added in that dynamic. And I believe this is the first investor day since August of 2020. And if you think about the evolution of the industry, we all know that this, you know, we move in light years in terms of progress. And I think in the case of TerrAscend, it's a company that if you compared August of 2020 to where we are today, it's an extraordinary story to tell. Full disclosure, as we like to have to do, I'm an investor as well, so it's exciting to be here and speak to the management team today. I wanna introduce the Executive Chairman, Jason Wild. Please come to the stage and look forward to today. Thank you, Tim. Nice to see everybody. Before we get into the most exciting part of the day, the safe harbor statement, I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge all of the loss of life in Israel by the barbaric terrorist attacks by Hamas. And I just wanted to say that I and the company stand behind all of the innocent victims in Israel and the Palestinian territories. With that, I'll... We'll read through the safe harbor word by word now. It'll take about 20 minutes. No, I'm just kidding. You've all got that. So anyway, thank you all for being here and for everybody that's logged in over our webcast. We're really happy to see all the investors and analysts and family members, team members, partners. Wanna thank specifically Nancy Whiteman from Wana, who was kind enough to make the long trip out here for this. And thank Tim Seymour as well, for making the short trip from New York. And we're just so happy to see everybody. Also wanted to thank the TSX for hosting today and for being, you know, great partners and, you know, being a pleasure to work with over the last three months. So anyway, I'm sure you all saw the pre-announcement that we put out this morning. We're very proud of the results and the progress that we've made over the last 16 months or so. When people asked us about our guidance a couple of months ago, when we first put out our first preliminary guidance, we mentioned that it is even more so than whatever the absolute numbers that were in the press release. We feel that it is, the more important aspect is the fact that we feel like our business is now, in a state where it is predictable enough, and we have enough visibility to be able to actually provide, financial guidance. As some of you may remember, we were the first ones, a couple of years ago to, pull our guidance right, right at the beginning of the slowdown in the summer of, in the summer of 2021. We are just so thrilled to be back in that, back in that position, to be able to provide, guidance, you know, starting, starting about two months ago. As many of you know, it took a while to, to get here. We've made a lot of progress over the last 14 months. We have significantly reduced our debt and interest payments. We were obviously uplisted to the TSX a few months ago. We entered Maryland, went from 0 retail in Maryland in January of this year to, now we think that we could be the top retail operator in the newly launched rec market in Maryland. And just all of the other aspects of the cost reductions that... Sort of all of these things have come together to really put us in a position now where, as we disclosed in the press release this morning, we plan on being fully cash flow positive for the second half of the year. And that was really, that was a really important goal that we set, starting over a year ago. We needed to do all of those actions that I just mentioned to be able to get there. And we've actually gotten there slightly ahead of our internal plan. So I think that speaks to the way the team has really come together under Ziad Ghanem, our new CEO of a few months. And I couldn't be more thrilled with the job that Ziad has done and with the job that the whole team has done here. It's easy, you know, a few years ago, when everything was high flying and, you know, everybody seemed to be doing well. I mean, that was rewarding for us and we had, you know, we were certainly rewarded in the market, from a stock price perspective. But this time feels different and better than back then, because, as everybody knows, it's not an easy environment. And the things that this team has been able to pull off over the last 14 months, I am really just really proud of everybody. And I just wanted to thank all of our employees that are here, and all of our employees out in the field as well. So, with that, I will... I'm gonna call up Ziad Ghanem, also known as the Million Dollar Face, or that's what he likes to call himself. And I'll hand it off to you. Thanks, Ziad. ...Thank you, Jason. Good morning, everyone. Good morning for everyone who joined us here in person and over the webcast. I'm Ziad, and I will soon celebrate my second year anniversary at TerrAscend. You know, it's been, it's been a great two years. I'm excited about a lot of things. Jason talked about the what, what we were able to do over the last year or two, but then he also described a little bit of the how from a business perspective. But there have been two, there have been two main enablers for us to get here. Number one is the leadership and the support that we have from Jason Wild himself, the sponsorship we have from JWAM, and then the, the sponsorship from this family and the investor of the JWAM. So Jason, we often accuse you of, you don't listen and follow the rules. The dress code today is one of those rebellious decisions. So we often—I often accuse Jason and use his mom's statement of, he never knows when to stop. We often joke about every time we bring a win to Jason, he has a follow-up questions, how many wins we'll get out of this win? So your relentless leadership, your focus on being number one, and your hunger to grow the company the way you've done, the others, is contagious to us. And on behalf of all 1,200 employees, we thank you, the JWAM team, and, the investor and family for our sponsorship. The second enablers that I am as proud of is the team that we have assembled at TerrAscend. A team that focus every single day on four things, and we breathe it, we talk about it, we joke about it, we hold each other accountable on. And that is, one, the team member. How do we engage the team member in a way that is differentiated and in a way that mimics the Fortune 10 and 15 company? We believe that our team members are the face of our brand. The second thing is our customers and patients, and how do we have the face of our brands and our team members deliver and make every decision thinking of the customer and the patients, when we make those decisions. The third one is excellence in the operations that feeds into both the P&L and the balance sheet. And all this is governed by a culture of compliance that we are so proud of. I personally, spending 20 years in the pharma company, would put that compliance culture for our customer and patients head-to-head against any others. Let's talk a little bit about the morning. Soon we will ask Tim to facilitate a conversation with Jason and Lynn, our CLO, and we'll get to hear a little bit about how the Wild goals and the Wild idea starts and how they get executed behind the scene. We'll transition. I'll come back with BJ, who leads our marketing and brand strategy, Chantelle, who leads our Northeast, and Mary, who leads our Michigan operation, and we'll talk a little bit about our brand strategy. We'll talk about the operation of the state, and we'll take a deeper dive in this. Then, once we're done with this, we'll ask Tim again to invite Nancy, BJ, and I to also go through a quick panel interview and talk about partnership and brands. Then, so at the end of the morning, we'll ask Keith, our CFO, to come in and quantify everything we've talked about with numbers that don't lie, and that's what drives us every day, and that's what keeps us excited before we all get on stage and answer every and each question that everybody has. So with that, Tim, I turn it over to you. Thanks, Ziad. Yeah, it's an exciting time. So actually, let's get our marshmallows and come to the stage. Jason and Lynn, please come on up. Let's talk about the industry. Let's talk about being listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, and let's talk about some of the exciting things going on overall in the industry. These are marshmallows. These, these do look like marshmallows. First of all, this is a monumental event for TerrAscend, but also, I think, for the entire industry. As I mentioned earlier, your last Investor Day was 2020. The world has changed. There's... They say, you know, the operators that make it through the most difficult times are the ones that are really the most nimble and able to evolve coming out of, do we call this crisis or is this just the natural evolution of the cannabis industry, frankly? But today, we're, you know, this is a full room of familiar faces, new faces, investors, executives, analysts, bankers, and the world has changed. So, you know, on some level, it's changed. If, you know, if I parachuted in for the first time, you know, versus when I came in industry probably 8 or 9 years ago, I would find the setup to be extraordinary. I'm