HEXO Corp (HEXO) Q3 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

HEXO Corp  (NYSE:HEXO) Q3 2021 earnings call dated Jun. 14, 2021. 

Corporate Participants:

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Trent MacDonald — Chief Financial Officer

Analysts:

Aaron Grey — Alliance Global Partners — Analyst

Tamy Chen — BMO Capital Markets — Analyst

Rupesh Parikh — Oppenheimer & CO — Analyst

David Kideckel — ATB Capital Markets — Analyst

Douglas Miehm — RBC Capital Markets — Analyst

W. Andrew Carter — Stifel Financial Corp. — Analyst

John Zamparo — CIBC — Analyst

Matt Bottomley — Canaccord — Analyst

John Chu — Desjardins Capital — Analyst

Adam Buckham — Scotiabank — Analyst

Presentation:

Operator

Good morning. My name is Sharon, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the HEXO Q3 2021 Earnings Call.

Before we begin, we would like to remind you that certain matters discussed in today’s call or answers that may be given to questions asked, could constitute forward-looking statements. These statements are based on the Company’s current internal views, estimates, expectations, opinions, forecast, beliefs, assumptions and other statements that are not statements of fact regarding the future of our business, future plans and strategies operational results and other future conditions.

These statements should not be read as assurances of future performance or results. They involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from current expectations and those implied by such statements.

We would also note that we utilize certain non-IFRS measures in our financial reports which may be discussed on today’s call, and reconciliations between any non-IFRS measures to their closest reported IFRS measures are included in our MD&A. The discussion is qualified in its entirety by the cautionary notes regarding forward-looking statements and the risk factors that are included at the end of this morning’s earnings news release and in our MD&A for our third quarter of fiscal 2021 financial statements and our annual information form, annual reports and other continuous disclosures and offering documents filed on our profile on SEDAR and EDGAR.

Please refer these — review these materials for more information about forward-looking statements and the risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations and those implied by such statements.

HEXO disclaims any intention or obligation except to the extent required by law to update or revise any forward-looking statements as a result of new information or future events, or for any reason. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions].

I will now turn the call over to Sebastien St-Louis, CEO of HEXO.

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Operator and good morning everybody. There is reasons for optimism, both in the cannabis industry and also in our societal roll-out against COVID-19. Rapid vaccinations are ongoing. We’re quite happy to continue to keep the safety of our employees as of paramount importance. We continue to take all precautions and we’re happy to say there have been zero transmissions of COVID on site. Some of our employees over the last year have been exposed to COVID, but it was all outside of HEXO. And no disruption — no significant disruption to operations so far. A huge thanks to all our employees who continue to put themselves at risk every day, and they continue to bring utmost morale and effort.

HEXO has been going through a significant period of aggressive growth and transformation. We recently closed on our acquisition of Zenabis, bringing significant indoor production capability to the table as well as increased market share across most of our markets. We’ve also announced definitive agreements to purchase both 48North and Redecan, those two transactions on top of Zenabis really put HEXO in an incredible position.

Forecasted, so off the back of the close of those transactions, HEXO should have the number one market share in recreational cannabis in Canada. We had set ourselves out to achieve a top two position a few years ago, and it’s really a momentous and historical occasion for HEXO, and we’re celebrating quite a lot in being able to see that we are now number one in recreational share with a 17% share, according to third-party results. That puts us a whole point-and-a-half ahead of the next largest LP on a consolidated basis.

We’ve also announced our intent that to purchase a 50,000 square foot facility in Colorado. And we’re very excited about our U.S. entry under, Powered by HEXO. With this facility, we’ll be able to put our Powered by HEXO technology to work on a larger scale to support all our partners, including Molson Coors, of course, which is selling CBD beverages in Colorado from Hemp at the moment.

Our third quarter had really two stories. It was — so one, a phenomenal story around the acquisitions and around the consolidated number one position, but also a challenging quarter. And that — those two stories really reflected themselves in all of Canada, and then in Quebec specifically. So I’ll start by speaking a little bit about what happened in Canada, and then I’ll talk about our challenges in Quebec and specifically, the two decisions that we spoke of, that we took that impacted Quebec negatively.

So let’s start outside of Quebec with a good news. We’re up 169% excluding beverage versus the same quarter last year. This is some of the best growth outside of Quebec in the entire industry. We’re also up 14% in Ontario from Q2. We continue to build a wonderful relationship with the OCS and with other boards across Canada, and we’re being recognized more and more for being the leader in the industry. Inside of Quebec, unfortunately, we were down about CAD5.2 million from Q2 and that is essentially a result of two decisions. So the first decision was one we undertook 12 months ago. And that was one when we started to see the shift in consumer preferences, in Flower, specifically.

We identified that shift in time and we started — we began a refresh of our flower portfolio. We had initial tests on some new genetics that came out of our Brantford genetics lab that were incredibly promising and that basically showed us that, no problem, we can hit these quality levels. So here’s where the mistake came in, in hindsight. We offlined some strains that were performing well in Quebec, we had sufficient inventory for to get through the nine month grow period. So we offlined about three genetics that were responsible for quite a bit of — quite a bit of sales in Quebec thinking we would replace them with the strains that we had tested at our genetics lab that had performed better than those current strains.

What happened nine months later when we actually — when we actually cultivated outside of our greenhouse is we did not hit the same quality that had been done in our indoor facility at Brantford. And so that was very disappointing, and we could not replace our strains that were now out of inventory with a better or like quality. And that then resulted in a loss of flower share. We’re still number one in Quebec, and we will rectify this very quickly. We’re working with SQDC, and since then, of course, our genetics work has not stopped. We’ve launched a 100 strain plan, and that is well underway. We’ve since increased quality at both our indoor production sites and at Masson. In fact, now the Masson greenhouse being some of the most productive it’s ever been, not just from a yield perspective, but also from a THC perspective.

