In the webcast. If you'd like to get a copy of this presentation, simply email me at glena@bristolir.com. I'll be happy to send you one. We'll break for questions at the end of the formal presentation. As a reminder, this is not an earnings call, but rather a general introduction and overview presentation. We're only taking questions via the web portal and encourage questions to help you better understand the business. If you're listening over the telephone, please access the web link sent earlier today to ask a question. You can submit a question using the text box within the portal at any time. I'll ask the questions on the air for everyone to hear, and then Nicholas will answer. I'm not going to reference any names, but simply read the questions asked.
As we have a fairly large audience today, if I can't get to your question online in time and it has not been addressed during the call and can be, I'll come back to you by email. I won't read the forward-looking statements, but I do state they apply and I reference them in the front part of this presentation. With that said, once again, thank you for joining us. Remember, this is fairly informal, and we do encourage questions to help you better understand the business and its growth path. Now I'll turn the call over to Nick to start his part of the discussion and presentation.
Thank you, Glen. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join me today for our fiscal 2024 review. For those who don't know me, I am Nicholas Sosiak, CFO of Cannara Biotech. I've been with the company for five years, driving both our financial strategy and our commercial growth. I am deeply passionate about what we're building here at Cannara and the value we're delivering to the Canadian cannabis industry. It's always a privilege for me to connect with our investors and stakeholders, and I'm excited to share why we are so optimistic about Cannara's future. Cannara Biotech is one of Canada's fastest-growing and most profitable cannabis companies. Over the next 15 minutes, I'll walk you through how we position ourselves as a market leader, our fiscal 2024 operational and financial achievements, and the strategies driving our continued growth in this dynamic industry.
What truly sets Cannara apart is our ability to deliver profitability while scaling our business in a highly competitive market. Today's presentation will highlight our strengths and opportunities that underpin our confidence in the path ahead, and why we believe we are uniquely positioned to create enduring value for our investors. Lastly, I want to ensure there's ample time to address any and all of your questions at the end of today's presentation. So let's get started. For those new to our story, Cannara is a vertically integrated cannabis producer headquartered in Quebec, and our operations are powered by two world-class facilities spanning over 1.6 million sq ft. This scale gives us a significant advantage, enabling us to meet rising demand and grow strategically and organically.
We're proud to have achieved our 14th consecutive quarter of positive EBITDA, posting an EBITDA of CAD 15 million for fiscal 2024, with CAD 6.4 million in net income and over CAD 10 million in operating cash flows. As of November 2024, we are Canada's seventh-largest licensed producer by sales, holding a national market share of 4%, which compares to 2.5% last year. That's a 60% year-over-year increase. This success is driven by our focus on operational excellence, premium product quality, and a disciplined, sustainable growth path. Our competitive advantage is built on three key strengths. Our first one is a hyper-focus on producing premium-quality products while maintaining scalability and price competitiveness. Our second point is that we are operating in a strong local market in our home province of Quebec, and thirdly is product innovation that is centered on meeting the needs of our high-value customers.
Our commitment to quality really sets us apart. From post-harvest craft procedures like hang-drying, hand-trimming, slow curing, never irradiated, to our flagship fresh-frozen live resin vapes, which capture over 35% of the Canadian live resin market. Our operational assets in Quebec give us unparalleled cost advantages. With the lowest electricity rates in North America, one of the largest contributors to cultivation costs, we can achieve significant savings. Additionally, Quebec's high barriers to entry protect our position in Canada's fourth-largest retail market, which we've secured a 12.9% market share purely on our value proposition, despite all these restrictions on advertising and promotion. Innovation further amplifies our strength.
We are constantly pheno-hunting, investing millions of CAD per year in the R&D process to uncover new genetics, or what I like to call unicorns, that not only are high-yielding cannabis genetics, but are sought after or haven't even been discovered yet due to their unique terpene profile and effect. So let's now turn to our financial performance for fiscal 2024, which highlights the strengths and scalability of our Cannara business model. For fiscal 2024, we achieved a net revenue of CAD 82.2 million, marking an impressive 43% growth compared to last year. This significant increase reflects both our expanded market share and consistent demand for our premium products. Gross profit for the year hit CAD 27.9 million, a 32% increase from prior year, while our gross margin was 34%.
This is a slight decrease from last year due to a reduced cannabis yields per plant that we had in Q2 of 2024, which was immediately rectified and improved in the second half of the year. We actually believe that our gross margins are going to increase to approximately 40% for 2025. Adjusted EBITDA for fiscal 2024 came in at CAD 15.1 million, a 10% year-over-year improvement, representing about 18% of our revenues. This demonstrates our ability to manage costs effectively while driving higher profitability. During the year, we invested heavily in our sales and marketing platform to increase distribution in comparison to last year. However, this investment will pay future benefits and assist in Cannara getting market share quarter over quarter.