someone that has a background in emerging markets, and I've used this analogy over and over. When I moved to Moscow in the fall of 1998, you know, it was basically the Asian financial crisis. Russia blew up, emerging markets were blowing up, and I'd never been through this before. I felt like, wow, like, the setup here is pretty good. You've got big resource companies, you've got, you've got, you know, the consumption dynamics and a lot of the same things. By the way, I always refer to cannabis as an emerging market, but I started investing in that market because I wasn't someone that had PTSD from having been through two or three boom busts in Russia. So you know, I almost feel like that's where the industry is today. I think a new dollar allocated here, and investors that are just coming to look, and obviously, listing on the Toronto part of this is a foundation to bring some of the biggest institutions in the world to be able to own your stock, and I want to hear all about that. So I don't know. How do you feel about today versus then? A quick look back, because you've seen almost everything in this industry, Jason. ... Yeah, absolutely. Can you guys hear me? It's working? Okay, great. Yes, very different feeling than a few years ago. As I mentioned, 2020 was a lot of fun all the way into, what was it? The beginning of 2021 or the beginning of- February ninth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we all remember the peak day of valuations. Right. Right. Exactly. And, but this feels different, and sort of more real. Not that the other one wasn't real, but it feels better when you're able to execute in a really difficult environment. And, to be clear, it's not an easy environment, the cannabis industry, like everybody, like everybody knows. And that's why it feels sort of, you know, more sustainable. And, you know, we are... And the other thing is, we just feel like it's just the beginning. We've now, over the last year, we made all those changes that we that we made, and now it's freed us up to do some of the sort of the things that would be, you know, nice to have instead of of must have. And we think that that is going to really help us continue to excel and, and hopefully separate ourselves away from the away from the pack. We've got, you know, all the right people in place. We've got the right, you know, avenue to the market in terms of being on the, on the TSX, where now, as we continue to execute, we won't be that tree that fell in the woods and, you know, barely anybody heard it. Meaning, you know, so many of these institutional investors, who couldn't have invested in us, in the past, now they, now they can. But we we really feel good about the the place that that we're in. It's sort of like, you know, a few months ago, we started talking about when we started to really realize that things were turning, you know, for the better for us, and we started to really get excited. I remember Keith getting excited. You know, it's hard to get a CFO very excited. I remember a text from him to me, and Ziad being like, you know, something like, you know, "Man, this," something like, "This really going to work. Like we're really, you know, you know, it's all really happening. Keith, was that the terminology you used? But now, we really do feel like we are there in a sustainable way, and you know, we're just thrilled to be in this position. Well, and again, you used the metaphor of a tree falling in the woods. You know, no one... If it's fall, if no one sees it, did it fall? Yeah. There's no falling down, and I don't expect TerrAscend is going to do that, but you're now listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Everyone will hear and see. In that sense, you're... TerrAscend's been a trailblazer for the industry. The TSX listing is a game changer for a lot of the reasons you just talked about, and I think for the industry, frankly. This is one of the world's, you know, top three exchanges, in my view. It will be interesting to hear, I think, for the audience, how a lot of this came to be. But it's now three months living on the Toronto Stock Exchange, so I want to hear- Yeah ... what the impact has been for the business. You want to talk about, you know, truly liquidity dynamics- Yeah ... in terms of institutional sponsorship, who's paying attention, who's not? Yeah, absolutely. In terms of- That's mine, by the way. That's yours? Sorry. Oh, I took it off of the... This happens on CNBC a lot, and I get in trouble. That's funny. That's funny. So yeah, I'll jump first forward to in terms of how the experience we've had with the TSX. As I've said in the past, it's been great. It has been, in terms of we felt like it would bring more volume into the stock, you know, more, a larger audience that could participate as we continued to execute. We had the number one question that would come up right away would be, does it solve U.S. institutional custody? Which we weren't sure of, and now 90 days post- Now you responded to that question. And now the answer is, it looks like it has solved U.S. custody because we don't know of any prime brokers that will not custody the shares, and we specifically know of several institutions like Morgan Stanley, Bank of New York, who owns Pershing, Cowen, several others that have specifically removed us from their block list pursuant to their MRB or their marijuana-related business policy. So that's been solved. That doesn't automatically get you those institutional investors, obviously, but it keeps you from losing that institutional investor if you know, if they like your story and it got held up by the fact that the plumbing would not allow it. So we've been... So it has exceeded our expectations, mainly because of the improved custody or the allowance of custody. But also from a volume perspective, our volume, it's up, I think, 3 or 4x now versus prior to our listing. You know, I would say that a lot of that was driven by the HHS news. Market has had a big move. Even before that, we had about, I don't know, six weeks or so or five weeks before that news came out, and our volume was up about 140% or 150% from prior to our listing. When you compare that to the other U.S. operators, overall, their volume was down about 18%, and the S&P volume was down about 18% over that same period. That, to us, is proof that the TSX in and of itself led to increased volume. There's also been, we got some stats on the bid-ask spread, and it has significantly narrowed. That just shows you more liquidity, and the ability, that's what's going to appeal to the larger institutional investors, that they can get into the stock without, you know, taking it up 150%, although, you know, I wouldn't mind that either. No, you know, obviously, other companies in the sector are following suit. Yep. Obviously, the dynamics of the plumbing within the industry and some of those challenges aren't totally solved here, but on some level, they are. To someone that runs a, you know, a U.S. 40 Act fund with a lot of requirements, getting past the compliance folks to say, "No, no, no, no, TSX," immediately, because if you challenge TSX, you have to challenge every other company on the TSX, and it's an exercise that I think, Yep - is pretty much impossible for a compliance team to go through, and it doesn't make sense. So Lynn, this has not been an easy process. It's probably taken months, and I'm curious, maybe talk about some of the legal challenges, you know, what you think has allowed TerrAscend. And I think there's some unique dynamics to the foundation, the genesis, the early stages of this company here in Canada. I mean, that's had a lot to do with it, and it's an important part of both the history and the future. But talk about that. It's great to have you here. Sure. Thanks. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to have you here, too, Tim. So Jason set out with a goal, and he said, "Okay, we're going to list on the TSX on July fourth." So literally, the team internally did everything that it took to hit that goal. So there were a lot of challenges, but the way I call them, they're more obstacles. Each and every one we tackled with innovation, which is the way we challenge ourselves every day. But, you know, TerrAscend is a trailblazer. It's not the first time that we've done something that's incredibly innovative. We transitioned to the U.S. in 2018 and 2019, and that, that was the first Canada, Canada operator to come into the U.S., and that was very significant. So we're just driven by innovation. It's one of our core values, and there were a lot of things we needed to get to in order to list on the TSX. Of course, we needed to design a structure that was compliant. We had to spend a lot of time working with the TSX to ensure that it worked. But then after we passed all of that, there were contracts that needed to be amended, reorganizations needed to be done, needed shareholder approval. So it was definitely a long process, but we got there, and I think that's one of the things that makes TerrAscend special. We don't really spend so much time asking how things have been done, but rather how they need to be done in order