-in-class availabilities and capabilities that SAP ecosystem provides. Tim mentioned that. Tim mentioned it, Steve mentioned it, that we started with a small footprint of customers. We started with a small footprint of employees, and we are sitting 9,000+ . To manage those 9,000 customers and/or to manage those 9,000 employees to make sure we are taking care of their benefits, their payroll, their personal information and being judicious about it.
In order to do that, we just launched SAP SuccessFactors as well, the beginning of May. That provides us an ability to take care of our employees so they can take care of our customers and again, you know, continue on the journey of customer obsession, if you will. Another thing that we talked about in terms of M&A, we made a bunch of acquisitions, and every time you do that, it's a melding of cultures, it's a melding of systems. What can quickly happen is you had a team of size 10, and all of a sudden, you are managing this system that provides one capability across three different markets, and you have a team of 30 that do that. It. The cost starts to go out of control pretty quick.
We have an active roadmap that you know works towards assimilating technology, people, processes into our infrastructure from an SAP perspective. I think that is something that has been in action with the Harvest acquisition, where we are trying to harmonize processes. We are looking at the best of what Harvest offered from a best practice perspective, what Trulieve offer from a best practice perspective, or if there is a best practice available outside, and we pick one, and then we just consolidate towards that. There is a high degree of focus on all of that work that's happening. We are doing all of these things along with keeping the lights on and making sure the customer is taken care of as we continue to add stores.
We were able to flip all of Harvest Florida, cultivation, production, and stores in 30 days onto our systems, and that is unheard of. I'll close with the consumer data platform, omnichannel, and the hyper-personalization components. Gina talked a lot about it. Tim talked about it in terms of the frictionless return policy. Again, I think if you think about our customer obsession, we focus on increasing that customer engagement. The way you increase the customer engagement is by creating the connections. The way you create the connections is by generating insights. Again, to bring the conversation full 360, knowing the customers, knowing when they interact with us, how much do they wanna spend, what is their demographic, what age group is shopping what category, how much amount.
What is the amount of money that they are you know willing to spend? What is the time they are showing up into our stores? We are looking at all of that data and making those decisions to continue to make sure that we can create tailored experiences for those customers. We become the destination place for them to shop and increase lifetime value. Personalized messaging. What's happening in our industry right now is because of the rules and regulations that we have, we can hit up customers during a certain period of time with a certain amount of information that can go out there, so that handicaps us. Generally speaking, everybody goes out there and blasts a blanket message to a wide swath of customers.
That is cost prohibitive over a long period of time, and it is very generic. There is nothing special about it. We have generated capabilities at this point where we can personally message customers based on a store group, a store market, a particular category, and their shopping behaviors over any number of days. It could be 30, 60, 90, or a combination of. Unified commerce. Gina mentioned that digital journey. You come in through the website, you come in on your mobile phone, you walk into the store. We're trying to provide you a seamless connected experience attached with loyalty, and the product assortment that is available to you so you can have a easy, seamless, quick in-and-out experience out there. Again, all of this stands on knowing them better.
We are executing industry-best AI-driven platforms, artificial intelligence-driven platforms that are providing us the insights. Now, how do these platforms work? The more data you put in, the more tryouts you make. We talked about A/B testing and the more information, you know, comes in into our ecosystem. We have people who are actively looking at it multiple times a day to figure out how to tweak and what to tweak and when to tweak.
That basically goes back to a place where anything and everything that we do, any dollar that we spend in the technology ecosystem has to be attached to a strategy that is marketing informed, production driven, and store executed, because we are customer obsessed. With that, Kim, I'll let you summarize.
Thanks, Nilyum. Hopefully you enjoyed hearing from our executive team today. I again am just so proud to be in business with these folks. Really could not do this day-to-day without their support and their deep expertise and passion for what we're building together here at Trulieve. You know, just in conclusion, this is a generational investment opportunity, and there may be some bumps in the road from a macro perspective, but the thesis remains true. Quite frankly, for Trulieve, it's truer than ever. We are uniquely positioned within US cannabis to take full advantage of the opportunities ahead of us as a company and as an industry. We are laser-focused on building a leading and sustainable cannabis company to be that again winner at the end of the day.