We generated net income of CAD 6.4 million for fiscal 2024, representing 8% of our total revenues and comparable to prior year as a result of the additional investment we are doing in Cannara's platform. Additionally, operating cash flows surged 81% year-over-year to CAD 10.7 million, solidifying our position as a profitability leader within the Canadian cannabis market. Free cash flow saw remarkable turnaround, reaching CAD 3.2 million, up CAD 7.2 million from the prior year, primarily attributable to our disciplined approach to operational efficiency and working capital management. These results, in addition to being supported by a tier-one Canadian bank, BMO, is a testament to our cost management, efficient operations, and the ability to produce high-quality cannabis at scale. The Canadian cannabis market, as the second largest in the world, is projected to grow to CAD 6.6 billion by 2029.
Cannara is strategically positioned to focus on and capitalize on this expanding Canadian market. As we scale our production capacity to over 100,000 kilograms annually, which we currently sit about 33,500 kilograms per year, and we continue investing in our strategic sales initiatives, we anticipate future growth in our market share. Our national market share has grown by approximately 60% year-over-year, reaching a 4% in November of 2024. In Quebec, we hold a commanding position as the third-largest producer with a market share of 12.9%. Additionally, we are making steady progress in key markets like Ontario, where we hold 2.7%, Alberta, where we hold 2.6%, British Columbia at 1.5%, and Saskatchewan at 1.6%. What's remarkable, though, is that much of this growth was achieved through word of mouth, all from our original three flagship brands, Tribal, Nugz, and Orchid CBD.
Our brand growth is from organic exchanges through friends sharing their experiences and budtenders enthusiastically recommending our products, an instrumental part in building our brand loyalty and awareness. Recently, we've taken it a step further by deploying a dedicated marketing and sales team to both reinforce our presence in existing markets and break new grounds in untapped regions. Particularly noteworthy is that our top-performing products have achieved category leadership across Canada. Tribal holds the number one position for live resin vape carts nationwide, while Nugz leads in Quebec for infused pre-rolls and in Ontario for hash rosin. Orchid CBD dominates as Canada's number one CBD flower and pre-roll brand for multiple years in a row now. With these results and the growing demand for our top-performing products, we are confident in our ability to further scale our market share as production capacity increases and sales strategies continue to gain traction.
This slide highlights the last 13 months of retail sales performance for the top 10 Canadian licensed producers, showcasing Cannara Biotech's growth trajectory within this competitive landscape. Of the top 10, Cannara Biotech has demonstrated the fastest growth in monthly retail sales throughout 2024 among the top 10, rising from CAD 10 million in November of 2023 to CAD 18.4 million in November of 2024. This upward trend underscores the success of our strategies in driving consumer demand, expanding market reach, and increasing retail presence. Notably, five of the top 10 Canadian licensed producers are demonstrating a downward trend in a monthly retail sales generation, offering us an opportunity to continue growing our market share. Our operations are truly the foundation of our success. Cannara operates two state-of-the-art facilities in Quebec that provide us unmatched scalability and operational efficiency.
At our Valleyfield facility, we've activated 10 of our 24 independent grow zones, representing 250,000 sq ft of cultivation space. This alone delivers a production run rate of 33,500 kilograms annually. Meanwhile, at our Farnham facility, we add another 28,000 sq ft of active grow space used primarily for mothers and genetic pheno-hunting, as well as our post-harvest and packaging activities. What's most exciting is our growth potential. Once all of the 24 grow rooms at Valleyfield are activated, we will achieve a production capacity of 100,000 kilograms annually. To put this into perspective, our fiscal 2024 revenue of CAD 82.2 million was achieved with about one-third of that capacity. For fiscal 2025, we forecast surpassing CAD 100 million in net cannabis revenue. Fully scaling Valleyfield could enable us to generate over CAD 250 million in net revenue, assuming current market conditions hold. A transformative opportunity for Cannara.
Our modular approach to activating each grow zone allows us to scale efficiently in response to market demand, preserving profitability and operational discipline. Combined with Quebec's low electricity and labor costs, Cannara remains one of the most cost-effective producers in this industry. We ended fiscal 2024 with 10 grow zones capable of generating 33,500 kg per year. For fiscal 2025, we plan to activate two additional growing zones, increasing our capacity to just under 40,000 kg per year. By fiscal 2028, we plan on activating all 24 zones and commence our project to activate our 200,000 sq ft rooftop greenhouse at Valleyfield, which will be used exclusively for the vegetative cycle and will increase our annual flower harvest from four times per year to five, which in turn our overall expected annual yield to approximate 100,000 kg per year.
Now, before we jump into QA, let me summarize the key reasons why I truly believe Cannara stands out as a compelling investment opportunity and what I like to call the diamond in the rough. Number one reason is our profitability. Cannara is one of the few companies in Canada delivering consistent positive EBITDA, net income, operating cash flow, and free cash flow while maintaining remarkable growth. Number two is our cost leadership. Our Quebec-based assets provide us with significant cost advantages that nowadays are just not replicable. Number three is our scalability, which is supported by a solid foundation of state-of-the-art facilities, 100% owned by Cannara. I remind our investors that Cannara purchased the Valleyfield facility from a competitor for CAD 27 million, and it was built in 2019 for over CAD 250 million. A once-in-a-lifetime strategic investment, and finally, our market leadership.