to achieve our goals. And we're just really excited to pave the way for others in the industry, and we're super proud to be here. It's again a moment that on some level has seemed so easy the way TerrAscend has done it, and yet it's an incredibly transformative event. And I think it's something that feeds us into the next part of this conversation, which is really to talk about the market and talk about the world that has changed so much. And the last two months have been extraordinary, even by a cannabis definition of macro and legislative headlines. And you know, eight weeks ago, 10 weeks ago, HHS comes forward with a scheduling recommendation that immediately drove market valuations higher. We can again talk about how sustainable that is. But there's no question, this was a headline that didn't require follow-through from a group of lawmakers in Washington that sometimes show up to work and sometimes don't. And then that was coupled with the news around SAFE banking or SAFER banking. Look, there's no denying this was the first progress in the Senate ever for this industry. And it's not only, you know, were there, you know, ceremonial type of and really important, just elements of why this made some sense, you know, getting past Mitch McConnell, and, you know, I mean, there's a lot of reasons that the industry was feeling pretty proud of itself, but we've never taken those kinds of steps. I guess my question is, we saw cannabis companies move anywhere from 30%-230%, at least some of the larger ones on the exchanges. A lot of them have given some of them back. You know, the folks in the room know kind of what the charts look like, and where you kind of have gone back to either levels on valuation that are, you know, a little bit south of where they were going into the summer of 2022, when we started to get sprinkling of all this good news that was going to happen, that never happened at the end of the year, and everything shut down. Just, you know, talk about that. Was it an overreaction? Are some of these headlines, even though we don't know the timeline on delivery, ones that you really think have changed the world in cannabis? Absolutely. I think the Schedule III news, I mean, it's news. The news is that the HHS recommended Schedule III. We don't know if the DEA is gonna follow that. We think there's a good chance of that. But that news, in our view, is massive, much bigger than safe or safer banking. It's sort of, you know, it's like sort of like Goldilocks to a certain extent. It seems like it would keep all the state-level programs in place, and the states could treat their cannabis programs as they wish. But it would, you know, the main, the main positive is that it looks like it would get rid of this very punitive tax treatment of 280E, where you can't deduct your operating expenses. So that would be... I mean, you look at our business and, you know, figure for this year, you know, we'd be making another, you know, an extra, I don't know, $7-$8 million per quarter. That makes, that makes companies and all of the companies, with all the cannabis companies around would be affected in a similar way. It just makes it so much easier for them to service their debt. It makes it so much easier for them to build out, continue to build out their their businesses. Hopefully, they don't build out too much new capacity anytime soon, but it is an absolute game changer. I think the day that that news came out, what's the boyfriend meme, where the boyfriend- I don't know. ... is looking ahead, and his girlfriend is, you know, is not happy with him. Oh, that one. That one, yes. And I thought that the perfect sort of use of that would be, the boyfriend was looking at Schedule III. I do remember getting that one. Yes, yes, yes. And was not looking, I guess, at his, the girlfriend, the old girlfriend was the SAFE Banking Act. And, and that's, you know, that's the way I feel. Talks about convoluted metaphors. And someone- It would have been much better with a visual. Yeah, well, that's. We've all seen that slide. Yes, we've all seen it. Anyway, the point is, safe. Maybe this is part personally, and maybe a lot of other people in this room have the same feeling. I've had so much frustration with what has happened in Washington or what's happened in Congress that to a certain extent, it makes me feel good to point out and to know that we don't need them to make this progress, and that the Schedule III will be such a game changer that it's going to end up putting a lot of companies in a lot better positioning, including us. I think that we did, I think we did a pretty good job over the last year of, you know, and on July fourth, we declared our independence, based upon all the things that we did in the prior, in the prior year, and culminating with, with the listing on the TSX, to say that we are independent of the need for federal reform. But the fact is, nobody was more excited about, hearing that news when it came out, and it is going to be a huge, positive for us and for every cannabis, operator in the industry. Well, it gets back to that self-sufficiency dynamic, and there's probably still a lot of debate in the industry. I mean, what is Adjusted EBITDA? There's debate in any industry, what is Adjusted EBITDA? But that self-sufficiency, free cash flow from operations as they are today- Yeah. And, I know Ziad is talking about it, I know Keith's gonna talk about it. Those are some of the defining moments of today alone. This is about what's going on right now in the business, not wishing on tomorrow. And I guess- Yeah ... as we look towards some of the regulatory framework, Lynn, and you think about, you know, how your involvement in this industry... First of all, Lynn, you come from some of the most regulated, established industries: insurance, alcohol, software, where you have not only some of the biggest companies in the world, but companies that have had to live under very austere compliance backgrounds. So, I mean, talk about your observation a year and a half into cannabis- Yeah. about first of all, you know, what this has been like for you, but, but how do you see this? Because, again, you know what it's like to walk the walk of an industry that really is in some of the most sophisticated regulatory framework as, as anyone. Yeah, thank you. So, first, I just want to comment on the regulatory reform. So we spend a lot of time internally thinking about what's coming and what it means to us. I want to reiterate, you know, we have made some massive changes, so we stand to be a successful business even without it, but we'll significantly benefit. So but, you know, from my perspective, the way I look at it, I think the federal government has failed us. There's- Mm. like, everything is on the table internally. You know, everything is on the table among the large cannabis companies who we speak to regularly about what else needs to be done. The fact is, the people have spoken. 38 states, including the District of Columbia, have legalized cannabis, and yet the federal government still says it's illegal at the federal level. So that's an abuse of discretion. There's state sovereignty, so there's a lot, you know, that we still need to- Sounds like a lawsuit. Yeah, so you, you never know. Hint, hint. But there are a lot of things that we're working on. Everything is on the table. But just to answer your question about what it's like, you know, to work here in cannabis versus more established industries that I've worked at. So, you know, it's. I've had this question before, and, you know, as a lawyer, you know, I take. I get value out of solving one problem at a time. I've worked behind large management teams, and you just block and tackle, and you know that every solution to a problem arrives at helping the bottom line. But in cannabis, specifically, there is no other industry where solving legal problems so significantly impacts the bottom line. And so that makes working in this industry so valuable, so impactful, and I'm just really thrilled to be here. It's been a really exciting year and a half, and I'm just happy for the next year and a half and then to come. Well, again, bringing that kind of background, I think, is critical for an industry that's growing up really quickly. Jason, let's talk about, again, balance sheet dynamics. It's been an extraordinary year for TerrAscend. It's been, again, a transformative year when you think about the pay down of debt, the equitization of the Canopy loan. You've acquired- Where are our Canopy friends here? Over here. Thank you. Partners, partners with Canopy for a long time, though. I mean, it says a lot about, you know, a relationship that I think has evolved throughout. Three dispensaries in Maryland, a $20 million, $21 million capital markets raised in a ridiculously difficult capital markets environment. I don't care what anybody says. And you know, yeah, there's been a couple IPOs in New York, but... So how's this getting done? How-- You know, what's... Talk to me about the team behind the balance sheet and the execution that's getting this done, because obviously, that's what, part of what this day is all about. Absolutely. And