We are and continue to focus on having the right talent, assets, and capital to meet this opportunity and believe that we are poised and ready to define the future of cannabis. Thank you guys again for your attention today. Thank you for all of our viewers on the webcast and for spending time with us to talk Trulieve. As I always say, onward. With that, we're gonna open it up to questions for the operations team. If anyone has any questions, feel free to queue up at the mic. Don't throw elbows.
Matt McGinley from Needham. My question is on with the investments in brands and branding, you clearly are gearing to grow that wholesale business to become a bigger part of your total mix, which today it's sub-10% of your total sales.
Mm-hmm.
Which, you know, is low compared to peers, but that just speaks to how strong your Florida business is. My question is, if you didn't grow that wholesale business as a percentage of mix, would you still be able to achieve those 60% gross margin targets and 40% EBITDA targets over the next few years? Or is that really contingent upon growth in that wholesale business, which would improve margins over time?
Yeah. Thank you, margin Matt. I would expect nothing less than a margin question. Actually interestingly enough, as I'm sure that you can appreciate, branded product through branded retail is actually a significantly higher margin contributor than the wholesale business. I think that the answer to that, I'm gonna give you my recovering lawyer answer, is that it depends, right? On how quickly we're also scaling retail, right? If we did not have a wholesale strategy, which we do, you know, we would in that instance, likely pivot to even more of a retail strategy. Honestly, one of the reasons that we are very comfortable with that long-term guidance is our strength in branded products through branded retail, our continued focus on that.
With understanding also the need for some diversification of in certain markets and in certain regulatory environments, limitations on the ability to have, again, branded products through branded retail. We will lead with that strategy, at least for the foreseeable future, while supplementing with, again, wholesale a more robust wholesale distribution platform.
I think with presentations, Aaron Grey, Alliance Global Partners. Just going off the use of data, Nilyum and Gina, from your presentations, you talked about how you're utilizing that data in the early days, both with hyper-personalization and some of the targeted offerings. Gina, you mentioned you guys are still kind of in the early days of utilizing that data. Just curious, from your previous experience in retail and traditional CPG, what do you feel like are some opportunities in terms of leveraging that data that aren't being used right now by Trulieve in the broader cannabis industry, and that could be used to make it more personalized and also create more of a moat, particularly for Trulieve in Florida, where you guys have such a large market share and a lot of competition coming after that. Thank you.
Gina?
Yeah.
You can take that.
Forgive me. I think that goes to the conversation of we're just starting to understand what the opportunity is. The moat infrastructure, if you will. We've already started the dig. I think it's the continued desire to make it deeper and deeper for that competitive advantage. I think as we get into the aspects of the platform as well as the contribution of the customer, meaning all of them are different, right? They've come to cannabis for different reasons, and that reflects in the product conversation of why we hierarchy them the way we do, right? You've got true cannabis connoisseurs, you've got folks that are kind of in the middle, and then ones that are truly new to the plant, which have a broader education need than the ones at the top.
To answer your question directly, I think it's a consistent and constant focus on what data are we gathering, how is it working for us? You saw some of those examples today. Specific to Trulieve, how can we make it work harder? That's really where I think Nilyum and I are partnering.
Yeah. I would just say, Aaron, one thing that you heard that I don't wanna gloss over, and I just wanna maybe highlight for you, is that the CDP system is new. What's not new is how we utilize feedback loops and how we listen and we're continuing to do that with our customers. We're coming when we're fashioning these campaigns, when Gina and Nilyum and the teams are sitting down to think about what does that A/B testing look like, we're coming from an informed place because of the years of information that we've gathered up to this point, right? Our ability to take and actually segment out that top, you know, connoisseur customer, comes from these years of data that we've been gathering in the Florida market specifically.
