Canopy Growth Corp (WEED)

[Carpathian]

Some highlights:

OBJ:You’re interim CEO right now. How’s the search going for a new boss?

BL: We’re down to the final few candidates. No certainty that we’ll close with one of them … it’s a bit like telecom was in the mid-’90s, where these people with unbelievable careers and resumes and experience were applying to startups. They were all wanting to be part of it because they could see that for the foreseeable future, the telecom startup was going to be hot. We have had people applying who’ve been running companies of a billion, billion and a half dollars. We’ve had people running brands that you would go, ‘Really?’ from all the big names. Because people recognize that probably the most interesting job in Canada or North America over the next three years is going to be building potentially the biggest medical marijuana company, seeing potential legalization with the next election, doing mergers and acquisitions so that this company can become a billion-dollar enterprise. And that could all happen over the next three years.

OBJ:You’ve talked about breaking into the European market. Do you think that will be viable?

BL: Canada has actually crushed it in terms of taking the best perspective and turning it into our legislation on how you produce, deliver, manage, measure – everything about marijuana. So I think you’re going to see our framework largely turning up with some alterations, from the Czech Republic to Albania, South Africa to parts of South America. So the opportunity to take our methods of compliance, our practices and protocols, and if you will franchise those into abandoned factories in other jurisdictions, that seems pretty likely.