Our flagship brands, originally created back in 2019, Tribal, Nugz, and Orchid CBD, are standing the test of time and are recognized as leaders in their respective categories, driving strong consumer loyalty and year-over-year market share growth. Cannara is uniquely positioned, aiming to capture a national market share of 10% in this expanding Canadian cannabis market. Through a disciplined focus on scaling operations and responding to market demand, we aim to achieve our full production potential while maintaining margins at 40% and delivering products that consumers trust and value and a compelling choice for our investors. Thank you for your time and attention today, and I look forward to addressing your questions.
Super. Thanks, Nicholas. To our audience, excuse me, please use the question text box within the portal to ask a question. We do have some questions in the queue already. So I'll just get going, Nick.
Can you just give or describe your current take on the Canadian cannabis market right now? Maybe give some background on how you view its evolution and what do you anticipate going forward as growth is either slowing or increasing? And how does this impact your position within the marketplace?
Yeah. So in my presentation, I included our estimate of what the industry is saying where we're going to be in by 2029, which is CAD 6.9 billion. For us, the industry, it's still really, really in its infancy. When it all started, there was the greenwash. A lot of money entered the industry. A lot of companies had a strategy which was not clearly thought out and executed appropriately. For us, we've maintained our strategy of a scalable producer, a high-quality premium producer, and a low-price producer. And we kept that strategy since day one with our three brands.
So we've scaled from CAD 1 from those brands to CAD 82.2 million to over CAD 100 million. And we believe that there's still a lot of room to grow for our brands because we are providing what the market wants and needs. So I believe that the industry right now, with the consolidation that happened, a lot of companies going to CCAA or closing production space, we've actually flipped the agenda on production capacity here in Canada. I believe that a lot of the cannabis being grown in Canada right now is going to international markets, providing a lot of pressure on actual good quality cannabis that consumers want in Canada. And that gives us a prime opportunity to continue focusing on Canada because our products meet the needs of those consumers. So I think that the market is going to have a slow growth.
There's still a lot of opportunity for growth over the many years to come. It's not going to be double-digit growth. It's going to be a slow growth. But there's huge opportunities to grab significant double-digit market shares for companies that are doing it right. And that's really our vision to be number one here in Canada with the right products, the right platform, and make a change for Canadian cannabis.
Great. Super. Thanks. When you make decisions to expand additional grow zones, what considerations go into it? I'm just combining questions, so I'm sort of ad libbing a little bit. What indicators do you need to see in terms of when you scale to make sure that you're not, I guess, running risk of oversupply both within the company and into the market? I guess what goes into consideration when you decide to open up a grow zone?
Absolutely. It's all in the planning. We have our numbers. We have a very robust ERP system that tracks everything from seed to sale. We know how much grams we're producing currently. We know how much grams we're selling currently, how much we have in inventory. For us, it's really just a math exercise where we see the upcoming gap coming through, and we have to add that because we do not purchase any cannabis from any other licensed producer to sell under our brands. We manage that gap through opening more growing zones. It takes time. We, unfortunately, leave some sales on the table as we ramp up and as we try to plan as accurate as possible. We'd rather be in a position where we're out of stock than overstock, given the position that we are in and the growth path that we see.
It's just a matter of time where we just open more rooms and fill that demand. So it's that operational planning that we really look at as well as our inventory balance, right? As our inventory balance quarter over quarter decreases, that's definitely a signal that we got to continue growing more cannabis. Thank you. When you report on your revenues, do you break out which brand contributes what percentage or allocation to it? And what do you see in terms of, I guess, the brand uptake as it relates to the scaling revenues? So in our public statements, no, we don't break down the revenue by brand. That's more internal data. But essentially, Tribal is our main revenue driver, with Nugz not too far behind, and with Orchid more towards the bottom, 5%-10% of revenues, given that there's only a few SKUs.
It's a CBD-oriented brand, and we only have a few SKUs under that brand. The majority of our revenues are coming from Nugz and Tribal. Okay. And what is your brand strategy? Do you see adding additional brands and then expanding within brand? If you could just talk a little bit about that. Yeah. For us, we're taking a little different approach. We're not saying no that a potential other brand might come down the pipeline eventually. But right now, in the strategic plans, it's continuing with our three brands. Those three brands are targeted to certain market demographics that we believe both brands capture a significant portion of the market, and the other portion is just something that we're not playing in. So what we're trying to do is create an ecosystem of brand loyalty and awareness.