that was part-- Yeah, that was a big reason why we wanted to have this investor day, was to have everybody meet. You know, everybody hears from me and Keith and Ziad all at all the time, but they don't hear from a lot of the other people that are really the ones that are helping drive things forward, like our head of marketing, BJ Carretta, and our President of Michigan, Mary Turon, who we're going to hear from in a few minutes, and Chantelle Elsner, who runs the Northeast for us. They are- they have-. Really impressed all of us with their drive and really with the results that they've helped put together here over the last several months in what I mentioned is a really, not a very easy environment, a difficult environment, in fact. Also, you know, Lynn, most people have not heard from Lynn, our superstar General Counsel or Chief Legal Officer, right? Yes, the team has done awesome. I mean, I would tell you in terms of all those things that you mentioned over the last year and the progress on the loans and all of that. Yeah, and it was like, I mean, that was, I know, you know, pretty practically every day for a long period of time. In the morning, it was, there was a call between me and, Keith and Lynn and, and, Ziad, to work on what we felt like and what we termed as landing, 4 747s, about 1 minute apart. And that was all the work that we did last year with that, with- Are 747s still flying? Yeah, yeah, yeah, they are. They're still my favorite. It's a metaphor. Yeah. 7 7 7s. So, we really... And it was like, you know, back then, it was more stressful when we were working on all of the, all of the debt reduction and everything, sort of had to be done in that order to make sure that the, that, that we could go through with the, with the next step. And, you know, I don't know. It really, I feel like it, it bonded us, together, really well. Now that we're able to pull all of it off, it just, like, now when we look at, like, other smaller problems and there's always, you know, problems every day in the cannabis industry, we look at these other smaller problems, and we keep saying, "Man, that's like nothing compared to what we pulled off a few months ago. What's your perspective, Lynn? And again, you come from a background of some of the most sophisticated companies in the world, and this is the road that TerrAscend's on. Yeah. So I agree with Jason 100%. Having worked in, you know, with management teams and in other industries and legal teams, like, the way I would describe this team is there's tremendous passion. We coalesce around a goal. We're all rowing the same direction, selflessly working toward uncovering obstacles, solving them, empowered decision-making, which comes from great leadership. I mean, you really can't... I would say, from my perspective, I'd stand up this leadership team, our cross-functional team, and my legal team against any Fortune 500 company. I mean, that's how I genuinely feel. That's what makes TerrAscend so special. There's people, unwavering passion for delivering the goal and just staying focused and working together and actually enjoying what we do every day. Yeah, and we're all gluttons for punishment. Like, there's, you know, part of the reason, and I agree with you, Lynn, part of the reason that we could stand this team up to practically any other major company is because, in my view, nothing else is as hard as cannabis. So most of them, if they tried to do this, you know, I'm not sure they would be as successful. No question. It's not only work. I mean, we actually have some fun. We do some group chat. I mean, this- Yeah. It's actually, you know, a really great place to work, genuinely. Well, it's clear that the team's working. And I guess, Jason, before we wrap, I wanted to get your vision of the future in a world where... Look, exciting moment. I always joke that this is me just being kind of cynical guy that sees a lot of companies, but you know, you don't have an investor day unless you have good news. Yeah. So, you had great news this morning, and you updated upon a quarter that already had people buzzing about the second half. So it's exciting. How are you thinking about the future? We've talked about macro, we've talked about bottom up, we've talked about the team- Yeah. We've talked about new states. What, what gets you most excited? All of it. I mean, the team is working really well together. Best we've, you know, ever worked together. So that's one major positive. We're just so excited about the lineup of states and the fact that we are not in that many states. You know, we've approached this business from, you know, for the last four or five years, as wanting to go deep and not wide, because we felt like we would have a better chance of winning if we were more focused. Because you have a lot of mom-and-pops that are in single states that are going to eat your lunch if you're not paying attention. So because of that deep and not wide approach, we are some of the top operators in the states where we are. Maybe I can throw out the PDS data for August, which is the most recent month, showed us move from number 3 market share in New Jersey to number 2, and we're only 1 percentage point away from number 1. And we know with the Wana launch, that we are gonna get there. So that whole approach has helped us build our businesses in those states better. But now, with the level of distress that is in the industry, we are really able to be the most opportunistic in terms of choosing additional states to go into. So super excited that strategy has worked out. And at this point, I mean, it's just like Ziad and the team and Chantelle and Mary, it's like we've got and BJ, we've got the machine is working, you know, pretty well. In fact, we're sort of like dialing it in more now, and you know, sort of attacking so many of the things that we didn't even have time to go after originally. So I think that you know, the sky's the limit. We think that we are going to be a much, much larger business two or three years from now than where we are now. But now we are cash flow positive, so we can truly say that we are a sustainable company. And, you know, just the way Maryland, when we dropped Maryland into our business and rec started on July first. That was one of the main aspects of what has turned us cash flow positive, or why we're going to be cash flow positive in the second half of the year. But what happens when we drop a few other assets into our base of business? We feel like we're going to. Yeah, in an industry where a lot of other operators profitability, their, their EBITDA margins and all that, have been going down, we are so excited about the fact that over the last 4 quarters or 5, or whatever it's been, that we've made progress on those, on those margins and our metrics, and we think that that's only going to get better, as we are able to, you know, add some more, some more businesses into our, into ours. Well, so, first of all, wrap up here and just say it sounds like a relentless team with a clear vision of the future. So, Jason, Lynn, thank you for the time. Let's bring Ziad back to the podium to talk a little bit about state-by-state marketing, et cetera. Thank you, Tim, Jason, and Lynn. So over the next few minutes, we'll talk a little bit about yesterday, today, and tomorrow for TerrAscend, where we started and where we are today. Then we talk a little bit about three or four main differentiators for our company before I invite BJ, Chantelle, and Mary to the stage to take us into a deeper dive into our brand strategy, marketing strategy, and talk about each state in more depth. So, you know, we've talked about our differentiators. The number one differentiator that we had, that Jason described, is the lineup of the state that we have. Before we get in there, how did we get in there? In 2017, we started as a Canadian LP, started all in here. From there, we started with a $52 million investment by Canopy and JWAM that progressed into 2018 to transition into the operation in the US market that Lynn talked about. We were the first company that transitioned from here to the US. That same year, we won our vertical license in New Jersey, that today is a main piston of the machine that Jason was talking about. Then in 2019, we entered into both California and Pennsylvania through the acquisition of Apothecarium and Ilera Healthcare. In 2021, we acquired three additional dispensaries in Pennsylvania before we acquired in Maryland the same year a small grow and a processor, a processing facility. In 2022, we entered Michigan through the acquisition of Gage. Later that same year, we went deeper into Michigan with the acquisition of Pinnacle and adding five operating dispensaries. Today, in 2023, we are in the state that we are. We went fully vertical in Maryland, and we transitioned the state into the adult use program in July. Also in July—on July fourth, like we've mentioned multiple times—we started a listing on the TSX, started up in this building. That's our journey over the last few years, but where we are today is what really sets us apart. We are in a lineup of states between New Jersey turning