The second decision that hurt us in Quebec was one of over confidence. We were the market leaders and still are in the Hash category. But we were at an absolutely dominant position with north of a 70% share nationally. And we couldn’t fulfill all of the demand, the demand was just too high, our products were flying off the shelf. So we made the decision to ship a product at a lower than maximum potential into market. We put some hash into market at 22% THC, because there were simply no competition. What we didn’t — what we underestimated was essentially the speed at which the cannabis industry moved, and that is the mistake we will never make again.

The — our competition — or we loaded in this 22% hash and we produced quite a bit of it, and our competition came in, especially from the craft grow. So it was a few weeks after we did our load-in, they started coming in with Hash at 26% and 27%. That crushed the velocity on our 22% Hash and we had to retool that product. So we, this is not a productive capability issue. In fact, that we have now started up again, we’ve re-specced [Phonetic] all our hash and now we’re outputting between 28% and 30% for the Quebec market. And of course, outside of Quebec, we’re going higher than that, our hash hitting as high as 45% THC.

We continue to work with SQDC and the rest of the boards to correct those two decisions. They were unfortunate, but there are things that were set in motion about 12 months ago, and we’ve since rectified the issues. Go forward, I think this really underlines the strategic importance of some of the acquisitions we’ve made. When you look at the Zenabis acquisition and the Atholville asset which is a 450,000 square foot indoor grow, that really allows us to lean in to all these genetics work and to scale up our premium genetics.

When you look at our portfolio and the demand in market, our UP brand which is HEXO’s ultra premium line is a highly productive asset in all markets. We have an opportunity to expand the assortment and the distribution, and to position a better overall offering in market. The UP brand has actually increased nationally about 20% quarter-over-quarter. Of course, our hash quality is now from a productive capability increased, we continue to invest on more capex behind that for the — what we call Hash 3.0. And so we’re very excited to be able to talk to that over the next six months to 12 months. And we’re very happy to say that quality on our other brands is increasing as well, namely in pre-roll, when we ran them through double blind consumer base tests.

All this story is actually backstopped by continuing great performance from a gross margin perspective. So we have dipped a little bit below the 30% watermark, so currently running on 28%, adult use margin which is still one of the strongest gross margins in the industry, and that is really a result of some inventory rightsizing during the quarter to prevent write-downs.

We want to maintain a pristine balance sheet, and so we’re making — we’re making choices on pricing in real time in order not to accumulate bad inventory. That should be rectified against over in the next few quarters. We did not have international sales, which was another impact on the quarter. It was a temporary impact. We actually missed the shipping window by a few weeks. We do have a CAD2 million sale to Israel that was recently completed post quarter.

We had an adjusted EBITDA loss of CAD10.8 million due to that lower margin percentage in dollars on lower sales as well as a CAD3.6 million federal cannabis tax levy recorded in the quarter. Our Truss portfolio has performed incredibly well. In May, it strengthened its share leadership of the beverage category in Canada, growing to 46% market share nationally. So huge congrats to the Truss team, and of course, to our consumers that keep making Truss the best beverage brand in cannabis in Canada.

We’re going to continue on that success and celebrate summer with some new products coming out of Truss, so look forward for House of Terpenes Valencene & Sparkling Tonic, XMG Citrus and XMG Watermelon as well as Veryvell Honey Green Iced Tea, Little Victory Lemonade and Mollo 5 Lime. Look for those on shelves across the country for this summer.

I’ll pass it over to Trent to talk more about our financial results.

Trent MacDonald — Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Sebastien. I just wanted to touchbase a few things on the balance sheet and for the P&L. This is another quarter, third in a row that we’ve had no significant inventory write-downs or provisions as we continued to do the right things around inventory, strategically and otherwise. It’s another core quarter without any impairments of long-lived asset. So, our asset base remains strong, our balance sheet remains clean.

We raised CAD45 million off the back of our at-the-market offering. We are only branded for about nine days between the filing of the prospectus supplements and the — as we led up to the possible announcement of a definitive agreement to purchase Redecan. We also raised an additional CAD395 million of net proceeds through the issuance of a secured convertible debenture in relation to the Redecan acquisition. We’re currently sitting with about CAD194 million in cash in our operating accounts, and have another CAD275 million sitting in escrow waiting on the Redecan transaction close.

Our G&A is still in a continuum where we will continue to want to try to push it down into the best percentage of net revenue in the market. Our marketing sales promotion, we came down another CAD1.2 million, sequentially, from Q2, which represents an 8% decrease in real dollars. Loss from operations was CAD16.1 million for Q3, bringing the total loss from operations to CAD25.6 million through three quarters. I just want to note that this is by far and I mean by far, the lowest of any loss from operations in any of the top LPs and is not even close. So we’ve been doing very well in terms of our commitments to ensuring we are spending investor funds wisely.

We still believe we have a clear path to EPS as we continue to structure our SG&A correctly, and leverage what we have to be able to have a bright future. We also know that with our M&A activities that once closed, we have a very good path to not only abundant adjusted EBITDA positivity, but pass through EPS. We now — of course with that M&A we will be turning our focus to integration planning and execution. We have hired external consultants. We’ve already closed on — sorry, called Protiviti and we’ve already closed on Zenabis as of just a couple of weeks ago.

So now that we are on our path to closing Redecan and 48North, we will be doing a lot of integration planning in a very structured way, and we feel very good about the risk that we are mitigating in that regard. We did a great job I believe in Zenabis and we’re looking forward to working with the teams at Redecan and 48North to have a very constructive integration planning process and then to be a proposed close integration.

At that, I’m going to turn it back over to Sebastien.

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks very much, Trent.

Despite the many dire economic and social consequences the pandemic has caused, the cannabis industry continues to grow. That’s a testament to the consumer demand for safe, high-quality, legal product that are offered by licensed producers. HEXO is extremely proud of its journey. Over eight years, we’ve went from the number 17 ranked LP by market share to now post consolidation of our acquisition of Redecan and 48North. We should be the number one recreational market share licensed producer. We think we’ve done that on some of the best deployment of capital, amongst the leading LPs and are thrilled to announce our new strategic priorities.