We're not trying to throw brands down the consumer's throat and confuse them. What we're really trying to do is create a brand ecosystem where they can trust the brand, the products that are created under those brands, and explore the different experiences that are available for cannabis, right? For us, it's all about genetics, uncovering those genetics, and then putting them under our different brands, either Tribal or Nugz, depending on the various criteria we have, and delivering them in the consistent product formulations that we have, as well as new innovative products. That's really the path. We grew it from CAD 1 to CAD 100 million, going for over CAD 100 million this year. We foresee ramping that up to CAD 250 million. As the industry is always evolving, there's a lot of opportunities.
So we're always keeping our ear to ground to see what other opportunities we can exercise.
Thank you. Can you talk about what you're seeing across Canada in terms of pricing trends within your industry, and then particularly for your individual SKUs?
So back a while ago, I think price compression (is it price compression or price competitiveness) was really rampant because LPs were fighting for shelf space, product space. They were really just focused on the top-line revenues, right? So price took a hit over time across all SKUs as an industry as a whole. For Cannara, we always had, and that's where we never differentiated from our strategy, which is high-quality producer at a low cost, as low as we can get it, and that we're going to provide that value proposition to the consumer.
I think our products and our product portfolio have been resistant to the price compression that we've seen in the industry because we were priced perfectly from day one and still perfectly today, given the quality and everything that we offer to our consumers. For us, it really didn't have an effect. What I'm seeing today is that reverse trend because all the cannabis is going outside of Canada. The B2B business-to-business market, wholesale market prices probably doubled since last year. That's going to have an effect on the retail price because LPs won't be able to fill shelf space here in Canada because of the lack of supply. Then their lowest gross margin SKUs are going to be the first ones to go.
And then the price is going to, I think, equilibrate in the coming years as the true market leaders in the cannabis industry position themselves properly.
Great. Thanks. You sort of addressed this question, but I'll ask it, and you could probably expand on it. Do you have intentions on exporting your product to European or other markets?
So we're not EU GMP, but we're what they call CUMCS and GACP, which allows us to move cannabis to Israel, Australia, Germany. That's not in our vision. Do we get calls every single day for our cannabis to be sold in those countries? Absolutely. So is it a plan Z if for some reason we need to, in the interim, we grow a room and we do it, but we're really opening our rooms to satisfy the retail market?
Could we open a room to satisfy the B2B market or satisfy international markets? Absolutely, and bring revenue in today. But that's not the goal for us. We're laser-focused on being number one in Canada. So all the cannabis that we grow is for Canada currently where we are. Okay. And again, also on the same theme, but I'll ask and I'll let you address it. Can you sell into the U.S., and do you envision a U.S. strategy? So no, we cannot sell into the U.S. as of today. We do not have any guidance to know that one day we will be able to sell if they're going to allow importation and exportation of cannabis. Do we have a U.S. strategy, a preliminary one? Are we waiting for the day that it legalizes? Absolutely. But again, like I said, our main focus is in Canada.
I think if the U.S. can hold off for a couple of years, that would be perfect for us because it would give us the time to execute our Canadian strategy, develop brands that are number one here in Canada, that we've proven that you can actually scale cannabis at a big scale and still deliver quality, premium cannabis. So that IP, that platform, the brands, the assets, even if there's import or export not allowed, I think that could be extremely useful to replicate in the U.S.. So it's on the back burner until something happens in the U.S., but for now, really execution mode in Canada.
Okay. Thanks. During the presentation, you mentioned 10% market share as your long-term strategy. Can you walk us through your plan to get there from where you are today?
Very simple. It's just continue execution, turning on more rooms, investing in our sales and marketing distribution, sales in our word-of-mouth strategy, creating new products, hunting new genetics that the industry has never seen before that become top movers. So it's just about finding a portfolio of top-moving SKUs. We have the assets. We have the infrastructure. We've got to just slowly turn on. It's not just turn on a room and throw in genetics, and it grows. There's a whole long process of millions of dollars that go behind the R&D process of pheno-hunting and finding the right genetic and then creating the SKU and making sure that when we launch a SKU, that it is going to be successful. So that's a process, and it can't be rushed. So we're really just focused on execution right now.
I think if we execute the way we have set up our strategy, our brands, our assets, our people—we're 400 people here at Cannara—and month over month, our market share is increasing. So it's just about continuing that uptrend and building it up.
Okay. Thanks. With many cannabis producers struggling financially, do you see any regulatory flexibility in the cannabis taxes?
I hope one day. My feeling is I think we heard recently that the CRA will consolidate the tax regime, meaning that there's going to be one excise stamps rather than having provincial excise stamps, which is going to save some operational efficiency and some flexibility to LPs. So that's a nice thing to come. Will they change the excise tax dollar? I believe so. I think that it needs to change.
It will come, which is another cherry on the top for Cannara, and how we're going to play that out is to be seen, but I think for us, we're just waiting for, we're just executing what we're doing, and if excise tax reform comes, we'll welcome it and we'll change, but we're really not waiting for that, and I think the government is also not pushing too hard on that because if they do a change right now, today, in today's landscape, where there are a few companies that are still surviving by a thread, that might not be paying their excise tax bills, and the reform changes gives them another opportunity to be successful, but they were not good operators at the beginning, wouldn't be beneficial to the industry, so I think that the government's watching, waiting until the industry consolidates.
