The Cannabis Investing Podcast · Seeking Alpha

Cannabis investing masterclass with Julian Lin + Jerry Derevyanny

·1 hr 18 min·10 clips

The conversation opens with a broad look at earnings season across cannabis. Julianne frames the sector around the fallout from the 2021 and 2022 bubble burst. Price compression still sits at the center of the story. It has weighed on both top-line growth and margins. He notes that recent quarters are starting to lap easier comparables, which has begun to improve the picture for a number of companies. The tone stays cautious rather than celebratory. Jerry and Julianne are asked to focus on the names and developments that matter most. From there, the discussion shifts toward what earnings actually reveal once the headline numbers are stripped away. The show keeps returning to the idea that cannabis investors need to look beyond simple revenue comparisons. The conversation treats the industry as one where timing, leverage, and operating execution all interact. That makes the earnings read more complicated than a standard growth story. It also makes the sector easy to misread if the listener stops at surface-level improvement. A major thread is capital structure. Jerry walks through why leverage matters in a sector where access to capital has never been straightforward. He points out that a company can estimate its current cost of debt capital by looking at where its debt trades in the market. That frame becomes important when the discussion shifts to GTI. The company is presented as a relatively premium operator within cannabis, and the episode weighs whether buybacks make sense at that valuation. Jerry argues that the answer can be yes if the business has visibility into future free cash flow and can repurchase stock at a multiple that looks attractive relative to those future cash flows. The discussion does not treat buybacks as automatically good or bad. It treats them as a capital allocation decision that has to be measured against refinancing risk, debt cost, and the next round of investment. The episode also brings capex back into view. Jerry notes that recent spending is not always fully visible in reported results. Minnesota is singled out as a market coming online, and New Jersey is also discussed as an area where prior investment may still be working through the numbers. That matters because the case for capital return depends on whether earlier investments continue to bear fruit. The conversation therefore stays tied to the actual operating business, not just the stock chart. It is comfortable with long conditional arguments. If the company can refinance on reasonable terms, if the balance sheet remains disciplined, if the new assets perform, then the buyback looks more defensible. That is the kind of layered reasoning the episode favors. The pacing is patient and interview-driven. Questions are used to open a line of thought, then the guests are allowed to build the answer in full. There is little interest in forcing a neat conclusion before the tradeoffs are clear. The episode repeatedly comes back to debt maturity, capital access, and the gap between investor narrative and financial reality. It also reflects the show’s broader habit of translating policy or market structure into investable consequences. Even when the conversation becomes technical, it stays oriented toward decisions an investor might actually have to make. The result is not a hype piece about cannabis recovery. It is a sector check-in that asks whether improving operations are enough to matter when the cost of capital still shapes every move. The episode gives room to nuance, and it assumes the listener wants the second-order effects more than the elevator pitch. It is especially effective where it forces a comparison between market perception and underlying economics. The buyback discussion, in particular, shows how valuation can become rational only when paired with real cash generation. There is a quiet discipline to the way the episode handles uncertainty. Predictions are treated as frameworks, not promises. The guests do not pretend that regulatory timing or debt markets can be solved by enthusiasm. Instead, they keep weighing what can actually be supported by balance sheets, operating momentum, and capital markets access. That makes the episode useful as a lens rather than as a takeaway machine. It gives the listener a way to think about cannabis names when earnings season is no longer just about survival, but still not about freedom. The key takeaway is that cannabis stocks only begin to look more investable when operating improvement survives a hard look at debt, capex, and valuation.

As heard by us

A sober earnings-season map of cannabis stocks, where cash flow and debt matter more than slogans.

Cannabis earnings are the organizing problem here. The discussion keeps circling back to what changed after the 2021-2022 bubble burst: price compression, easier comparables, margin pressure, and the balance-sheet strength needed to keep moving.

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Why you'd press play

You want a sharp read on cannabis earnings, price compression, and what actually improves the setup.

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