What you also heard is the AI nature of the systems that we're putting in place. The more campaigns that we're running and the more often we're trying these A/B testing, the more the more suggestions and the more tools in our toolbox in terms of which the system will generate suggested campaigns for us to run in different targeted markets. It's a constant evolving. It's sort of what you put in, it sort of multiplies, and it becomes exponential with time. I think to Nilyum's point, we have such a large swath of data that we put into the system coming in.
Our ability to have a moat is again, not surprisingly, particularly in the state of Florida, linked to our scale and our consistent focus on data up to now that we're now leveraging to Gina's point now, right? I mean, we're just starting to leverage it in a technology first way, whereas before we were leveraging it in an old school, you know, large databases and that data becomes very difficult to manage. Now we're making it work for us in a more expeditious and methodical way. Nilyum, I don't know if you have anything else to add to that.
The only thing that I would say is just to add to that. I think you guys covered it all, but we have large swaths of data, so we are customer obsessed. The key is we are in the process of, or we are in the early stages of transitioning how to influence what Kyle produces. If we can continue to optimize that to the T, then what it does is it reduces our overall spend footprint. The moment we optimize that, we would be. There is no equal right now. However, a lot of competition is coming in, and if we can nail that, which we believe we are on the journey and we have the investment behind that, we can nail that. I think we would be truly unbeatable across the board.
Great.
Hi. Derek Hsieh from Jefferies. Thank you for the presentation the whole day. It's been truly great. Just a question on cultivation processing. You know, I think we're all really impressed with the 750 sq ft facility. You know, I think what are the plans to implement that type of automation processing across the whole footprint? You know, does it make sense to actually make the investment into making those automations and scalable automations across the footprint in these markets that have limited licenses or limited cultivation caps rather? If it does, then you know, what is the future of these smaller types of facilities that we saw, the 24K and the 46Ks with more hands-on, you know, staffing? Thank you.
Sure. I'll start it, and then I'm gonna hand it off to you, Kyle. So the answer is that we foresee a mixed footprint. It's not a one-size-fits-all at this stage. Again, different markets are in different phases of evolution. That level of automation does not make sense under a certain scale. The type of investment and the ROI on that investment, you need to have the scale behind it to support. That being said, we continuously improve all types of footprints and add automation to all types of footprints where it makes sense. Again, that value proposition and that ROI has to fit.
Also keep in mind that while yes, the 750 is, you know, is certainly we think a key element of our future cultivation footprint, we still have data collection to do there, right? It's not completely online yet. We need to make sure that it's, you know, accountable to what we thought it was going to do, that the efficiencies are actually delivered. And that's something that we're gonna continue to measure and kind of think about, right, as those numbers actually come into reality. That being said, it also takes longer to bring that type of a facility online. And sometimes speed of market is perhaps, you know, wins, if you will, when we're weighing the options of cultivation styles in front of us.
What we've seen here in Florida is we run parallel paths, right? We've continued to build out 24K or the 46K, or, you know, up to a 100K in Florida while that building was coming online, which then we're able to slow that down because of the speed to construction, so that when that building comes online, we don't have, you know, an overabundance of capacity. It really is, it's not an either/or. Oftentimes we have to take into account all the different variables in a particular market and what we're forecasting for that market in terms of really what the best fit is for us. What we talked about before is having optionality.
That really is what we think is one of the most important aspects of being successful in the cannabis space is because things change very quickly. You need to be able to pivot and to take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves. Kyle, I don't know if you have any other adds.
Yeah. Kim did a great job, obviously, providing the synopsis on it. Just to kind of add in, we're in continuous improvement mode across the organization continually. Even though we've got a team that focuses specifically on that, they focus on teaching it, not just doing it. We want production centers and plants full of people that are thinking, "How can we do this the next best way?" Sometimes that doesn't mean investing in a crane to pick up pods and move around in a particular market or opportunity. Just,
Yeah. That really I mean, Kyle's really done a great job of bringing that mentality to the forefront, particularly in our cultivation, our production facilities, and really that mindset of continuous improvement. Even our 24 Ks, what you saw today is radically different than what you would've seen two years ago in those facilities.