Three years ago, I have set us out to become top two in Canada, have operational scalability and high gross margins, and of course continue to invest on product innovation. Today, on the verge of becoming number one in Canada, we’re focused on integration and making sure that we continue to push our margins higher. We’re focused on delivering not just positive EBITDA, but in the future, moving us to positive EPS, and we’re of course updating our top two Canadian target, because we’ve achieved number one to now becoming top three from a cannabis products perspective across the world.

We look forward to updating you on all of this on our next call, and happy to answer some questions. Operator?

Questions and Answers:

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. First question comes from Aaron Grey with Alliance Global Partners.

Aaron Grey — Alliance Global Partners — Analyst

Good morning and thanks for the questions. So first question from me, just talking about your home market of Quebec. So just diving a little bit deeper on some of the softness there in terms of genetic. So it looks like you’re trying to right that ship. So would like to get some more color in terms of the timing of kind of the strain cultivation decisions and how you look to remedy that. And do you feel like that still might be another quarter or two until you kind of right that ship.

And then also, as you also talked about heightened competition in that market. How do you feel, it might be more difficult to kind of maybe regain some of that market share as more competitors have come into the Quebec marketplace. So you may kind of cover there in terms of the timing of when you look to return to more positive sequential sales there in Quebec will be helpful. Thanks.

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Aaron. We expect to fully recover our market share in Quebec within two to three quarters. Most of those decisions that brought us here were decisions that we started as I mentioned, almost 12 months ago. But we didn’t stop. So 12 months ago, we made the decisions to pull some strains that were highly productive out of Quebec. And so, and those — that inventory now have since run out on those specific strains. So that gave up some share.

But it’s not like we stopped building our genetics library 12 months ago. So 12 months ago, we said, hey, we’ve got two new genetics that look awesome, so let’s pull a few out of Quebec, and we’ll keep investing. A few months — so then nine months ago, then we had more genetics coming in and six months ago, even more so, to the point now that we’ve got 56 genetics that are actually well underway for development for a complete refresh as part of what we call our 100 strain plan.

So no — things are going very well. And now, since then, so since those first two genetics failed in greenhouse, we’ve actually had tremendous success. So some of our stalwarts specifically Northern Berry, which is one of the best-selling flowers in Canada is produced out of Masson and is actually hitting north of 23% this round from greenhouse. So we expect that we’ll be able to do a lot better with the Atholville indoor site in Zenabis.

And, of course, all of this is just reflective of the HEXO genetic library proper, not the HEXO Zenabis, 48North Redecan library, which of course is incredibly robust.

Aaron Grey — Alliance Global Partners — Analyst

Okay. Thanks for that color. And then second question from me. You also called out some impacts on revenue, I think it was to due to a less reserving ability to get high THC products. It looks like harvest during the Q remained near record high. So would love to get some commentary in terms of the level of THC for the harvest in the most recent quarter. And then also, if you could provide some color in terms of Zenabis with that acquisition now closing. It looks like there was some softness in their most recent quarter two. So just in terms of what you’re seeing from their own sales and their own harvest that they’ve been having, because I know high THC has been a high priority for you guys. Thank you.

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

As far as the Zenabis numbers, we look forward to reporting consolidated and you’ll see — you’ll see that, that should be — that should be positive when we get to those numbers. So I won’t share the numbers today. In terms of productive capability and what we’re able to do from a quality perspective, we keep making improvements all the time.

And so, I just mentioned specifically that we now have our Northern Berry product which is coming up above 23%, and that’s out of greenhouse grow. So some remaining upside to go — kind of go hit some theoretical maximums there, as we move to indoor. The entire portfolio is now — half of the entire portfolio is now hitting consistently over 20%. And that of course fills the UP promise, which is a guaranteed 20% or more across the board.

We’ve also made some strides in terpene production. So it’s not just a question of increasing THC, but overall quality. And so, we’ve actually had tremendous success in Quebec with Lemonades which is actually a bit of a lower THC strain sitting at 16% to 17%, but the terpene profile is just resounding with consumers.

On top of that, in double blind tests with consumers, HEXO was performing extremely well. We keep improving our curing processes, our drying processes. We’ve continued to improve the moisture content of our product. We’re improving the bud sorting of our product, which is able to guarantee larger bud size. So if you go pick up an Original Stash or Original Stash reserve, you’ll notice. Go try that against a competing product, you will notice the bud structure is a lot nicer, way more moist product. And I’m not — I’m not picking, cherry-picking just against the majors. You can put up HEXO Original Stash product against craft Quebec cannabis and the HEXO product and double-blind is better on almost every single qualitative aspect. So we’re quite happy with that.

So I think as the consumer continues to learn and look for a factory response, right, and just sensory response and that the story matures beyond THC, we’ll have a lot of occasions to really show how great HEXO product is. Of course, we continue to hit higher and higher THC and that will remain part of our story.

Aaron Grey — Alliance Global Partners — Analyst

All right. Great. Thanks for the color. I’ll jump back into the queue.

Operator

Next question comes from Tamy Chen with BMO Capital Markets.

Tamy Chen — BMO Capital Markets — Analyst

Thanks, good morning. First question is on the genetic in the production. So, I was wondering we’ve seen some other competitors doing their own product revitalization. Now what we’ve seen is that, one, it takes quite a while; and that two, the pathway to eventually get some of these newer genetics growing in their facilities to commercial scale and hitting more on spec takes quite a while, and it’s quite a bumpy road.

So Sebastien, could you just elaborate a bit more on the confidence you have that you will have these new genetics and there seems to be quite a bit of them that you’re trying to scale up that you’ll be able to have them in market and recover your market share over the next two to three quarters, especially if areas you’ll be growing, it sounds like some of those strains in Zenabis’ facility which I think does come with a learning curve, since it is a facility that you’ve acquired rather [Phonetic] than till now from day one yourself.

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Tamy. Yeah. So this is the advantage of having started our genetics program 12 months ago. So we’ve been in full swing in genetics revitalization for a year now. So it’s not something we’ve talked about, we’ve been quietly doing it in the background. And the first two strains didn’t work when we moved to our greenhouse in Masson. But we currently have four new ones that are in Masson that are productive, that are working that are growing and actually about to be harvested. We expect that by September, we’ll have many new strains in market. So we’re quite excited about that.

