Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Avant Brands Inc.'s second quarter 2022 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Alyssa Barry, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome, and thank you for joining Avant Brands' second quarter 2022 results conference call. My name is Alyssa Barry, Investor Relations for Avant Brands. Speaking on our call today is Avant's Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Norton Singhavon, and Chief Financial Officer, Matthew Whitt. Avant's Chief Operating Officer, David Lynn, is also present, and all will be participating in our Q&A session. Our second quarter 2022 results were disseminated yesterday and available on SEDAR and on our website at www.avantbrands.ca. Before we get started, I wish to remind everyone that some statements made on today's call are forward-looking in nature and therefore are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, which are all outlined in detail in our regulatory filings available on SEDAR. On this call, we will refer to the company as Avant Brands or Avant.
We recognize that most of you have already reviewed our results issued yesterday, so being mindful of your time, Matt and Norton will keep their comments brief, and then we'll transition to our Q&A session. With that, I will turn the discussion over to our Chief Financial Officer, Matthew Whitt, to share the company's financial highlights. Norton will then provide a strategy update. Please go ahead, Matt.
Thank you, Alyssa, and good afternoon, everyone. Following a very strong start to fiscal 2022, we are pleased to report another quarter of solid performance. Revenues for Q2 were just shy of our record revenue set in Q1 at CAD 4.5 million as our export sales for Q2 were CAD 700,000 lower than Q1. This means that our Canadian recreational market made up for this decrease, coming in at a record CAD 3.1 million in Q2, an increase of 23% over Q1. Accordingly, we continue to break our sales records on a year-to-date basis, reflecting the positive trends across our business, including recreational, medical, and export sales.
Our press release yesterday summarizes the key financial and operational highlights for the six months ended May 31st, 2022, compared to the same period last year, as well as comparison of Q2- Q1 2022. I'll first touch on some of these points for the six months ended May 31st, 2022. We sold 1,846 kilograms of cannabis, generating gross revenue of CAD 9 million, which represents a 151% increase in volume and a 77% increase in gross revenue over last year. Recreational cannabis revenue per gram has declined by only 4% from CAD 7.43- CAD 7.13, demonstrating the ability of our premium products to withstand significant price compression that is occurring in the market.
Our total production across all four facilities increased by 58% to 2,556 kilos. As of May 31st, 2022, we had 1,930 kilos of dry cannabis in inventory, and we continue to experience significant demand for our products which exceeds our current production. Therefore, we have not experienced a steady accumulation of inventory. Net loss from operations was CAD 5.5 million compared to net income from operations of CAD 0.2 million in the prior year. The decrease in the current period was primarily due to non-cash items such as depreciation and share-based compensation, which I would like to briefly hand over to Norton to comment on.
Thanks, Matt. Our company was incorporated in 2017, and we've had a lot of employees that have been working with us since day one. The company has not paid out any bonuses to date up until recently. Furthermore, we had many employees that we believe were paid under market salaries. Therefore, we've decided to utilize our RSU plan for the first time since it was adopted in 2020. Back to you, Matt.
Thanks, Norton. Adjusted EBITDA loss of CAD 0.5 million is compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of CAD 0.2 million in the prior year for the first six months. A few highlights for the Q2 to Q1 comparison. As noted in my opening remarks, we did achieve record recreational cannabis revenue of CAD 3.1 million compared to CAD 2.5 million in Q1, representing a 23% increase. Total production across our four facilities increased by 66% to 1,595 kilograms. The company sold a total of 961 kilograms of cannabis, generating gross revenue of CAD 4.5 million in the quarter, which represents a revenue decrease of 3% relative to Q1. Touch on our gross margin before fair value adjustments was 23% for the quarter.
Our gross margin is negatively impacted by our accounting treatment for 3PL as an equity investment as opposed to consolidating 3PL's financial statements. For further clarity, certain harvests at 3PL are purchased by ACC at CAD 3.50 per gram, then sold into the provinces, while other lots are simply distributed to the provinces through ACC, with Avant only capturing 5% distribution margin. As a result, this lowers our overall gross margin at the Avant level. However, if you account for the margins that would be captured within 3PL, our overall margins from production to buyer remain relatively in line with our recent quarters. Our net loss from operations for the quarter was CAD 4.5 million compared to a net loss of operations of CAD 1 million in Q1.
This change was in the current period is primarily due to non-cash items, including share-based compensation, as Norton Singhavon just addressed. Adjusted EBITDA loss of CAD 0.6 million compared to adjusted EBITDA gain of CAD 0.1 million in Q1. Overall, we do continue to focus on maintaining a strong balance sheet with approximately CAD 9 million in cash and no debt. We expect continued improvement to our financial results throughout the second half of the year as we further realize the production at our 3PL facility, new product launches and export sales. I will now pass it over to Norton Singhavon.
Thank you, Matt, and good afternoon, everyone. Avant has performed extremely well for the first half of the year with many catalysts for continued growth. Despite the overall challenging marketing condition for investors, particularly in cannabis, Avant stock has been performing well relative to the Canadian cannabis sector. As of the end of Q2, Avant was the number one performing cannabis stock during the trailing six months, being down 5%, while the average Canadian cannabis stock was down 50% and some down as much as 80%. We continue to remain in one of the strongest financial positions amongst our peer group. We have been executing a series of contract growth agreements which will effectively increase the quantity of cannabis available for sale, therefore increasing our top and bottom line numbers.
We launched a series of new premium cannabis cultivars under the BLK MKT and Cognōscente brands, which have generated significant positive feedback. We signed supply agreements with the provinces of Newfoundland and PEI. Due to significant demand for our products and our inability to fulfill all of this demand, we have been able to execute export deals which will increase our average export selling price immediately. ACP received its license amendment from Health Canada to facilitate the sales of edibles and concentrates to the Provincial Liquor Board. This will ultimately increase our margin on these products. 3PL received its license amendment from Health Canada to facilitate sales to the Provincial Liquor Board and its IMC-GAP certification via IPC to facilitate exports to Israel. Subsequent to the quarter end, we executed a revised shareholders agreement with 3PL, which increased our ownership stake from 49%- 50%.
As a result of this, we will revisit the accounting treatment regarding consolidating 3PL's financial statements with Avant's, which would positively impact our bottom-line results. We are confident in the strength of our business and are excited about what lies ahead. While many players in our sector are burning cash at an excessive rate while losing market share, we continue to be a nimble company that is continuing to gain market share in Canada and globally. Some of the key initiatives for the current fiscal year include driving 3PL into full production. It's naturally scaling up to full capacity and is anticipated to deliver significant revenue growth. Realizing third-party contract growth agreements with other LPs to fulfill the excess demand that we cannot. This does not require any CapEx or OpEx from Avant, and leaves room for very little downside, yet has the ability to generate significant upside.
Further developing innovation to expand our product offerings within the increasingly sought-after concentrate segment. Continue to grow our market share, fulfilling and entering into new export agreements. Finally, continue exploring acquisitions, internal expansion or outsourced contract growing opportunities. As a leading and top-performing Canadian cannabis company, we have a unique value creation opportunity and continue to focus our efforts on meeting the needs of our consumers while expanding our market share. We believe that Avant continues to be extremely well-positioned for the future. With that, we'll now open up for Q&A.
Certainly. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. The first question is from Scott Finley, a private investor. Please go ahead. Scott, your line is open.
Hi. Yeah, just got a couple of quick questions if that's okay. First of all, congrats on another great quarter. So that's fabulous. Can you expand on the ramp-up with 3PL and how much of this quarter's revenue was generated from that? Can we expect to go to the normalized run rates? Second question is kind of what you were just talking about on the M&A side, because you mentioned the potential for acquisitions. It seems right now companies in the same space are rather capital constrained, and they seem the values have been more compressed. So what's your appetite, would you say, for M&A in the current conditions?
If I can just follow up with one more question, on the export side, can you provide details around how you see shipments trending for the rest of the year? Because it's certainly great to hear the demands and that you're looking to obviously put more orders. What can we expect moving forward?
Thanks, Scott. Our revenue for this quarter was approximately 28% from 3PL. 3PL as is still in the ramp-up phases. The rooms are fully planted, fully at capacity, but we're gonna start to realize these harvests and start to realize the revenues from this. We expect that over the coming months that we will hit full capacity and hopefully full revenue potential from 3PL. And your second part was M&A, correct? Yeah. In terms of M&A, right now we're being extremely disciplined. We've been approached by many other peers, some private, some public, some smaller, some potentially similar size. The issue is that we have a very strict tick box that a lot of these companies have to hit. The facility needs to be built fairly close to our specs and standards.
They need to be located geographically where it makes sense, which is in the Okanagan, which is where we are based out of. They need to have a pretty reasonable financial performance, you know, either a positive, neutral or slightly negative. We've explored many opportunities and right now there hasn't been anything that we've decided we want to proceed with. But we're gonna continue to keep looking and hopefully, if things go our way, we may be able to find something. But we're happy just to continue on our own path if we don't find anything. What was your third one again? Export. I'll hand it over to David for export.