recreational, Maryland in July turning recreational, Pennsylvania expected to turn recreational over the next 12-24 months. Organically, without any further investment, without any acquisition, we will double our revenue by the time Pennsylvania turn recreational. Our CapEx is spent, our operation is fine-tuned, and we are ready to go through that rapid growth. This is not a growth we are hoping we get. This is a growth that Keith will prove by numbers today, that we are leading the industry in that story, and we're excited that we can do this, for the next year to two. Now, within that lineup of the states, we have an open map. That open map will allow us to be pretty selective on how we build on to our machine, further acquisition opportunities. When we think of acquisition, we think of it in two buckets. Internally, our top A priority is to go deeper in New Jersey through a bill that was signed recently, and I know Chantelle will talk about this. Our top B priority is to go deeper in Michigan. I'm excited about New Jersey. Obviously, I'm excited about Maryland. The state that I'm excited about the most is Michigan, and we'll share why. It's a state that is an unlimited state. It's a state that we can get the scale, and then if you give me an option to be in a 50+ gross margins in a limited license state, or to be in a mid-40 unlimited state with a potential to have 50, 70, 80, 100 stores, that is what is going to help us build that growth that I talked about. So again, we'll double our revenue organically. We have those opportunities internally in New Jersey and Michigan. When we think of additional states, we think of Michigan east and up and down the coast, and we are having constant conversations with potential partners and potential, potential additional family members that come in. But we will stay committed to our investor and our shareholders to be disciplined and not to have any fear of missing out, and only look at deals that are cash flow accretive, not only EBITDA accretive, and that's a focus that the team will continue to look at. You know, we've talked about the first differentiator on the lineup of state. We talked about the second differentiator of the open map, and then the third differentiator I've talked about in my opening remarks, and that's the sponsorship that we have, whether with our partners and from JWAM. Then all this is really powered or enabled by the team. Bear with me for a second. I wanna, I wanna share more about the team that we have, that I'm so proud of. We have a team that brings a super effective diversity of thought that is, that is pretty unique. We have a team that is connected to the culture and the cannabis experience. We have a team that brings corporate experience and scars from Fortune 500 companies that we are implementing in the industry. We have a team that is determined to promise internally that we continue to fine-tune, and we will hopefully soon bring it externally. We are determined to build the best cannabis company. You know, Lynn, you said it, I've led a total of 19 teams in my career, and with a lot of confidence, I can say, I can put this team against any of the teams I've led before or I supported before, and yet against any team in top 100 Fortune company because of the passion, because of the experience, because of the collaboration. So, I couldn't be any prouder of the team. Talking about the team, I'd like to invite 3 of them to the stage. BJ, that you've heard about, Chantelle from the Northeast, and Mary from Michigan, to talk further about state by state and the operation. All right. This is fun. We're really excited to be here. I'm really excited to be sitting next to both Chantelle and Mary. As Jason and Ziad said, we are a machine. We are. I think I talk to you two maybe more than my wife on a consistent basis during the course of the day, since we're all remote. But our objective is to challenge each other, our objective is to set up the right operational procedures, and our objective is to move fast. We look at data. This company is way ahead of everybody else, in my opinion, in the cannabis industry. As it relates to data and research and homework, we make decisions based on numbers. We look at consumer trends, and we're constantly trying to evolve our brands, trying to evolve our products. Our cultivation facilities are top-notch. Our product is amazing. Even when we talk about our lower-level brands, it's still amazing flower. So we've got the system set up. We've got the operation set up. Chantelle and Mary will walk you through their markets, and then we'll get into our brands, and talk a little bit about our strategy. Good morning, everyone. My name is Chantelle Elsner, for those of you that I didn't meet already, either today or last night, and I'm super excited to share an overview of our Northeast operations with you today. A little bit about me. I have been in the industry for about maybe a little over seven years at this point, which, as all of us will say, feels like a lifetime. I've led retail, wholesale, sales, marketing, operations, and about three years ago, I decided to move across the country to join TerrAscend, where, you know, I lived in Arizona before. I now live in Pennsylvania, so I can imagine, you know, you all understand how different that is, but it's really important for me to be in the markets that I'm leading. I often, you know, think about my why, right? I do a lot of research before I join companies, and my why today is very similar to the why that it was when I first joined. I did a lot of research. I knew I wanted to be part of a high-growth company. I knew I wanted to go all in, and part of that, you know, a huge part of that was the research I did on Jason, right? All of you've done your research. I did as well before I joined, and he's a huge part of that. So our strategy, and you've heard us say it, we'll continue to say it, is to go, you know, deep, not wide in our core markets. And it's this team, relentless, and JW is relentless, we all are, pursuit of continuous improvement, day by day, quarter by quarter, year by year. That keeps me going. So, let's talk about New Jersey a little bit. At the heart of our success in New Jersey, which we're all very excited about, one of the, you know, best markets, you know, in the nation, is our state-of-the-art cultivation and manufacturing facility. So this facility is beautiful for those of you that have, you know, had a chance to go see it. And if you haven't, we welcome you. You know, we're looking at bringing on additional capacity next year, but the team has actually done an amazing job revolutionizing our growing practices. And over the last eight months or so, we've seen about a 50% increase just using the current square footage that we have with those practices being in place, which has been amazing to see. I think we were all a little nervous about it in the beginning. Is it gonna work? Is it not gonna work? And, you know, we've seen it, we've applied it there, we've applied it across all of our markets. Our brands have really, really took off in New Jersey. So the Kind Tree brand, Wana, that we, you know, launched recently, and Cookies, as well as all the others, have started to become kind of household brands in New Jersey. The patients and the consumers have embraced them. They love them. And JW kind of stole some of this from Ilera, but I'm going to say it again because it's so important. According to BDSA, in August, and, you know, we were, you know, waiting until this launched on BDSA and sending out texts that got shared all too quickly. We secured number 2 in the market, so it was such a close miss, I want to say, on number 1. So between myself and this entire team and everyone, we are absolutely striving for number 1, and we will get there. I know that we will, and I believe it's going to be quite quick. And we also hit number 1 in 3 other categories: flower, vape, and extract. That's number 1 in the market. Like that's pretty amazing. I know that, you know, I'm so proud of the team. I'm so proud of the quality of the flower that, you know, flows through all of the products that we produce. And it's all about, you know, what Lynn said about, you know, our innovation and, you know, that relentlessness about our team. So I know that we're going to get there to number one. Wana has been, you know, something for us that has fueled, you know, significant momentum in the edibles category. I think, you know, anybody who thinks about national brands definitely thinks about Wana for sure. This brand has been amazing, and it's actually catapulted us just in the early months of launching to number three in the edibles category. So, as I mentioned, we're so committed to driving quality and efficiency throughout all of our operations. In New Jersey and across the board, we continue to optimize our product mix, balancing our wholesale and retail offering, which has already and will continue to reduce our cost of goods, and we're going to continue to see sequential revenue growth. We also have lots of really great opportunities in New Jersey on top of what we have. So I think Ziad kind of mentioned it a