And of course we keep just improving the base strains that we have. So of course, things like Northern Berry continue to be highly productive under the UP brand. So this is not — it is a long turnaround, but it’s something we started a year ago. And I think when you look at full cycle for that to really be complete, it’s probably an 18-month process to largely engage that. So September we start, and we should have a full portfolio refresh completed by Q2 by our fiscal Q2 in January, which should coincide with the consolidation of — as well of our acquisitions.

Trent MacDonald — Chief Financial Officer

So just a couple up on that, Tamy, I know you mentioned the Atholville as well. Atholville has been a productive site [Technical Issues] for Zenabis for some time now. So it is a state-of-the-art facility. It is producing at high grade. We don’t — we don’t believe that it’s going to be — to your point, like starting from scratch. We didn’t build a greenfield. It is a site now that is in full production. So we believe we’re going to be able to get the genetics out of there at a high — at a very high-level within a very short timeframe.

Tamy Chen — BMO Capital Markets — Analyst

Okay, thank you. That’s helpful. And my follow-up question is more on the beverage category. I noticed some language in the press release mentioning some more competitors with SKUs coming to market. While you’re still number one, you did call that out. So I just wanted to ask, is that of a concern? What’s the strategy aside from some of the new products that you will be launching in the category? How’re you thinking about maintaining your number one share? Do you think pricing as a lever may be required? Just overall commentary on how you feel about the category now that it seems like some more competitors and schemes are coming into that category. Thank you.

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Tamy. Well, it’s a dominant number one right now at 46 share, and we’re not — we’re not worried in terms of a short answer. In fact, I welcome competition in the beverage space. I think it’s necessary. Our biggest opportunity in beverage is actually growth of category, so not growth of share, but the growth of the overall category. And we’ve seen that in certain markets that we can get upwards of 6% of the category. So we’ve hit that time and time again from a unit sales perspective.

What’s key, our beverages have an 85% rebuy rate, meaning that when somebody tries it, they’re almost certain to try it again. And so, really we need to induce trial, we need to bring people into the category, because once they try it, beverage becomes a go-to. And anyone who’s tried the Truss portfolio, they’re usually blown away and it becomes part of their — part of their weekly consumption habits.

And so, having more people come into the category, we hope will bring more attention to beverage, incite consumers to try Truss products and then of course off the back of that, we should have a lot of repeat sales. I still think that beverage as an overall category could eventually hit 15% of total cannabis sales. It’s simply a wonderful format.

Tamy Chen — BMO Capital Markets — Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Next question comes from Rupesh Parikh with Oppenheimer.

Rupesh Parikh — Oppenheimer & CO — Analyst

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So I guess — I guess first starting out with Q4, is there anything you can share from a revenue expectation perspective? We clearly saw some challenges out there with COVID. But then you guys had some Company specific things that you’re also getting through. So just curious if you could just share any perspectives on Q4.

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Listen, Q4 is better. We’re coming out of COVID, Rupesh, so — and we didn’t want to blame COVID for Q3 either. Really I think — I think that’s a key differentiator for HEXO. Q3 was our fault. We — there were those two key decisions that we took a year ago. So, one on the strain selection and the other on hash. We know what those are, we’ve rectified them, and it won’t happen again. It was not a COVID problem. Consumers were still buying the HEXO product, and had we had the right mix in category and channel it — I think Q3 would have been a very different story.

So Q4, certainly already looking better, but we’re not providing guidance or numbers in more specifics.

Rupesh Parikh — Oppenheimer & CO — Analyst

Okay, great. And then maybe just a follow-up question, so on EBITDA profitability. So the last quarter you guys did get to positive EBITDA. Just any updated thinking in terms of the timeline to get back to that positive EBITDA metric?

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Look the EBITDA was hit by two things, okay? We had a CAD3.6 million tax levy that came in on an annual basis that hit Q3. We also had, of course, the margin loss in relation to the lower volume of sales specifically at Quebec, but then the margin percent was about 20% still a pretty good margin percent, all else being equal, especially around the LPs this time. But I think for us, without giving specific guidance, there is — you have the — you have the M&A activity as well that’s coming in. We believe that there’s going to be a ton of synergies. We’re already starting to see those in Zenabis, and we believe that we have this path forward that we continue to talk about, not just from adjusted EBITDA, but actual EPS.

So look, our Q2 is where you’ll see really Q2 next year you’ll see all three hopefully, and when we get to the close of Redecan and 48North and we have Zenabis which we would have had for few [Phonetic] months, I think you’re going to see a great Q2. But what that looks like? I don’t know. But we’re not worried too much about the EBITDA. Our SG&A is coming under control. We’re getting better all the time as we leverage our sales back up, I don’t see — I don’t see any reason to think that we’re not going to be able to get back to where we were.

Rupesh Parikh — Oppenheimer & CO — Analyst

Okay, great. And then maybe just on Health Canada recovery fees, is that something that’s accrued every quarter and then paid out in April? I just want to get a sense, because I think the P&L impact will hit this quarter. So just on — any comment there.

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

It did hit this quarter. I’ll be honest, it’s a bit of a debate between us and our auditors as to how we should treat that. I mean, I’m on the opinion that it should be accrued quarterly, so it doesn’t hit in any specific quarter. I’ve been losing that debate quite frankly, but I’ll continue to have it. This is the same way as other LPs have been treating it as well, apparently. So look, stay tuned, but if we have to start budgeting in for Q3 every year, we will.

Rupesh Parikh — Oppenheimer & CO — Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you. I’ll pass it on.

Operator

Next question comes from David Kideckel with ATB Capital Markets.