And really, there's going to be in this current market environment. There's going to be winners. There's going to be key players that are able to operate. And I think at that point in time, when that's clear, that's probably when the government would give us some tax reform.
Okay. Thank you. Can you talk about, I guess, the Canadian industry and how you view consolidation, whether it'll happen, as a sort of first part of this question?
So I mean, consolidation, we've seen it happen. We've seen them fail most of the time, 99.9% of the time in our industry, just because a business that's not doing too well acquiring a business that's not doing too well, most of the time, doesn't equal a business doing well. So I think there's still to come.
I think the key players that will make a mark in the industry are watching which assets, which players are actually beneficial to their overall business. So there's going to be some consolidation. I think it's going to be very focused, very targeted, and probably the consolidations or the mergers that we're going to see are going to actually make more sense in the industry and for the company than they did in the past.
Okay. Thanks, and the second part of the question, I guess, somewhat related is, would you consider using your, I guess, growing capacity to grow other companies' product?
So would we consider it? Again, every opportunity is available. We'll look at all opportunities, evaluate what's the best for Cannara. But our plan for us is continuing growing for us. We're already operational cash flow. We're already bringing income. So leaving that space for us as we grow properly over the next two years is key for us. So that's what we're staying focused on.
Okay. Some specific financial-type questions. Regarding your property, the financials show cost of almost CAD 80 million before depreciation. How does this reconcile with the purchase price mentioned on the call?
Yeah. So I mean, in accounting, unfortunately, when you acquire something that you pay the value for and its previous cost was much higher, you capitalize the actual payment that you paid for the building. So on our books, off the top of my head, we have CAD 13 million related to the building of our Farnham facility that we bought. We have CAD 27 million valued for our Valleyfield facility.
We also invested about CAD 5 million on another building on the Valleyfield lot that is either going to be used or sold for additional funds. So yeah, there's that. And then all the capital expenditures, production equipment that we've invested in both Farnham and Valleyfield is the difference. So the delta between the CAD 350 million and the CAD 27 million, unfortunately, has disappeared and not on the books, but the value is absolutely there.
Okay. Thanks. Also, the valuation method for the inventory seems very aggressive. What was the cost basis of the inventory?
Yeah. So we do our fair value a bit differently. When we harvest our plants, we know where each gram is going to go, either in our flower products, pre-roll products, resin products. So we fair value the gram depending on where it goes and with different costs involved.
Our inventory is actually, in reality, held at fair value. And that's why we break it down. We show the cost base as well as the fair value change and the fair value gap. But our inventory is held at pretty much our retail net excise tax price. Yeah, that's how the accounting, each LP does it a bit differently. We're really, really detailed. So we know exactly what every gram and item is going to and cost the fair value appropriately on that basis.
Okay. Thank you. What do you see as the biggest challenge for Cannara in increasing its national market share from the current approximate 4%, especially with your goal of scaling the output capacity up to 100,000 kg per year?
What would be the challenges?
Yeah. The biggest challenges that you see in that happening.
So, I mean, the biggest challenge is, one, we've got to continue pheno-hunting. We've got to find those genetics. We've got to introduce them, roll them out properly with the right innovation and the right SKUs. We've been doing that for four years, five years now. So, I think we have a good track record of executing on finding those genetics and product innovation. And just we're in not all the markets in Canada. We're not in all the categories in Canada. Just until recently, most of our sales push was word of mouth with very little spend on sales and marketing compared to our peers. In Canada, we were two sales reps for the whole company, and we just went to five sales reps.
We're extremely, extremely lean on the sales and distribution side, which is complex in the cannabis industry and requires investment to get shelf space, to get access points, distribution points. Yeah, so I mean, other than just executing on the sales and sales side, finding new genetics, innovating on new SKUs, that I believe will get us to where we want to go.
Okay. Super. Can you comment on the cost of each grow zone when you add it? And then what do you anticipate is the future CapEx in order to build out all 14 grow zones, which I believe will take over five years and get you to 100,000 kg production?
Yeah, no, each grow zone will be conservative and say about CAD 1,000,000 to turn on. Most of it is putting chillers and HVAC systems in it, the tables and the lights and everything is there. It's about CAD 1 million per room to turn on for us. We're turning on two rooms this year. It's about a CAD 2-3 million, CAD 2 million spend. We're investing over the next 2-3 years on the 12 rooms that we have on the east side. That's going to be a CAD 12 million spend for there. To open up our east side, the 12 rooms, we got to turn on our processing building, which is 200,000 sq ft under the rooftop. It's attached to the greenhouse, but it's a separate building. I mean, it's a separate area.
