“In terms of the retail market, Colorado sales were down approximately 15% on a year-over-year basis compared to our growth of almost 8%. Population in the state remained flat year-over-year, with overall store count down 3%, driven really by a reduction in medical dispensaries and also offset by low single-digit growth in the recreational stores.
“Sales volume was down about 15% year-over-year in Q4 and we’re seeing sequential improvement and we’re in a developed market and certainly going through some growing pains as demand and supply kind of normalize. But we’re built really to withstand this and I love the opportunity for us to compete in a tough, challenging market, and I think, things are certainly going to improve.
“From a wholesale perspective, cultivation licenses count in Colorado have come down roughly 22%, which is a sizable move from approximately 1,200 licenses at the end of 2022 to over 920 as of Q4 2023, which is below pre-COVID license counts.
“We’re starting to see pricing stabilization, as Forrest mentioned, in the state with flower AMR remaining around $750 in Q4 and plant counts back to 2018, 2019 levels. So we’re certainly starting to see stabilization and we believe there’s improvement around the corner, but we’re going to continue to execute, we believe, in the short-term in a tough market.
“To summarize, we believe it’s going to be leveling out with steady flower AMR and believe shows stability regardless of how we really think about retail pricing pressure. We feel good about where we’re headed from a wholesale perspective standpoint.
“Looking ahead, we believe we can maintain solid retail margins, utilize the wholesale penetration growth to protect our CPG margins and we’ll benefit from modest increase in wholesale pricing as supply settles down.
“This could be a shakeout year for Colorado and our lightweight capital model, strong retail capabilities, we believe position us very well to continue to grow share of wallet from our customers. We’re going to continue to focus on retail execution and optimizing customer acquisition with loyalty and retention and unlocking liquidity through our current asset base.” - Justin Dye