David Kideckel — ATB Capital Markets — Analyst

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Both of them are going to revolve a little bit around your M&A activity as of late. So my first question, Sebastien, and we’ve had this conversation several times around cultivation specifically, we’ve seen — you didn’t have to write down any inventory this quarter. But now with your other acquisitions, namely Redecan and to some extent, 48North, perhaps Zenabis, what are your thoughts still around, now, going back to having the problem and not in this quarter, but in subsequent quarters of having excess supply, especially with all these potentially new cultivation facilities coming online. Thanks.

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks David. Well, to properly answer that, I think I have to take you back almost two years. So two years ago when we did right size our balance sheet, HEXO did that — we were the the first licensed producer to do that. Well, we learned a ton of lessons. And those were lessons that we’ve built on in those two years. So a ton of experience there in learning how to manage supply chain, how to manage cultivation, moving from specific SKU, all the way to the shelf, and then to the consumers’ hands.

So those lessons is a big part of our integrated business planning. It’s a big part of what we bring as a combined story and as HEXO to our M&A partners. So going in, we’re immediately implementing things that will ensure that inventory does not become a problem in the future. And you saw some of those things in Q3, of course, but those are — those are largely temporary and the — anything larger that we need to do on a consolidate basis, we’re not afraid to do them.

So, no I don’t — I don’t expect that inventory accumulation is going to be a problem, especially in the face of continued, really strong demand for some of the product portfolio from that consolidated business. So specifically when I look at the Redees product, the Redees portfolio, the Redecan portfolio as a whole in oil, etc. I mean, on a consolidated basis coming out of this, HEXO is going to be the number one, not just overall by rec share, but we’re actually the number one — we should be the number one in flower, the number one in pre-roll, the number one in beverage, the number one in hash, the number one in oil, the number one in gel caps, it’s a lot of number one. So you need a lot of capacity to fill that demand.

David Kideckel — ATB Capital Markets — Analyst

Okay, that’s helpful. Thanks for that encouragement as well, Sebastien. My second question is around the actual integration of the two. I know the deals or at least with Redecan hasn’t closed yet, which is the most significant one here. But, I mean what processes and procedures are in place to ensure a seamless acquisition? I mean, even with quality control, you’re talking about products that have been arguably number one in the market, or number one to three with Redecan. So is this going to be HEXO adopting a Redecan approach or vice-versa or kind of combination of the two? Any help — I’m just really trying to understand how and which measures you have — HEXO has in place to ensure a seamless integration of the two or three companies. Thanks.

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, no problem. We’ve hired a — I keep saying we’ve hired this company called Protiviti, but they are a world class organization that has a huge transaction services component. We went through the Zenabis acquisition plus integration planning process, it was extraordinarily robust. We had a tremendous communication plan, cross-functional plan, operational performance plan, all leading into the close, and now we’re starting to execute on those plans. We also have those same — those same consultants that we peered on through the engagement to help with the Redecan and 48North, which we’ve already launched. And so, we’re already starting on those integration plan. We see all three being very different, okay?

So Zenabis was a very — very much a more complex type of multi-sites LP. Redecan for as successful as they are, are a little less complex to be honest, and they have been a tremendous operator. We do not see ourselves going in there and fully integrating Redecan, nor are we going to take what they have done and implement it in HEXO. It will be a — we’re going to take the best of each and apply to one another. We don’t — we expect with things like quality control, health and safety that we’ll lend our expertise to Redecan where necessary. But we will allow them to be quite autonomous, think of it almost as a wholly-owned sub, but with a lot of support from the HEXO teams where that makes sense, especially on cross-functional basis with SG&A.

But operationally, these guys are very, very, very good at what they do and we don’t anticipate changing a lot. And then 48North will be a bit of a different approach sort of in between the two, being Zenabis and Redecan.

David Kideckel — ATB Capital Markets — Analyst

Okay. Thanks very much, Trent and Sebastien, I’ll hop back in the queue. Congrats on the quarter.

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks.

Operator

Next question comes from Doug Miehm with RBC Capital Markets.

Douglas Miehm — RBC Capital Markets — Analyst

Yeah, good morning. First question has to do with how you see the broader market transitioning. You’ve had a lot of success with taking share from the illicit market. But is that incremental market share getting more difficult to achieve? And then secondly, are you being squeezed then by the craft growers as well, or is there a definite place where you’re going to be able to take market share over time is my first question.

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Doug. Yeah, I think your first point, Doug, we’re still as an industry, we’re still capturing black market. But it has slowed down dramatically. I think that’s because we’ve largely captured the flower market from the black market largely. What’s left now is concentrates. And you’ve seen an explosion of black market concentrates. So, we’re keeping an eye on those specific categories. So I think rather than shatter live extract, etc, just to see where we want to play in those specific categories. We do have R&D aggressively working on that. HEXO has been the number one concentrates operator when you look at our hash product. And so we — we are quite good in making really high quality concentrates. The question is how big does that market have to be before we want to go full-fledged to put in the sort of capital where we can compete black market prices.

So basically taking the strategy of matching black market price, but doing so with the right capital investment that allows you to do that at high margin. So that is the next path for growing from the black market. The second point of your question around craft. Craft has absolutely surprised us. I talked about their ability to come in with Hash that we were not expecting, so which was a large negative impact in the quarter, for — from that decision. But it was mostly a one-time thing. So they’ve showed us what they could do from their load-in. It was very much a THC concentration piece which we can do.

So to be clear, we have no trouble putting out high THC Hash that’s better quality than what the craft guys are putting. We just weren’t expecting them to do it so fast. And so we thought there was an opportunity to put more product in market at a 22%. And so that’s been largely rectified. On the flower piece, what’s been really interesting is craft loaded in some of their best product and they made quite — quite a bit of inroads starting late in our Q2 and really full-fledged in Q3.

But what we’ve seen on the tail end of Q3 and even starting Q4, the craft growers that were originally successful with their first load-in now are running out of products, their quality has taken a nosedive. So we do — we do a product review weekly at HEXO, and we go and we review our own product, we review our — the majors and we also pick out a couple of craft and black market offerings, and we all run it through our quality process to see what people are doing. And the craft product that’s coming off the shelf right now is just terrible compared to what they were doing. So there’s huge consistency in growth issues that craft needs to solve at this point.