And that has 200,000 sq ft of licensed space right now, which we're going to use in turning into drying rooms so that we can continue hang-drying all our plants to scale up to that 100,000 kilos. So that's about a CAD 7 million spend on the processing building. And then we're going to turn on eventually once all the 24 rooms are turned on, the processing building is built out and drying all the 24 rooms. We're going to invest probably about CAD 15 million in our rooftop greenhouse, which will then, because right now we're doing a vegetative stage and the flowering stage in each bay.
So we can actually reduce the time in our flowering bay by vegging the plants in a rooftop greenhouse and then transferring them to the bays, which would increase our harvest from four to five and get us to the kilograms that we're looking for.
Okay. Thanks, Nick. Do you break down your margins by brand or by product category?
So again, we don't share that public information. That's really too detailed to share. But we do have all that information internally, look at it internally. All that to say is that our Tribal has the higher margins and our Nugz products has the lower margins, which averages out to our 35% that you're seeing today, going up to 40% as we increase our yield. So that's really, really important for our investors to understand is there's two variables to changing your gross margin. One is costs, saving costs, being more efficient, reducing cost, economies of scale. Now that we're turning on one more room, two more rooms, it's going to require only three labor heads to turn on two more rooms.
We're at a point where economies of scale are going to really, really benefit us. Once we turn on those rooms, we have much more cannabis. We have lower costs. Our gross margin goes up. That's one lever. The other lever is on an average yield out of the 12 genetics that Cannara produces today, our average grams per plant are around 70 g per plant. Each genetic that we hunt, if we do the proper R&D on it, we found genetics that range from 100g- 120 g per plant. As I invest in the R&D process and we uncover these genetics and we swap them into our portfolio, we then go from a 70 g per plant as an organization to 100 g on average per plant as an organization. That significantly changes our gross margin as well.
Excellent. You may have just addressed two new questions that I was about to ask that are in here. So first off, is there a ceiling or a target number in terms of margin profile that you're sort of envisioning long term? I'll let you answer that and then ask the second part.
Yeah. I think for us, 40% right now is really the target. And that's, I think, is very achievable for us. We were there as we tried different genetics. We had a little issue in Q2. Again, we're always dialing it in. So we're always changing parameters to increase yields. We're putting new tests right now that should increase our yields 30%. So not even phenos and this and that. We're just trying different things to increase our yields. Unfortunately, we had test results that showed our yields were increased. We implemented it in Q2.
It decreased our yields. So we undid it and went back to where we were and then implemented something else, which increased our yields. So we're always constantly, constantly dialing it in to increase that. So conservatively, I think 40% is well within range and aggressive. We can probably go up 45%-50% as we build this out.
Okay. Perfect. And then the second part of, I guess, those questions are you're obviously generating positive cash flow. Can you just talk about your cash allocation strategy? Are you reinvesting into R&D? If so, how much? How do you view your debt? And can you use your cash for share buybacks or dividends?
So right now, I gave numbers for CapEx spend plus automated equipment and other production equipment that we'd be spending. So all of our CapEx growth for 2025, 2026, 2027, 2028 is all going to be self-financed through our operating cash flows. It's all allocated to our operating cash from our operating cash flows. So we're going to be able to self-finance ourselves from where we are today all the way up to the final project. And in terms of the debt, BMO has been with us since 2021. They're a great partner. They're the one that supports the cannabis industry. So they're going to be with us as we expand and we pay their terms. And what was the third part of the question?
Just, I guess, broadly, do you envision any share buybacks or? Right.
Yeah. So I mean, we're not every dollar right now is going to reinvest into the business, right? Because when we turn on one room for that CAD $1 million-dollar spend, that produces at a 70 g per plant, that produces 800 kilos per year per harvest times four and eventually times five for the yearly harvest. It's about CAD $10 million of net revenue that we can make in year one. So we can 10x any dollar that we spend in year one if we can grow it and sell it. And we can do that 14x right now from now. So that's really where we're spending our money. I think the share price is going to reflect if we continue doing our job of executing. The share price will reflect properly what we're building here at Cannara.
Eventually, when there is additional money, share buyback, dividends, and all that fun stuff will come. I think for the next two to three years, as I said, we have CAD 15 million on the rooftop. We have about CAD 14 million-CAD 15 million for turning all the rooms in Valleyfield and then another CAD 7 million for the processing building. So it's a lot of spend, but again, all financed by us. And then once that's done, we can look at alternatives of how we're going to use our cash.
Thanks. Are you selling oils in any of your product categories? And if not, do you plan to do so?
Assuming oils as droppable oils, oils is a big category. So it could be concentrates and all that. I mean, we have products in concentrates, so dabbable products as well as our vape cart oils and our vape cart products.
And then our Orchid CBD line, we do have medical-grade oil, THC CBD blends, four different products that are being sold under Orchid CBD. Okay. Thank you. How do you view some of your competitors in terms of the market and M&A activity? Do you envision growth simply organic through the build-out of your grow zones, or do you potentially see yourself being an acquirer in a consolidated market? Right. So for us, for Cannara, what the beauty is, is that we have a great opportunity as just us, right? And what our stock represents and what the opportunity represents with the assets, the people, the products, the brands, everything is wrapped up right now inside Cannara. And we're confident we can get this from CAD 100 million to CAD 250+ million dollars.