Matthew Baker from Cantor Fitzgerald. Just a question regarding the company's footprint. When evaluating opportunities, we're just wondering how you guys think about New York and New Jersey markets, and then between the two, which one you guys think is better. Thank you.
Almost all day. I think, you know, we've been very consistent in terms of our messaging. Look, the Northeast is an important hub for us. We've continued to invest in the Northeast. Certainly, we love our positioning in Pennsylvania ahead of what we think to be a very meaningful catalyst, that's on the horizon there. Like our ability to really achieve depth and scale in that market ahead of that catalyst. I think that what you see in some of the other markets that you mentioned is there's gonna be a rush to now scale, right? It's sort of gonna be a bit of a, as we mentioned, you know, some elbow jabbing, trying to get that to happen, prior to recreational coming online.
Look, I would say this, never say never, but it has to meet our criteria. Some of that criteria centers around opportunity cost, it centers around price, and it centers around our ability to have a strategy that we feel comfortable articulating and executing, which in some cases does require some, I would call it, a regulatory certainty in terms of how some of those markets are going to develop. You know, I would just say that we remain opportunistic. Again, I wouldn't count us out, but we are thoughtful, and we are strategic in terms of where we spend our dollars. I'm very interested to see how both of those markets continue to develop.
You know, I'm hopeful that they turn into great, real, substantial opportunities and substantial markets. It's great for the industry, and it's great for the surrounding areas, which we plan to have a meaningful role in.
Hi, Eric Des Lauriers at Craig-Hallum. Certainly, throughout the day today, lots of focus on data feedback loops, the processes involved in getting, you know, the right product to the right customer at the right place. I'm wondering if you could talk to, let's see. You also referred to genetics and the.
Mm-hmm.
tissue culture lab that you guys are working on.
Mm-hmm.
Can you talk about how some of those data feedback loops and processes might also enable you to not just, you know, sort of, you know, maintain, share, and improve efficiency that you have right now, but perhaps, you know, stay ahead of consumer taste changes and really kind of, you know, lead on that edge of consumer tastes? Thanks.
Yeah, sure. Who wants to answer that? Anybody? I mean, I can take it. Tim, you wanna talk about that?
I can talk about it.
Okay. We thought we were gonna have a wheel up here, and we were just gonna spin it.
We'll see who's up next. No, I think it's a great question, and a lot of the, you know, from the feedback loop and the information data we're gathering, a lot of the consumers are telling us what's next and where they wanna go. You see a lot of, you know, everybody in the cannabis talks about West Coast to East Coast, right? It starts in the West, kinda works its way towards the East. There's a lot of in-between inside of there, where when you're really listening to the customer, you can hear about different things that they're asking for. You know, Kyle talked earlier about a lot of the live products. You know, those have been out in the marketplace for a while, but we weren't hearing a lot of that, right, in some of our states.
All of a sudden, it became the demand. With that, with our scalability in that listening mode that we're in, it was like, "Okay, it's here. Time to move," right? He already knew how to make it. We jumped right on it and, you know, launched and off we go. I think it's really important that you continue to listen to that consumer because they'll tell you where they wanna go.
Nilyum?
Yeah. A couple of things that I would say is, I think, there was a part of the question is you were talking about how are we looking ahead. We are a data-first company. However, the brand was built in, so there is OG, there is G, there is newbie. I am a little bit of a newbie, but you know, I love history. This company is built based on rolling up the sleeves and jumping in there. We run focus groups.