little bit earlier. There was a bill that recently passed, which allows us to own up to 35% of seven additional stores. So we have three stores currently. We are currently in talks with lots of different partners, and this is going to be a huge leap for us in the state, which we're all super excited and very quickly working towards securing. So New Jersey, for us, is a pretty prime example of, like, the ideal state playbook, right? We take a lot of our learnings, we take a lot of our best practices from New Jersey and apply them across the board. And it's we have our, you know, diverse brand portfolio launched. We have exceptional growth prospects in New Jersey, and as I mentioned, we will be number one. So next time you hear from us, and, you know, JW will probably steal my thunder on that one quickly, we will be number one. So really, really proud of the team in New Jersey. It's been an amazing road for us, and we are going to talk a little bit about Maryland next. So Maryland is a $1 billion adult-use market. We've had a pretty quick, you know, jaunt into this market. In all my time in the business, I've never seen anything quite like the speed at which this team acquired and integrated 3 stores just moments before the adult use launch on July 1 to get us to our now 4-store count. Every leader was boots on the ground, everyone was engaged, everyone answered their phones 24/7. I think my phone was on at all times. We even acquired a store the day before July 1, and that store successfully converted to adult use the next day. We didn't actually even meet the team before they launched. In fact, Ziad himself even took it upon himself to drive to all of the dispensaries in a rental car, which are, of course, strategically spread out, you know, amongst the state. He was taking calls from the car and, you know, doing his very best to get to everyone, so much so that he ran out of gas somewhere, you know, on the border of Maryland and West Virginia, to where he had to call in a rescue to our head of security, who told me it was an honor to bring the CEO a can of gas. So, you know, he made it, and he, you know, shook everybody's hand, and he wished everyone congratulations, and, you know, we're so happy that, you know, all levels of our leadership get to interact with all of our team members. So our journey in Maryland began with an acquisition of a small cultivation facility in 2022. We have since then, and pretty quickly thereafter, relocated to our state-of-the-art facility in Hagerstown. We've learned our lessons along the way about balancing supply and demand and, you know, the ever-changing market. To meet the now growing demand, we are doubling our capacity in 2024. This expansion really aligns with, like, our, you know, rapid market penetration plan for Maryland, right? Doubling the output, feeding our 4 stores and the entire wholesale market. Much like New Jersey, Maryland's margins and market structure are conducive to driving significant positive cash flow. We know Keith's going to talk a lot about that later, which further reinforces our position in the state. We've really only scratched the surface of verticality in our own stores at this point, primarily due to the demand for all of our brands on the wholesale market. That kind of brings me back, and I know BJ's going to talk a lot about this, but our proven brand strategy learned from, you know, all of this team's experiences and how we've seen it work in New Jersey and applying that to Maryland. I'm going to throw in some more BDSA stats because I have them also fresh in my mind. We've seen a, you know, a 200% increase quarter-over-quarter, right? Which tells us actually, based on the data, that we're like, you know, growing at nearly double the market rate. So it's been really amazing. We've acquired a lot of new faces, and, you know, the team is fully focused on, you know, producing all of the amazing brands that we, we sell in all of our other markets. The Maryland market, I think, you know, overall did an amazing job of converting to adult use quickly, easily. Not every state is like that. New Jersey wasn't like that. Lots of other states that we've all operated in were not like that. So we have really high hopes for every other state conversion to be much like Maryland, quick, easy, seamless. And... Oh, I just saw my next slide moved. And we, you know, I think we're going to apply a lot of those, of those lessons as we, as we start to ramp up, in the Pennsylvania market for when we go adult use there. So, on to Pennsylvania, which is my now home state, with a population of 13 million people. It's the largest in our northeast region, so it's currently a $1.1 billion medical market. Obviously poised for, you know, huge growth when adult use launches, and it's the third state that I've been a part of here at TerrAscend, taking adult use. However, we can't talk about Pennsylvania without maybe referencing some of the challenges that this state has seen over the last few years, including price compression, market consolidation, and we're actually now starting to see that the market is stabilizing, and we're seeing gradual gains over the last couple of quarters. I believe that our team, our proven playbook, will continue to be the key to our success in each state. We've recalibrated a lot of how we operate in Pennsylvania based on those learnings. We've applied our proven innovation process. We've launched new brands. We've reinvented some existing ones, and the data is showing us that we're delivering products that every consumer wants. Again, to highlight some of our recent successes. So we have six stores in Pennsylvania, and I mentioned some of those gradual gains. So we've grown about 6% sequentially and 8% year-over-year. And we're, again, going back to BDSA, because we've been so eager to see some of these amazing results and how we're trending in the state. Our flower category has seen some remarkable growth, with a 12% increase year-over-year, and concentrates have shot up. So we see this a lot, in adult-use markets, where a lot of consumers start to convert over to concentrates, and it starts to change the mix of how people are shopping. We saw a 25% increase in concentrates. Our Legend brand, which I know BJ is going to talk a lot about, that launched earlier this year, continues to be a key driver of our success, amongst all of our other brands. We saw an 8% increase in the last two quarters, according to BDSA, with overall flower sales, with introducing that brand, right? So it's having all of the brands and a selection of products within each of those that, that are good for all consumers at every price point. So I talked a lot about, and we all do, right, about our innovation mindset. Our innovation is always driven by our consumer demand. In the case of the state's recent approval of edibles, select edibles, I'll say, not all edibles, we quickly brought our Valhalla brand to market, and this has been a game changer. It's such a huge deal when a state adds categories, you know, and form factors. Pennsylvania, for those of you that might not know, doesn't allow or didn't allow edibles and pre-rolls. We know that those are in high demand in every market. You know, recent launch of our Valhalla brand has shown incremental revenue, you know, on top of everything else that we're already succeeding with across the state. And, you know, as far as our understanding, the state seems really open to expanding other categories, further expanding the edibles category, as well as pre-rolls. So we know that that's all going to be incremental when they do that. So I mean, Pennsylvania for me is, it's on a promising trajectory. It might not be going quite as fast as we all want. We're going to continue to leverage all those best practices that we've seen successful in our other markets as we prepare for adult use. And I know that we're going to be one of the strongest players in the state. I'm going to hand it over to Mary, who leads our Michigan market. She continues to remind me of the friendly competition that the Michigan market is going to bring based on her unlimited license structure, which is very different than how we operate in the Northeast. Take it away, Mary. Thank you so much, Chantelle. Well, I am Mary Turon. I'm delighted to be with you this morning. You know, just to share a little bit about my background, for those of you who didn't get to meet me last night, I'm probably an OG in cannabis after seven years, your lifer. I spent seven years in the cannabis industry and absolutely love it. Three of those last years, I have been with, you know, honored to be representing the Michigan market. Despite joining TerrAscend only in June, I feel like I've been here my entire career. I can't tell you enough about this wonderful team, their camaraderie, their warmth, and their collaborative spirit. It's truly been a unique, like a unique experience for me. So it is an amazing team, and I can't say enough about the support we've all received. Presently in Michigan, our state boasts 19 retail locations, soon to be 20, and we're determined to go further and strengthen our presence in this