Now, to say we're always open and looking for always opportunities to level up and grow and expand in the right way, we're looking, right? We're open to looking around and seeing what it is, but that's not the ultimate strategy. Ultimate strategy, we're confident anything that we do, tax reform, M&A, doing any editing thing is all on top additional potential to Cannara.
Okay. Thanks. A few questions here from an individual. And I know some of these have been answered and others haven't, so I'll just try to cherry-pick here. So first question is, MTL Cannabis yields 550 g per plant. Cannara is only 75 g per plant. Can you just elaborate on why we see this massive difference?
Yeah. So unfortunately, the industry went grams per plant. It's not the best metric. It's not the best metric because if you know the production facility, it's all by grams per sq m that the industry should be looking at. Because a plant could be a small plant and you have multiple plants in a room. So one room, just standard, 2,000 sq ft, we'll put 1,000 plants in there at 75 g versus maybe MTL would put 100 or 200 or 250 plants, which grow bigger and will have more yield per plant. But then when you look at it on a sq m basis, how much did that 2,000 sq ft produce? That's the real number that we need to compare. And unfortunately, the industry has chosen to go to per grams eventually as it stabilizes.
I will actually try to make that personal move to change it to grams per square meter, which is truly reflective of when you're trying to benchmark from a company to a company. If you're looking at a company just standalone and you know how many plants they have to have in the facility and you can times it by grams per plant, then that's a no-brainer. And you can easily follow the progress of a company when they're presenting it like that. But if you're comparing two companies, two growers, grams per plant doesn't work.
Okay. Thank you. And sticking to cost per gram, do you report on your post-harvest cost per gram?
No, we don't. Okay.
What is the cost per gram until you ship to the provincial distributor?
Right. So I mean, our flowering cost right now to flower a gram of cannabis or to harvest a gram of cannabis ranges between $0.55 and $0.60. And in terms of drying and packaging and getting it all that, we go up to $1.50 per gram. $1.20, sorry, not $1.20, $1.20 to $1.25 per gram, which is continuously decreasing.
Okay. Super. Thank you. I don't believe you're currently in Atlantic Canada. If not, why and when do you expect to be?
So all part of the strategy over the next two, three years. Right now, we're at a point where we have to open our two rooms ASAP. So we've already started a month ago opening up our two rooms because we're out of supply. So unfortunately, we can't expand to another market right now. We got to cater to the current market that's happening, especially as I showed the slide before with the top 10 LPs, they're losing market share, right? So just naturally, the demand for other products is increasing, and we're getting a portion of that increase. So October, November is our highest month ever in sales for the company. It's highest market share ever. I'm sure December, January, I'll say the same thing and continue saying the same thing until we finish our project. But yeah, that's where we are today.
Okay. Thank you. Are genetics a competitive advantage? How easy is it for a competitor to replicate? And what is the process of acquiring new genetics?
I love that question because it's absolutely not, it's extremely hard to replicate. It's a process I didn't even know how long and how hard it would be. I knew genetics are the name of the game. It's the way to differentiate yourself. It's the way to build brand awareness. It's the way to market, to create hype, to create long-lasting relationships. Genetics is super, super key for us. We're in a room, we're throwing 250 different genetics, and I'm lucky if one or two check all the boxes that we're looking for, that we can stand behind and say, "This is a winner," and that's that one plant out of we had; they're called phenotypes. One genetic, call it Neon Sunshine, but I'll have 10 versions of that plant. It was just that one version that made the cut.
Even if somebody were to try to get those seeds and try to recreate it, the chances of them finding that exact pheno and the conditions and all that, it's just not worth the time. It's not achievable. For us, it's really finding genetics that work in our facility that produce high yields that are just simply amazing. They work in dry flower. They work in pre-roll. They work in resins. They work in rosins. Once we find a genetic, one genetic can give me 30- 40 different SKUs. If I find 12 genetics, maybe 20 genetics one day, that's one genetic per room eventually for our facility plus a couple of other duplicates. For me, genetic is key because if I can find those unicorns and put them in our facility, then that's what's going to support the growth of our company.
Okay. Thank you. Have you considered raising pricing? If so, do you think you could still sell all your inventory? I guess outside of that, can you comment on your inventory loss rates?
Yeah. So we're not really considering price decreasing or increasing our price. I think we've priced ourselves perfectly where we are at. If tax reform comes, we're going to have to reevaluate things. There's going to be potentially 20% of additional revenues that are going back to all these LPs, which is huge. Right now, we're paying 33% of our top-line revenue to the government over the past since inception. We spent or gave the government over CAD 70 million in excise tax that we paid back to the federal and Quebec and each of the governments. So we're spending it. And yeah, we're focused on just making those products. Sorry.