The way we run focus groups is we have an active stream as part of our consumer engagement, and we run focus groups with our budtenders because a large population of our employees participate in the lifestyle recreationally, or because they or somebody in their family, you know, is helped by the products that we create. We do that. All of these folks are of varying ages, so they tell us what works, what doesn't work, and what probably we should do. We also go out there and with the Harvest acquisition, with the recreational experience and the recreational data starting to come in there, we are running focus groups to figure out the customers who don't shop us, what are they looking for?
When they are going outside, what are they shopping for? That's also a data point that is coming in there. Then we go out there, and we do some paid focus groups as well, a third-party paid focus groups that basically tells us, call it secret shopping or what have you, that also tells us what we should be doing and what we should stop doing. I think that's, you know, additional set of data points for you.
I think also, just a final point is that also we think about like next generation in products that are having success. For example, I'll give you two quick examples. We onboarded nanotechnology a while back. We were really one of the pioneers, I think, in this space to really scale nano and begin using it in different formulated products. Then when we looked at, for example, the drink space, and we were thinking about, okay, that's great. There are a lot of these companies that have, you know, liquids in some form, whether it's a gel pack or a squeeze product or, you know, a actual beverage. In Florida, there's actually a prohibition against beverages currently. Also, I think that there's still some distribution pain points as it relates to beverages.
The question is, will someone actually come into a dispensary for a cannabis beverage, right, and where that friction is. We really used kind of our, again, our technology advancement to create something that's unique in the space with a powder, a flavored powder format, easy to transport, right? Doesn't spill, doesn't get your purse messy. You know, has been, again, it's growing in popularity in terms of a product form factor. That's one way that we've used our technology and our capabilities to kind of think ahead in terms of a particular category.
I would just say that in addition, you know, similarly, minor cannabinoid research is really something also that our tech, our R&D team has been focused on because we had incredible demand for our CBN products, which we have launched now across a variety of form factors, including capsules and gummies. Thinking through, there was really a great response for this. What other minor cannabinoids should we be focusing on? What other formulations should we be thinking about? Is the market going to be moving to more of an effect base, or again, to Gina, a need state based, right, kind of more in your face direct product line? That's something that we're working on.
We take a lot of different inputs, in terms of our processes and, but again, it all comes back to really being in tune with and listening to the customer however and wherever we can.
Mackenzie Boydston from BTIG. On your retail strategy in Florida, could you just talk about how you balance new store growth with delivery and then your existing store base so that you don't cannibalize your sales?
Mm-hmm.
Any tools you're using to preserve your border wall profitability? Thanks.
Sure. Tim?
Yeah, great question. You know, I get asked this quite frequently because we continue to expand our store base in Florida, and it's like, at what point are you cannibalizing yourself, right? I think again, we utilize a lot of different tools and information gathering, and it's a little easier in the state of Florida because it is a medical state, and you have the records of where all your customers are coming from. You have the opportunity to look for, between that and delivery that you brought up is, you know, where is the demand? Is the demand enough that it fits into our criteria of whether or not we should open a new location to get closer to the customer, right?
Ultimately, that's what we're looking for is, you know, can we get closer to the customer, deliver the metrics and the profitability that we expect to when we open a new store? We kind of use those criteria, and when we pick and, you know, look at the locations across, and then we actually have something on our website that says, you know, tell us where we should open a new store. We look at where all the demand keeps coming in from, and then we look at, you know, is that an area where we need to go? That's pretty much the biggest things that we use for Florida.
Hey, guys. Spencer Hanus with Wolfe Research. I guess if you could just talk a little bit about how you're thinking about managing that opening price point as the consumer faces inflationary pressures really across the board, while you're also building some of these higher tier products and rolling that into the mix. Talk about the trade-off there. Then, I guess a lot of retailers talk about digital as a way to drive comps and personalization as a way to drive better sell-through and reactivate users. How do you scale that and take you from today, where you're kind of in the early innings to sort of inning seven or eight? How do you kind of scale that, and what do you see as the key pitfalls that you're looking out for there?