I think that HEXO continues to improve its quality and in a double blind basis, I also think that we can put HEXO product up against just about any flower in market. So I think it was — I think it was a temporary setback. I think that we know the reasons why it happened. And I think that the structural advantage is clearly in HEXO’s favor long-term.

Douglas Miehm — RBC Capital Markets — Analyst

Okay. Very good. And then second question, just has to do with the U.S. clients. I know you have a lot on your plate right now, but this is going to become obviously very important probably over the next 12 to 18 months. Is there anything else you can tell us about what you’re planning in the U.S.?

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. So, the U.S. is really a three-pronged strategy. So now we have a productive asset going up in Colorado. So that’s going to feed our partners. So we’ve got expansion going on the hemp side with Molson Coors and beverages. So we expect to expand Truss USA to multi-state very soon. So that’s one growth path.

The second growth path of course, as we continue to be in advanced discussions with large CPGs and especially in the functional food, but also PetCare and cosmetics. So, of course, you can see the strategic value of the 48North tuck-in for those cosmetics conversations. So we continue to talk to them, which is also going to be the part, the Powered by HEXO. So when I say three-pronged, the first part is ad partners, the second part is grow geographically, and then the third prong is about to bring everything that we do really well in Canada in cannabis 2.0 to the U.S.

So once legalized, and once recreational is available in the U.S., we believe that we can take the product portfolio we have here so Hexo Hash, Redees’s pre-rolls, we can bring those to the U.S. and essentially compete on a quality and price basis directly with any other pre-roll or Hash manufacturer that’s in the U.S. today.

So by doing so, we plan on leveraging the current distribution network. So, the multi-state operators, but anywhere else cannabis is eventually sold and becoming a Powered by HEXO producer for those retailers. And we think by doing that, we’ll be able to improve those retailers’ margins and also capture a meaningful share of shelf. And we believe that that’s what’s going to lead us to eventually becoming a top three cannabis products company in the U.S.

Douglas Miehm — RBC Capital Markets — Analyst

Perfect. Thank you.

Operator

Next question comes from Andrew Carter with Stifel.

W. Andrew Carter — Stifel Financial Corp. — Analyst

Hey, thanks. Good morning. I want to go back to the cash. I appreciate the breakdown, but if I had it straight, you had CAD469 million in total cash between what’s available and what’s in escrow. You take out CAD400 million, so basically for Redecan, that leaves you with CAD69 million. So can you just kind of go through kind of what kind of capital expenditures remain on the base business? I am not sure if you want to invest more in Zenabis or 48North, gain cost to achieve synergies, cost for the new facility in Colorado and then what other — these future partnerships, will they have kind of the same capital commitments that the Truss JV had? Thanks.

Trent MacDonald — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Happy to talk about sort of our capital plans and where we’re headed with cash. Look, we — you’re right, we have about — if you start doing the math and remove about the CAD400 million that we’re going to require to close on Redecan, there will be more cash requirements as we continue to roll out our capital plans both in the U.S. and here in Canada. We have more plans to stand up [Indecipherable] facilities in certain categories within Belleville such as pre-rolls. We want to continue to invest in pre-roll and other things.

In the U.S., we will be standing up our Powered by HEXO technology, which we believe is going to be in the — anywhere between CAD25 million to CAD40 million over the next 12 months to 18 months, if not more. We are standing up our Powered by HEXO technology in Belleville which is going to require a significant cash, CAD20 million, CAD25 million at least, over the next 12 months to 18 months.

So between all of those things and more, we will be looking at what our cash requirements are going to be, to be able to take advantage of these opportunities that we find in front of ourselves. So you can stay tuned for the timing on that.

W. Andrew Carter — Stifel Financial Corp. — Analyst

All right. And just wanted to kind of zoom back in on some questions. I know you’re not giving guidance today, but you are the first LP kind of reporting kind of post kind of a reopening start in Canada. Are you seeing any accelerated orders? I guess the question is, will we see a step change in orders from the provinces or did the kind of inventory level kind of get right-sized during COVID? Thanks.

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Andrew. The sales are definitely open. We’re seeing the opening up again. So the orders have increased.

Trent MacDonald — Chief Financial Officer

[Speech Overlap]. And Andrew, if you look at us, I mean, look, it’s — I know people got — may have glossed over a bit, but we had 14% sequential growth in OCS, sequential through COVID and I know that that’s been the struggle for a lot of LPs as they came to market in recent quarterly releases. We’re not sitting here saying that. We were up 14% in arguably one of the, if not the most important market in Canada. So that’s not bad, and we’re seeing momentum coming into Q4 and forward from here. So, I mean, if that was our worst quarter, then we’ll take it.

W. Andrew Carter — Stifel Financial Corp. — Analyst

Sounds good. I’ll pass it on.

Operator

Next question comes from John Zamparo with CIBC.

John Zamparo — CIBC — Analyst

Hey, good morning. I wanted to start in Quebec. The press release referenced additional competition in the province. So I’d like to get a sense of where you think Quebec is in terms of maturity of brands versus some of the other provinces? And then can you remind us what are the primary benefits of the preferred supplier agreement or what are the terms of that preferred supplier agreement with the province?

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

In terms of competition, John, the — so Quebec has gone from 11 listing license producers to 26. They recently implemented a grown in Quebec platform in which HEXO participates. And in terms of maturity of brands, I think Quebec was later in accepting more licensed producers. So originally if I take you back to the start of legalization, Quebec had six licensed producers. And now of course they have opened that up a few times and we’re now up to 26, and you’ve seen that SQDC continues — they just released their quarter. They continue to do a great job, one of the most profitable distributors — provincial distributors in the country, and also getting — continuing to see huge growth in sales.

But I think what we’re going to see again from the maturity, I think that Quebec has been slow to ramp on license producers. I do think that the craft growers have a lot to prove out from an ability to operate sustainably. So, I mean, remaining on shelf, maintaining quality, having consistency so that they maintain not just their listings, but just their consumer demand. It’s no secret, SQDC is there for the consumer, it’s there to migrate the black market to the legal market. And those things are done — those things are — as long as those things are done, they operate on a market basis.

