Last November, Massachusetts residents voted in favor of legalizing recreational marijuana, making the state the first in the East to make both recreational and medical marijuana permissible by law. Denver-based agricultural technology company AmeriCann, Inc. (OTCQX:ACAN) on Monday took the opportunity to publicly applaud Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker for signing the cannabis bill on July 28, 2017, paving the way for planned business for AmeriCann.
AmeriCann, who holds the distinction as the first public cannabis company to earn a Certified B Corp. accreditation, has been approved to build what it is calling the Massachusetts Medical Cannabis Center in Freetown, MA, about 47 miles south of Boston. The facility is greenlighted for nearly one million square feet of medical cannabis cultivation and processing.
AmeriCann expects to construct the massive, state-of-the-art greenhouse in stages. The first phase is initially scheduled for 160,000 square feet of growing and processing, but can be expanded to 600,000 square feet if warranted by demand.
Looking at overall market, there is the real possibility that supply won’t be able to keep up with demand in Massachusetts. In fact, most aspects of the state’s cannabis network is going to have to undergo intense growth.
For starters, the state only has about a dozen licensed dispensaries, although as noted by Signal Bay (OTCQB:SGBY) in their news of buying one of only a few operating cannabis testing labs in the state four days ago, the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services has another 100 provisional certificates for dispensaries awaiting approval. As such, there is a unique opportunity to qualified growers and labs to get clean marijuana onto shelves for public consumption.
Tim Keogh, AmeriCann president, CEO and (who also happens to be a Massachusetts native), believes the evolution of the industry is going to create thousands of new jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the state, similar to what has happened in the company’s home state of Colorado. In CO, legal cannabis sales are forecast to top $1.5 billion this year, generating more than $250 million in taxes at the same time.
When Massachusetts legalized medical marijuana in 2014, more than 40,000 patients were registered. Sales this year for medical cannabis are expected above $100 million. With legal recreational cannabis too, analysts are predicting sales to exceed $1.6 billion by 2021.
So-called "pot stocks" have been a little cold in 2017, despite some very positive developments and evolution of the green rush. Shares of ACAN have skidded to their lowest level of 2017 today to $1.56 each. Incidentally, after first running ahead in the morning sessions, shares of SGBY are even at 1.8 cents after the Oregon-based company said it expanded its operations further down the East Coast now with a license deal in Florida today.