Sure. The first question as it relates to inflation, and as we're thinking about, I think what you're asking, I just wanna make sure I get the question right, is how we're kind of distributing time and resources between maybe a value consumer, vis-a-vis a Primo or a connoisseur consumer. Again, I'll say, thankfully, we have the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time. I think that for us, our efforts have been in both of those categories, potentially not equally. Again, you know, right now we have launched a suite of what I'll call it, elevated value, that is something that we have been focused on.
We think that is a differentiator and that often, you know, value brands have gotten kind of relegated to sort of an afterthought. Us putting intentionality behind across categories, not just with, you know. It's in all categories, so it's flower, it's how are we, you know, how are we speaking to that consumer in the flower category? How are we speaking to them in the concentrate category, in the vape category, and in the, what am I missing? Edible category. Having specificity around brands that they can relate to, that they can identify with, as opposed to just the lowest thing on the shelf, right?
Being intentional about those brands and actually exercising brand building techniques within that value segment, which is, shouldn't be, but it is, somewhat unique in the cannabis space among our peer set. In terms of the premium customer, again, we're looking at data. We're looking at where those trends are. We're looking at consumption. We're looking at the categories that they're gravitating to, and subcategories that they're gravitating to. Sometimes it's not necessarily, as we mentioned, a full on product innovation. It's tweaking, right? Okay, what strains are we making available to what stores, in what quantities, and making sure that we have. That's new and exciting also, right?
If we're bringing out, say, for example, in our Primo lines now, we have the ability to forecast, like Gina and Nilyum talked about, the fact that we have this new and exciting strain available in this particular product offering that has not been available before, right? Variety is super important for, especially for that connoisseur customer. Really there, it's a lot of actually also just increasing variety, making sure you're communicating directly with those customers who want that variety and who will spend at that price point. Whereas again, on value, it's more about hardcore, like brand building and making sure that we're speaking directly and embracing that customer, in a little bit of an elevated way to protect value proposition of that value customer.
Your second question, I'm gonna head over to Nilyum around where we see the personalization or, you know, personalization going or technology going.
Yeah. What I would say is there is a classic difference. I think you used a retail example in terms of everybody saying that we're gonna do a digital transformation. We are digital natives. We don't have any technology debt. We are cloud native. We are cloud first, cloud always. We have no data centers. We buy those as services. We are in the cannabis business. We are sort of not in the technology business. We use technology to drive cannabis, if you will, or the product assortment. So that being said, that keeps our footprint a whole lot lighter. Because of the rules and regulations, I think there are challenges associated with that, but there are some benefits associated with that as well.
Most of our journeys, and Gina shared this number of 100 million page views coming in, most of our journeys, if not all of our journeys start in a digital fashion, even if they end up in store, like in Florida, the journey will begin online, but would end up in the store or with a delivery that is happening. That makes us a little bit different than a classic retailer. Now, the key is it's not about doing the hard work, it's about doing the smart work. To talk about the cannibalization example that you were talking about, right?
If a store site is being opened in the Tampa area, we look at it and we go out there, and from a personalization perspective, we can say, if we open one of our stores, and Tim touched upon it a little bit, if we open one of our stores within 10-20 miles of another store of ours. How has the trend gone? That informs whether we would decide to open the store or not. Now, that also decides that, you know, by having data enrichment and data hygiene, which is classic across, you know, all retail industry, we can go back and target that, "Hey, if you have to take four right turns to get to a closer dispensary," we'll probably hyper-personalize in that fashion.
I don't believe any of our competitors are even thinking about any of that, and we have the capability to start unlocking that potential now. That's how we are thinking about it.
Great. Thank you.
Thanks.
Hi there. Andrew Semple from Echelon Capital Markets. First of all, I wanna say that I really enjoyed this discussion, so thank you for putting this together. I think I wanted to ask this question to Kyle and Tim in particular, but anyone else, please feel free to chime in. It's on the supply and demand dynamics within the Florida market. It feels like we're in a really interesting point. You know, over the past two years, Trulieve in particular has invested heavily in the state, to bring on additional dried flower capacity, when dried flower launched, to bring on edibles capacity, to bring on, more recently hydrocarbons. I'm wondering if...
I'm wondering from the production side if we're reaching a point where it's becoming less about adding new capacity to the Florida market, and more about optimizing the existing facilities, and really focusing maybe a little bit more on driving down costs and building the production side for the long term. Tim, you know, from the retail perspective, do you feel the stores are well supplied in all aspects? Where would you like to see better availability of products in your shelves to better meet consumer demand? If you are feeling, you know, that the stores are well supplied, can you continue to drive growth through quickening the pace of new store openings over the coming years? Thank you.
All right. I appreciate the question, Andrew. It's a little bit of a tricky one because we've never really thought that we should never stop optimizing or continuing to keep driving down costs. I know, I understand what you're saying as far as, you know, driving max, you know, switching the mindset from maybe some of the other competitors from max throughput to max efficiency. For us, that's really been baked in our DNA since the very beginning, and we're continuing to live that, through our efforts and operations now. I think someone asked me the question if they felt Tim was well stocked, and I said, "You know what? You're gonna get that chance to ask that question." Here's my report card is coming right now.
Yeah. Thanks, Kyle. Yeah, great question, Andrew. I think it's something that Kyle and my office are like, right next door to each other, right? It's like a conversation we have almost every single day, and it goes back to that right product, right time, right place, right price, right? I think the one there that is the right place, right? We've done because we spent the first several years really chasing, right? Trying to find a ceiling for a style of product, because of the growth and, you know, how fast we were expanding our store base and our growing production facilities. Really this last year has become more about that optimizing of having the right product at the right depth and the right quantities, right?
That goes back to what Nilyum was saying earlier, is can we get this nailed down to the T of what he needs to produce, and then we gotta get it to where it needs to be delivered, right? You don't wanna be in an ever out situation, but you don't wanna be in an overstock situation either. I think we're dialing that in really well right now because of the new technologies that we have and our ability to work, you know, cohesively as a team to, you know. Like I say, Kyle and I talk, it's like, "Hey, I got a little bit extra over here. We probably need to shift over there." We work supply chain and those conversations regularly. I think it's a great question and it's something that's always on our mind.
Yeah. Just for the benefit of the group and something that was said on the tour, you know, we're shipping seven days a week in the state of Florida, and it's a constant adjustment. We also move products and have the ability to move product or among, amongst stores. We try not to do that, right? I mean, if we're doing everything right, we're forecasting correctly and we're getting that right product in the right stores at the right time and the right price. I would say that there's still, I think, some opportunity in terms of certainly in certain subcats and in certain SKUs that we're still a little light, right?
There are others that is about optimization and kind of dialing in and, maybe again, adding a different level of variety or, you know, again, kind of just sort of thinking about that consumer and how to make sure that we're top of mind, for that consumer from a product perspective. Also keeping in mind, I think broadly, our shelf optimization, right? How and what type of product variety and the proper mix of products, not just in Florida, but across the country, right? I think that one of the biggest and maybe most seen cannabis challenges is just you have in a lot of markets just an overabundance of product. There is a direct correlation, quite frankly, to that activity vis-à-vis profitability.
Being purposeful in terms of what our shelves look like, how they're segmented, how we're communicating that segmentation to customers through retail is also, and quite frankly, how we're also communicating that value proposition through our wholesale and our suite of wholesale products to dispensary partners as well, is something that's really critical and something that we're definitely very passionate and focused on across the country, but Florida as well. Okay, y'all. I think that wraps it up. Again, appreciate your time and your attention today. You have been wonderful.
Thank you for the thoughtful engagement and questions, and again, giving us the opportunity to showcase the company that we love and are passionate about every day. Thanks so much. This concludes our 2022 Investor Day. Thanks for participating.