So when you talk about maturity of market, I do think that we will continue to see a few craft growers come in, but it’s a very difficult market to operate in long-term for those craft growers. For the second part of your question, from a preferred supplier in Quebec, the preferred supplier relationship, of course you continue to see HEXO has been number one in Quebec since day one of legalization. We don’t expect that to change. As Trent said, we expect to fully recover our market share in the next two to three quarters, and we are very well aware and we are working with SQDC, HEXO is very well aware that we did this to ourselves.

We pulled SKUs that were highly productive in Quebec anticipating we could replace them. We did not replace them in time. We will replace them over the next two to three quarters, and Quebec is fully aligned with that strategy. So it’s not an issue from that perspective and all our planning and innovation continues to work very well with the province of Quebec.

John Zamparo — CIBC — Analyst

Okay, that’s helpful. Thank you. And then my second question is more broad in terms of the industry. We’ve got this three year mandatory review coming up from Health Canada. Do you get a sense if there’s any impetus from Health Canada to change any of the regulations that somewhat negatively impact the industry, whether it’s on beverage unit sales or edibles concentration or marketing or consumption margins [Phonetic], really anything — do you get a sense that anything’s on their radar for being potentially changed in the next 12 months to 18 months?

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. There is a lot on their radar and the administrators of the program are certainly aligned with industry on a lot of the points. So that’s very pleasing to say. In terms of timing, unfortunately, I mean, we’ve gone through this pandemic thing, so rightly so, the Health Canada has had other priorities in handling the pandemic.

But I do think, by the time they do come up for air, I think a lot of the decisions are pretty much de facto made at this point in the recommendations to go to the minister. And I do expect we’ll see some positive outcomes. So specifically, I think case quantity for beverages is one where we will get some progress. I think we’ll get progress on ways of consumption, personal possession limits.

I do think we will maintain limits on single dose edibles. So I don’t expect that to change. But overall, a lot of progress for the industry and also, I don’t think that single dose edible limits are necessary for us to meaningfully impact black market. When you look at the technology we’ve put in to our beverages, for example, if you’ve had the chance to try one of our Truss SMG beverages, which has a 10 milligram nano-emulsified formulation. I mean, the uptake of that product is phenomenal, very quick, it works in about 15 minutes. And the — because of the technology we’ve put behind it, the efficacy of it or the high — the quality of high is very, very good.

So it’s not just about more THC, it’s actually about the technology behind that THC and this is a lot of what Powered by HEXO is aiming to solve.

John Zamparo — CIBC — Analyst

Understood. Thank you very much.

Operator

Next question comes from Matt Bottomley with Canaccord Genuity.

Matt Bottomley — Canaccord — Analyst

Good morning. Thanks for taking all these questions. Sebastien, just wondering if we can get a little more granularity on maybe the dynamics between what we’re seeing with some of these LP earnings, and what’s happening at the retail level. We’ve mentioned Alberta has seen some drawdowns in inventory they are holding. I know historically that’s happened in Ontario as well. But when you look at all the announced M&A in terms of the most recent quarters, we can see they are pretty much all sequentially down. We don’t know what Redecan obviously has done as of late, but I’m just curious, given that we are seeing retail numbers incrementally increase — I know Jan and Feb was a little bit down. I’m just curious how much of that is potential market share loss versus all the LP universe kind of dealing with various issues even aside from some of the ones that were more specific to HEXO this quarter.

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. I think this — we’re definitely in the worst period of the year in terms of the impacts that we felt from supply chain, logistics, proliferation of small growers. So again, if you look at it on a national basis, you’ve got 90% of the share that was split amongst the top 10 LPs. Now what’s happened, you’ve had an onlining of about really 500 or so growers. So there is now 566. And those growers have all loaded into provinces.

And of course, the governments have a mandate to allow some distribution for these smaller growers. So they have given them chance, which they should, but what’s happening is that all that load-in has I think globally taken share from the majors. And I think — I do think that’s temporary. I don’t think that’s sustainable, because I haven’t seen anything out of most craft growers. And with some exceptions, there are some that really have good high quality product. But I haven’t seen high quality consistency supply chain acumen. I mean, the reality is that standing up a cannabis business is extremely complex and requires CPG expertise that is very expensive and capital that’s very expensive. And so it’s just — to compete at scale is not something or a skill set that the craft growers have.

So I think that’s what we’re really feeling this quarter. And of course HEXO being offset from the rest of the industry, February, March was actually very painful from a total demand perspective and that’s right in our quarter, right. So we took on two of those bad months from an industry perspective right in our Q3. So I think that largely recovers and that we will see most of these successful majors continue to retake share. HEXO of course is on a great path for full Quebec recovery, but also as Trent said, you’ve seen us grow — be one of the fastest growing outside of Quebec. So, we have great traction in those markets despite all those small producers being there.

Matt Bottomley — Canaccord — Analyst

That’s very helpful. And just lastly from my end, just in Quebec specifically, I know you talked a little bit about this in the prepared remarks and one of the other questions, but just your risk assessment on being able to rebound there given that, I would assume other than maybe new store openings in order to fully rebound, you’re going to have to take that share back from someone else.

So you had mentioned something that you had talked to the SQDC and you’re on the right track there. So I’m just wondering if that’s simply the risk mitigating in your view or if there is still going to be the supply/demand dynamics of what other LPs are doing in Quebec and what strains they are providing as you’re trying to recover there as well?

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. It’s completely risk-mitigated. On a consolidated basis, when I look at the strains, I mean that we’re bringing in not that just we’ve developed internally, but also the library that’s available from Redecan, Zenabis and 48North. The actual portfolio has never been stronger and you overlay that to our productive capability, our technology, and strain post processing, so including both drying and curing, have never been stronger. And pair that with the fact that the quality we’re seeing out of the craft growers has taken a nosedive after their initial load-in, they are not prepared to compete.