On the export side of our business has a lot of growth potential, and there's certainly more demand than we have the ability to supply. We do prioritize our rec shipments over the export shipments. It's primarily surplus product that we export. Really the volumes that we export over the balance of the year are kind of a function of what's available after fulfilling all of the rec demand. Overall, the demand is really robust on both the domestic and international side. Some of the new cultivars that we launched into the market have received a phenomenal response that's triggering a lot of purchase orders from our major rec customers, which are liquor boards.
We can't really give you an exact number in terms of the split, but I can tell you that the demand from both Israel and Australia is very strong.
Okay. That's it. Thank you.
Once again, if you have a question, please press star then one. The next question is from Ben Freeman, an investor. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Congratulations on another great quarter. Excellent first half of the year. I was just curious if there's a significant gross profit percentage difference between the flower, Live Rosin, and the vapes?
Yeah, I'm gonna hand that one over to Matt.
Yeah. The Live Rosin and the vapes are, I guess they're starting at a smaller denominator is the best way to put it. The thing is, as we recently launched into that category, it's got fairly robust growth percentages. Flower and pre-roll clearly is still our first priority and our, you know, largest share of what we sell. Again, jumping into, you know, getting ATC, having their sales amendment, that will allow us to make that a more profitable channel and something that we can focus on going forward. Yeah, like I said, growth percentages is pretty high, but it's a fairly small starting point.
Absolutely. That makes sense. Do you expect room for run rate for this to improve revenue or anything like that for the concentrates?
Yeah. Again, I think the revenue will go up on that or the margins will go up on that as we start selling it ourselves through our own license because we won't have that third party manufacturer in between. We should see an improvement in margins there. Again, we're hoping that as we dive deeper into that category, we can generate additional incremental revenue out of it.
I believe that previously we had to pay a 15% distribution margin to our partner to sell into the provinces. Instantly we'll get to capture that. Also, you know, operational efficiencies, realizing which cultivars, you know, may extract a higher yield than others. This is still a bit of a learning process for us as we dial in which cultivars make the best concentrates, right? We're starting with small scale. It's kind of a crawl, walk, run approach. If you'll notice, it's kind of how we've always operated.
Okay, awesome. Thank you guys for the information. It seems like the market's responding really well to this.
Appreciate it.
The next question is from Jordan Kay, a private investor. Please go ahead.
Hey, Norton, it's Jordan from Pothole Stocking . How's it going?
Hey. Good, good, man.
Hey, question for you. You know, I think a lot of people were pretty shocked at the per gram price of bulk. What you said during the call that because of demand, you could be seeing incremental additional per gram price. In percentage terms, are you thinking this is gonna be something like 5%-10%, or is it something even more that we can really get excited about?
Right now, our average selling price for export is actually it's about CAD 4 a gram. We think this is gonna increase to about CAD 4.55-CAD 4.65, if I'm correct, David, is that.
Yeah.
Australia export prices are north of CAD 4 currently also. We're looking at because we can't fill the demand, we're in a position where whatever product we have, we've been able to execute agreements at a slightly higher price point.
Yeah. Norton, that is absolutely incredible, and you are absolutely crushing it. Do you know when that might translate into positive cash flow, positive EBITDA? I think we'll be able to see the assets on the balance sheet start to increase.
I like to be very, very careful about forward guidance, and I don't wanna promise anything, but I would say I think in the near future we are looking, trending in that right direction. One thing that's also worth noting is that, which we didn't touch on, is our revenues have gone from about CAD 3 million a quarter to about CAD 4.5 million. It's a huge jump, you know, 50% jump from CAD 3 million. But understand that a lot of that revenue is considered what I call low-margin revenue, right? Like our distribution deals with Habitat, which isn't growing our own product, right?
It's still a decent margin, it still puts some into our bottom line, but our core business still has a lot of upside, and that is where all of the, I guess, call it the thick gross margins will come from, which will then you'll see on the bottom line. As we ramp up production at 3PL, and also improve efficiencies at our existing facilities, that's what's gonna come to our bottom line the most.
Amazing. Norton, congratulations on an amazing quarter. I wish you guys the absolute very best in the coming quarters.
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Once again, if you have a question, please press star then one.
All right, so no more questions. I'd like to thank everyone for joining us. We shared on our last call that we're looking to host an in-person investor day at some point here in Kelowna, with opportunities to actually tour 3PL and meet our team. It's still something that is on our list. We'll keep everybody posted on this. I just wanna say thank you for everyone that came, and thank you for everyone that asked the questions. Hope everyone has a fun and safe summer. Thank you all once again. Have a good day.
This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.