Okay. Thanks. My understanding is that Cannara's processing and packaging is in the Farnham facility. Do you have enough capacity to accompany the production ramping up to all the grow zones in Valleyfield?
Yeah. So in Valleyfield, we're going to be moving our drying processes as we invest in our processing center. Currently, a lot of the rooms in Farnham are also doing drying and flowering. So as we move our drying process to Valleyfield, we're going to free up space in Farnham for additional packaging activities, transformation activities. We also have Farnham is built within a 625,000 sq ft warehouse. 170,000 is dedicated to cannabis production, but we can slowly expand our packaging activities within that building.
Okay. And I guess I got a question here regarding that building itself. My understanding is that you own it. Do you plan on maintaining ownership or potentially selling the building?
For now, we are maintaining ownership. Just our operating cash flow can finance our strategic plans. But it's a question you can just ask yourself is like, "Yeah, we can sell this building for probably 70." It has CAD 4 million, excluding what Cannara would pay as a lease as a tenant. The current tenants pay CAD 4 million a year for the building, right? So you add a lease rate for 170,000-sq-ft facility, and you do that cap rate on there. That building's worth CAD 70 million-CAD 80 million. And that's owned by us, right? And that's our small facility in Farnham. That's not Valleyfield, which we also own. So yeah, it's a potential. It's a card in our back pocket that we can finance future activities by selling and leasing it back to Cannara.
We lose control of the cannabis facility and we become a tenant rather than an owner. We're trying to build a long-lasting business that earns returns across all of our main business as well as our assets.
Okay. Super. Thank you. I think in one of the slides, you mentioned 50% insider ownership. Can you comment on who the insiders are that own the company, and are there any major institutional shareholders?
Yeah. So right now, the majority is 50% held by the CEO, Zohar Krivorot, founder of the company, as well as Derek Stern from Olymbec, a large real estate company here in Montreal who've financed a lot of the acquisitions and the initial purchase prices that we did here at Cannara. So they're both long invested into the company. The rest of the balance is several family offices here in Montreal, as well as the remaining being public and amongst the public float. That's really the composition of our share structure.
Okay. Great. And I'm just doing a time check. So we've got time for, I guess, one more question. And I see there's a theme there around valuation. So maybe I'll characterize it because there's a number of people asking similar questions in different ways. Number one is, obviously, everybody here recognizes that the company is well undervalued. I guess the general theme of these questions is, do you envision in 2025 a more proactive strategy to get the messaging on both the value of the current company and the opportunity for the current company?
Yeah, we do. We're going to be doing everything what we can reasonably and effectively. There's two forces at play here. At play is one, every dollar that we have: do we invest it in investor relations to attract new eyeballs, or do we invest it into the actual company, which we know we're going to get a 10x return in year one? I think the company believes that investing it might not be beneficial today to our investors because they're not more eyeballs will potentially have increased the share price. If we put that dollar in 10x, that's going to pay a lot more in a couple of years than what we would be paying if we were doing an investor relations push. We're investing in our operations. We're going to push investor relations more so than we did before.
We're looking at all the different exchanges to what's the next path for Cannara in terms of uplisting and seeing how to get more eyeballs properly to the company, but always with the mindset that we are actually executing a long-term profitable company, and then the second force is just the industry itself, right? There's just too much turmoil that happened. Investors are down and are turning away from cannabis. So there's a certain market timing that you have to be aware of because you can scream at the top of a rooftop about the company and the name, but if no one's listening and no one cares, then it's just not going to do anything. There are bull markets and bear markets. We've seen it time and time again. We know that that exists. So that time will be coming.
And we've just got to monitor that and keep pushing our story, why we're doing this today, while we're doing another one in January. So we're pushing. We're pushing hard properly. But there's going to be a shift eventually. And then that's when hopefully it lines with just more better results that Cannara is pushing. And it'll be our time to really push on the gas pedal on investor relations.
Super. Nick, really appreciate it. To our audience, thank you very much for attending. We did have quite a reasonable sign-up for this. So that's encouraging. And Nick, I'll just leave you with some closing remarks, then we'll end the call.
Absolutely. Thank you, Glen. Thank you, everyone, for joining me today, listening to the story, the track record that we're building for Cannara, the platform we're building. This is a platform. This is a scaled cannabis platform that we're building. You can tell, hopefully, the passion that I have in terms of building the company, the products, the genetic hunting, the accounting side of it. I'm creating the products. I'm costing the products. So we know everything from A to Z. You have our CEO, Zohar, who is our master grower.
He is the most hands-on CEO I've ever met in my life, who is at each facility every single day, knows the whole operation, knows exactly how to grow our cannabis genetics, and he improves the facility, improves the operation day in, day out. Then our 400-person team who are just amazing and are equally as passionate as I am about building this company. So I just want to leave you with that. You have my phone number. So you have my email as well as my phone number to reach me if you have any questions about our company or what we're doing here. Again, thank you for your time. And have a great holiday.
Super. Thanks, Nick. Thanks to our audience. This concludes this presentation.