So no, I’m not worried at all. And I think — I mean, of course nothing is absolutely risk-free. I think the risk sits only in timing. And that’s why we’re seeing two to three quarters. So the visibility on exactly when it’s fully rectified is not 100% clear at the moment, but from a capability perspective, I have zero concerns.

Matt Bottomley — Canaccord — Analyst

Okay, thanks again. Appreciate it.

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Next question comes from John Chu with Desjardins Capital.

John Chu — Desjardins Capital — Analyst

Hi, good morning. My first question is just on the Original Stash, your bulk format products. Sales are down quite a bit in Alberta and Quebec, and I don’t know if that’s just the new strains you were talking about or is that competition and/or pricing pressure. Can you comment on that?

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Sorry, in which markets, could you just repeat your question, please?

John Chu — Desjardins Capital — Analyst

Yeah, I think in the MD&A it was saying that the Original Stash in your bulk format, you saw sales pressure in the Alberta and Quebec markets, maybe just a little further more color.

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

So, Quebec, I have explained, it was part of that strain choice. So some of those strains were present in Original Stash. And for Alberta, specifically, we had a slight decline there as well and that was also mostly related to high THC and load-in, but overall Alberta purchase orders are going quite well now at this point and especially when we look at it on a consolidated basis.

John Chu — Desjardins Capital — Analyst

Okay. And then just with this strategy of refreshing with the new strains, I think you said a 100 new genetics. So are we going to see a — basically a complete overhaul of the product portfolio at some point over the next 12 months, 18 months? I mean, you’re going to keep the existing brands, I guess, but you’re going to upgrade them with some of these newer strains. Is that how I interpret that?

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

No, the 100 strain plan is really response to consumer demand for newness. It’s a response to consumer demand for variety and — but we will keep the stalwarts in our popular strains in market. We’re absolutely not going to pull them. I mean, they worked very well. Again, I mean Northern Berry under our UP brand is one of the best selling flowers in Canada and we continue to have robust success. I mean, yes, there is a pullback, but we’re still number one in Quebec. So HEXO flower, I mean, we have had a pullback, but keep in mind that Quebec consumers are consuming more HEXO flower than anything else. And so we do not want to pull what’s working in market. This is really about competing against craft across the board, competing against additional variety and taking the next step in evolution to respond to consumer demands.

John Chu — Desjardins Capital — Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. And we have a question from Adam Buckham with Scotiabank.

Adam Buckham — Scotiabank — Analyst

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So I just have one, and it’s more from a long-term perspective. Within Canada, after you consolidate the three companies that you’ve gone out and reached definitive agreements with recently and you realized the synergies with those. I’m just wondering if you think you’re going to get to a place where you won’t need the market to fund Canadian operations or how you think about that?

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Adam. Well, I will let Trent add a couple of sense, but overall we will be the Canadian rec share leader. So you can do your own math to start to see what kind of top line that throws out and you know that currently HEXO from an adult use perspective portfolio, even in an incredibly challenging quarter, still has one of the highest gross margins in the entire industry.

At our last quarter, we had the highest gross margin in the entire industry. So the technology behind HEXO and our partners is there. The acquisitions we’ve made have a great operation. So they — some of them have balance sheet issues, but certainly not operating issues. And Redecan is by far in a way one of the top operators in the entire space.

So, I certainly think the path of EPS is strong and I think we will continue to need the market for U.S. and global expansion, because obviously now we’re turning our attention to be not just number one in Canada, but top three in the world. Trent, anything to add?

Trent MacDonald — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. No, I’d reiterate that, once you have the three M&A completely amalgamated and into — integrated into HEXO as one consolidated entity, we do believe that we will have that path to EPS and to a ton of cash flow positivity. That’s where we see things going. I think we’re looking in to Q2 of next year to be able to start really seeing what that looks like. So we don’t anticipate there being any requirement for market support within Canada.

Clearly, we will continue to need market support as we go into the U.S., but we don’t believe even within the U.S. that it’s a long time or really capital heavy. I’d like to just reiterate and remind people that if you take what capital has been deployed to-date by HEXO being the amount of net assets that we purchase plus the accumulated deficit that we finance, add those two things together, and divide that into our current market share for every 10 basis points of market share we deployed at this point is actually around CAD16 million of investor capital and nobody — no LP is below 26, 27 besides us and you got a couple who are up already CAD5 million per 10 basis points. So we’ve been deploying capital in a very efficient way. And our net loss from operations, as I just said, year-to-date about three quarters is less than half of the next best LP and some LPs are over CAD1 billion of loss from operations.

So we like our position and we like what we’ve been doing and I think we have a really strong, strong path to improve from here. And we’re already one of the best.

Adam Buckham — Scotiabank — Analyst

Great. Thanks for that.

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. And we do not have any questions at this time, I will turn the call over to Mr. St-Louis.

Sebastien St-Louis — Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you very much. And — So I want to take a moment to thank of course all our shareholders for continuing to analyze HEXO and looking for the right entry point for yourself and understanding the financials. But I want to underline that, in this day and age, I think it’s very important that we look not just to the financials, but also to the environmental, social and governance principles behind the Company.

I’m extremely proud that HEXO has announced a plan to be completely carbon and plastic neutral by September. And that’s not just at the corporate level, we’re actually offsetting the carbon of every single employee at HEXO. So I implore all our stakeholders, our consumers, our shareholders, when you are making purchase decisions, investment decisions, please do consider which licensed producers, which companies are taking the planet at heart, are doing something about it, and are making sure that our products don’t negatively impact the planet or its people over the long term.

I’m extremely proud to have a team that’s now completely carbon neutral, not contributing to the problem. And of course, all backstopped by the fact that come our Q2 2022, when we expect to be fully consolidated, HEXO is a completely different story. We’re number — we plan to be number one in Canadian rec on a much larger revenue base, with good gross margin, accretive synergies, and a solid growth story in the USA, all while making sure that our planet is here for generations of children to come.

Thank you very much for listening. It’s been a pleasure. We’ll see you next quarter.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks].