This is an essay from the Business Policy course.

Canopy Growth Corporations

A Company with High Ambitions

As North America’s leading producer of legal marijuana, Canopy Growth Corporation has

always been ambitious. Canopy, formerly Tweed Marijuana Inc. was founded by Bruce Linton,

Mark Zekulin, and Chuck Rifici in 2013 with the objective of providing affordable medicinal

cannabis to patients. Their concept of “Compassionate Pricing” would become a standard

industry-wide. This is just one of the few benchmarks the company has set.

In 2014, Tweed became the first publicly-traded cannabis company in North America with stock

being traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The following year, the company purchased an

abandoned Hershey factory in Ontario, where they still operate to this day. Later in 2015, the

company grow from“..a singular enterprise to a multi-branding holding company that can focus

on diversified markets.” and changed their name to Canopy Growth Corporations. In 2018,

Canopy Growth Corporations achieved another first when there were the first cannabis company

to have the shares made available on the New York Stock Exchange.

Figure 1. International Footprint (Canopy Growth 2018)

Currently, Canopy Growth has a total of 11 operating facilities in Canada in addition to their 10

other facilities in places such as Poland, Columbia, and Denmark. And, by partnering with

numerous brands, they are able to provide their customers with a wide variety of medicinal and

recreational products such as “dried flower”, oils, concentrates, supplements, and hemp.

The company's current mission is to elevate the experiences of its medical and recreational

consumers, and drive the biotechnology industry forward. This well-articulated statement clearly

defines the purpose of the company. Moreover, it’s realistic and motivating. The main focus is

on satisfying the needs of the recreational and medicinal customers as opposed to the company’s

products. Customer experience is a key factor for a company’s growth. since if a company meets

and exceeds customer expectations by delivering quality products as promised, the company is

destined for growth and success. Additionally, the company’s emphasis on their aspirations in

the biotechnology industry reinforces their desire for continued growth and innovation. It can,

therefore, be concluded that this mission statement is quite effective.

The vision of Canopy Growth Corporation is to be a leading cannabis company in the globe.

While this statement is clear and describes the company's desired future state. The statement is

broad and lacks distinctiveness as it can be applied by any organization in the cannabis industry.

The company would have taken another step to align its intended efforts to complement this

vision. Surprisingly, the Mission Statement is more inspirational. A more effective vision

statement would have expanded on this. Currently, it’s too generalized and so the company

might scatter its efforts into other goals not aimed at supporting this vision statement. This can

inhibit the company’s direct progress toward this vision.

Canopy Growth’s values are aligned with Corporate Social Responsibility. Their values

statement is as followed. “Canopy Growth is committed to being a responsible member of our

community and industry wherever we operate. We pride ourselves on investing in and being the

leader in creating solutions to cannabis-related issues. Now that we’re on the verge of legal

access to regulated, recreational cannabis, we’re stepping up to do our part to ensure education

and responsible use are at the forefront of the cannabis conversation.” This statement is lengthy

but hit all of the right notes. Canopy Growth is determined to find solutions to cannabis related

problems and had made strategic partnerships in to have their goals realized. They have

partnered with Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Canadian Drug Policy Coalition. Another

alliance is with Parent Action on Drugs (P.A.D). It is important that their customers and

investors know that they are passionate about growth in their industry as well as educating and

corporate social responsibility. This statement is supported by their numerous alliances. Thus it

is quite effective.

The performance of Canopy Growth Corporation over the last five years has increased

tremendously. According to Bloomberg data, in 2014, the company reported sales of $3.4 billion.

In 2015, the revenue reported sales of $7.7 million. In 2016, there was an increase in sales as the

recreational market expanded and the company had $12 million in revenue. At the end of 2017,

the company’s revenues rose considerably to $39.9 million following an increase in the purchase

of medicinal cannabis units (Kristine, 2019)..

The year 2018 saw an increase in the amount of cannabis harvested and revenues rose to $ 77.9

million. In 2019, the company hopes to achieve an extreme increase in revenue earnings

following its expansion into the skin care market. In an interview with Susan (2019) of

Bloomberg News, the company's CEO Bruce Linton stated the company's team productivity has

been quite impressive over the last five years and this has been a contributing factor to Canopy’s

success​. Despite it’s increase in revenues, Canopy Growth Corporation continue to report losses

and investors continue to question the company’s profitability, resulting in the termination of

Co-founder, Bruce Linton. Canopy’s lack of profitability is due to its focus on investing in long

term growth, keeping an entrepreneurial mindset in a rapid growing market, which resulted in its

phenomenal 90 patents and continued revenue growth, forecasting the company to have large

future rewards and market share.

​References

● Canopy Growth Corporation. Retrieved from​ ​www.canopygrowth.com

Freeman, S. (2016). Canopy Growth Corporation to acquire Mettrum for $430

M-making a mega-company serving half Canada’s medical pot users. Retrieved

June 28, 2017

● Kristine Owram (2019). Canopy Analysis. Retrieved from

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-15/canopy-shares-tumble-as-a

nalysts-surprised-by-declining-revenue

● Paul Monica (2019).Canopy’s cannabis business growth. Retrieved from

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/15/investing/canopy-growth-cannabis-earnings/in

dex.html

● Susan Berfield (2019). Canopy’s Bruce Linton. Retrieved from

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-canopy-cannabis-bruce-linton-canada-

weed/

● Canopy Growth. (2019, September 11). Retrieved from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canopy_Growth

● Our Story. (n.d.). Retrieved from​ ​https://www.tweed.com/en/our-story

● Marijuana company heads to New York Stock Exchange. (2018, October 25).

Retrieved from

https://wtop.com/business-finance/2018/10/marijuana-company-heads-to-new-yor

k-stock-exchange/

● Our Story. (n.d.). Retrieved from​ ​https://www.canopygrowth.com/about/

● Corporation, C. G. (2018, December 23). Tweed Marijuana Inc. Renamed Canopy

Growth Corporation. Retrieved from

https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/tweed-marijuana-inc-renamed-canopy-gr

owth-corporation-528475771.html