market. Michigan currently stands as a $2.9 billion juggernaut in annual sales, solidifying its position as the number two in the United States, just behind California. The key story here really is growth. It's all about growth. Growth in a gross margin, our growth in increased profits, growth of brands, and untapped potential of expansion in our state. Following the acquisition of Gage in April 2022, we took decisive action to streamline our cost structure in a challenging operating environment. We've successfully stabilized pricing since the early 2023, thanks to favorable regulatory changes and decrease in statewide cultivation capacity. Our dedicated team has taken steps to balance our gross margin and revenue. Q3 gross margins are up with significant retail increases resulting from promotional strategy refinement and product assortment. We've also seen decent increases in our wholesale market, driven by strong performance from Cookies with Khalifa and our own Kind Tree products. In retail, we've been adjusting our promotions and product strategies to focus more on increasing margins and streamlining promotional offerings and leveraging that data and consumer trends to drive traffic and increase frequency. Our product assortment strategy is the same as all of our states, which BJ will share with you. Offering consumers the right products at fair prices and having the selection that consumers desire. Similarly, we are focused on building a national brand presence with our internal brands, and the introduction of Gage, Kind Tree, and Legend has enabled us to add SKUs, consistently tapping into new product categories and prioritizing our own brands on the shelf. In the last two quarters, we've reduced our reliance on third-party brands in Michigan by 20%, increasing our gross margins, which is really a great story and a huge success for our team. We've seen remarkable growth with partners brand Cookies, which had a substantial surge in August sales for us. This growth was propelled by popularity of our flower, our vape products, reinforcing our strong presence in the Michigan market. Our vertically integrated setup with three cultivation facilities, a state-of-the-art lab and a packaging and distribution hub, has leveraged our verticality and helped us control costs. Consequently, our gross profit margin has seen consistent growth every quarter. I'm highly confident we will achieve EBITDA positivity by the second half of 2023. We are currently exploring numerous opportunities to expand our retail footprint within Michigan through both organic growth and acquisitions. The sky is truly the limit when it comes to licenses, and we're eager to seize all of these opportunities in the state. I'd like to truly express my heartfelt thanks and gratitude to all of our dedicated team members, all of our valued partners, investors, and loyal customers. I'm tremendously excited to see and be part of the growth that we're gonna see out of Michigan. Thank you for having me here. It was so nice to get to know everybody last night and meet everybody, and watch out for Michigan. We're coming. We're coming for you. A lot I could say about Michigan. One thing is Michigan is also, per capita, the largest U.S. market. California, from a revenue perspective, is, but Michigan this year overtook that, which is really impressive and really important for us as we continue to explore growth opportunities there. But we're gonna get into the marketing strategy. Just sitting here, I realize that the three of us, when you combine our years in cannabis, is probably the deepest bench at any of the larger cannabis companies. We've all got five, seven, eight years in the industry, so we're walking into the room with a deep, deep round of experience. So that's just something for everybody to think about as we make decisions and continue to move forward. From a marketing perspective, just really quick, so everybody can understand our point of view. We operate as one. We have SOPs across every single market. We don't veer from them. Structure, movement. We try to move quick, we try to make decisions. So we all work off of the same programs, the same operating procedures. We have the objective to unify all of our brands across all of our markets. We don't need different brands in different states. We need our brands in our states. We need the products to come out of cultivation. We need to put them into our brands. We've created a brand standard set that the entire company works off of with cultivation. We're lucky, I would say, the three of us are, because our cultivation head, Jeremy Cohen, is tremendous, coming from Northern California and the state, from the State Flower brand. We benefit from having just really, really good product right out of the gate. The marketing team services the whole entire organization, so we're set up as one marketing group. We have marketing leads in each market, but we come from the top-down approach. Things obviously move and weave, depending on the market and what the data is telling us, but it's not a separate bunch of group of people. Always have the objective of growing our consumer base. We have a thing with the retail teams of... and when we do our, the panel, I'm sure Nancy and I will talk about this a little bit more, but when you can bring them into the ecosystem, they're in the ecosystem. That means when you walk through the door and you check in, are we getting your email? Are we getting your phone number? Are you opting in? Once we get you in the ecosystem, it's then our job to leverage all those points and to continue to remarket back to them. Our head of technology, who's here, David Wheeler, is working on one system approach for everything that we do. So our POS system will be tied to our email system, will be tied to our tech system. We are launching national loyalty programs across the country. We're rolling out a, a national app across the country. We're also getting into segmentation, so we're gonna know, it's like a D2C model for the most part. We're gonna know when you come in, what you're purchasing, when the last time you purchased, how much you purchased.... If we don't hear from you for a while, we have, we have flows set up that are going to ping you and say, "Hey, where have you been for the last 30 days? Or, Hey, this flower promo is happening." Our objective is to talk to them through one system, using data at all points, at all consumer touch points, to really try to give us the edge, because in marketing and cannabis, as everybody knows, not a whole lot you can do. So the things you can do, you really got to do them well. And it's, it we were joking this past week, some of it's boring, but it actually works. So if we can continue to evolve that and grow that across the country, I think it's going to put us in a really good position, to have great success. So on to our brands, our brand portfolio. I'm the luckiest marketer in the industry because our two partner brands are Cookies and Wana. I mean, you can't really ask for any larger national brand than Cookies and Wana in two separate categories. So walking into the room, it's amazing. They're not licensed partners. I've been involved with licensed partners in my previous lives. They're not licensed partners, they're partners. They dedicate marketing team to work with us. We talk to them on a daily basis. The Cookies team and the Wana team, they drive innovation with their process, with their genetics. They are deeply ingrained into our culture, and it's really helped us as it relates to our other brands, because, you know, cannabis cultivars, I kind of view them as creative people. They can vibe off of each other. So when multiple groups of them are in the room, innovation happens, and it's, we're really lucky to have them as partners. This is your typical CPG brand map. I'm not a huge fan of these type of brand maps. I think you're just kind of putting logos in squares. At the end of the day, it doesn't really mean anything. Our brand map is more linear. We view it as premium to price savvy. The reason we do this is it allows us to move our pricing as the market is moving. So we're not just putting it in a quadrant, and we're saying it has to be this price. We like it for the fact that we can make decisions based on what the market's telling us and put things in certain areas based on price and product. Let's start with Legend. This is our lower priced, lower tiered brand, but it's not lower tiered, it's not value. I will not call it value because the product is fire. It's bigger pack sizes. It's 28 grams, it's 14 grams. It is your everyday consumer. It is people who walk in, they are rolling joints, or they are consuming every single day of the week. The product is amazing and it's priced really, really well. We saw an opportunity in Michigan this year to launch this brand, and Mary and I kind of fell off our chairs after the first three days on the sheer volume of units that were moving across the state of Michigan. Quickly got on the phone with Ziad and Chantelle, and we made the decision: Let's replicate this. Took it to Pennsylvania. The first weekend, it was flying off the shelves. Got back on the phone, took it to New Jersey, same thing. It's moving. We're not taking Legend into the 3.5-gram packs. That's not the purpose of this brand. This is a brand that is good flower, it's priced well, it's larger pack sizes for the everyday consumer. We're going to replicate this over and over again, and continue to be nimble with this brand. Valhalla is our in-house edible line. It's a lower-priced edible brand. It's mostly for the newbie or reentry, I would say. It comes from California, and that group, when they came into the family, does very well for us, as I talked about when we launched it in the Northeast, it's doing really well. It's not a competitor of Wana. It's not, not much is, but it's our edible line, and it does really well for us. Kind Tree is the mid-tier brand. This is your, your workhorse, so to speak. This is what got us to number one in New Jersey. This has the largest variety of strains that we grow and we put into it. Its primary SKUs are 3.5 grams. At the end of the day, we're constantly rotating strains in and out of this. It's picked up on the Northeast really, really well, and it's, it's the brand we can test a little bit more with cultivation and having a lot of fun with. Gage is the legacy Michigan brand. So both retail and this brand exist in the state of Michigan. We've begun to roll it out across the Northeast and our other markets. It's doing pretty well, actually. There's a lot of passion in Michigan for this brand. We battle a lot on the Gage line in Michigan in a good way, but we're working on continued growth across the country with this. With the fastest growing brand for us in New Jersey, it had a 110% increase in market share month-over-month. A lot of that was just our distro. State Flower, Corda, because this is where Jeremy Cohen comes from. This was his baby in Northern California. It's only in California. It's a small batch brand, really consistent strains. We don't grow a ton of it, but we distribute it through all of our stores in Northern California. It's the constant reminder for all of our cultivation on quality. Wana, I know we're going to have a panel with Nancy shortly. It is North America's most trusted edible brand. It is. Plain and simple, anybody tells you that it's not, it's not true. They're all over the country. They've done an amazing job with market penetration. They're really focused, and like I said, they're huge partners for us moving forward. We launched them in both New Jersey and Maryland, and we saw a really substantial movement for us in the market. It's number 3, month-over-month of edibles, 67% distribution, +203% in overall sales, month-over-month in Maryland. It's doing really well. New Jersey took off, 12% share. It's on track to increase to 16 as we continue to do more with our partners in Wana. Cookies, the slow burn is what we call it. They're a great group to work with. I was joking last night where, you know, I can go to my family's soccer games and sporting events, and I see Cookies merch on everybody. That's a huge advantage for us at the end of the day, because everybody knows the brand. Their genetics are pretty, pretty amazing. They've been a really, really good partner for us. We've got some pretty cool things coming down the pipe with them. They call it 2.0. They've launched a lot of it in California. There's a dual chamber vape that's coming out, that I've been able to get my hands on. It's pretty, pretty amazing. It's doing really well in California, that we're bringing into other markets, so we're gonna continue to evolve and grow with Cookies. So what's next? These are our—this is our portfolio for now. Our objective is to continue to evolve, continue to do more, continue to look at the market, come up with SKUs that we think make sense. Find holes in the market or opportunities in the market, and really work together with my partners here, and then obviously our California group, on market penetration. You know, we want to be number one, so that's what we're driving to at all, at all times. So I think that's the end of our presentation, if I'm correct. I will welcome Tim back on stage. Now we're gonna have this conversation about brands. You know, in fact, I want to invite Nancy up to the stage. I want to invite Ziad back up to the stage. B.J.'s gonna stay here. Please come on up, and, you know, we're sitting on our marshmallows for our fireside chat, and we'll continue to kind of evolve this concept, because if I want to continue down the line of slightly off-color jokes and things that Jason actually started earlier with his metaphor about the, you know, if you see something, walk in the street. I mean, you know, we've all heard a limerick, a metaphor, an adage about opinions, and they're kind of like something, everybody's got one. In the cannabis industry, it's brands, right? I mean, everybody claims they've got a brand. This is the greatest CPG industry that's yet not really hatched. Nancy has certainly been about building a brand, and there's no questioning what BJ has said about the foundation of the two brands that are really, truly partners for TerrAscend. But now I want to talk a little bit about not only brands, but I want to talk about the data behind the brands, and that which gives you not only the... It's the efficacy, right? And, but it's also, it's, it's the thread that is the future to, to more customers, and I think data is really important in this industry. One of the cool things about... Again, I'm an emerging markets guy. One of the cool things about emerging markets, cannabis is an emerging market, right? Is there's this technology leapfrog. So you've got brands growing up at a time when digital e-commerce loyalty software is for the biggest brands in the world is changing by the second. And so this is the advantage that this team has, and it's happening very quick. Ziad, talk to me a little bit about the integration of brand and data, and then, BJ, I want to hear a little bit from you as well. Yeah, thanks, Tim. I think one of the, my biggest challenges, my biggest surprise, coming from a very well-established industry and a 117-year-old company, was the data that was not existing in the cannabis industry. And the gut instinct and the emotions and the decisions that were made based on where the wind is and deciding what we do next, and the, the inability to make the, the decision that drove the return. When I interviewed BJ, we talked a lot about data. I feel today we have crossed a long distance, leveraging our data, making decisions based on the data, measuring the success, sunsetting decisions, not having egos, turning the page on emotion. So I'll let you share a little bit about how you're using this internally. Yeah, cannabis is one of those industries where we have the ability to constantly be seeing what people are purchasing and why and how often. When you look at that, you should be able to make informed decisions pretty quickly, right? At the end of the day, instead of saying: Oh, this would be cool. We don't need to be cool. We need to provide a product for the consumer or the patient that they actually either want or need. I thought you were gonna say, "We don't need to be cool. We are cool. I might say that, but then I'd get made fun of a lot by my staff, maybe a little bit. But that's how we use it. We use it from the perspective of what is the consumer telling us they want. So let's make it, and let's give it to them in the way that they want it. Let's not deviate from that path because the data is telling us what we should be doing. Right. So the data then leads you to, you know, again, the consumer and most importantly, building this brand. And so I got my snarky comment in about brands, and everyone's got one, and, you know. But how far has the industry really come here, BJ? Because, no question that the two brand partners here are the brands that people know. But what does the industry need to do to get to the next level? I think it needs to just keep plowing forward. I think working with brands like Wana, working with a brand like Cookies, they've done such a nice job already laying the foundation of what cannabis brands should be doing. Part of it is the innovation that the two of them bring to the table and collaborate with us. A brand in cannabis just can't be slapping somebody's face on a package at the end of the day, because the product itself delivers a purpose to the consumer. So I think following in the footsteps of our partner brands and what Nancy's built is a roadmap for us as we move forward. I think the industry has a long way to go. The state-by-state differentiation doesn't help, but it is what it is, and it's something that we all continue to have to continue to explore, review, evolve until that changes, if it ever changes. Well, we've got someone who can talk to us about that state by state, you know, dynamic. Nancy, welcome. And first, talk a little bit about the background of the relationship between TerrAscend and Canopy, and thus Wana, and really how you have been involved in that relationship and obviously how you see the future. Yes, thank you. And thank you to TerrAscend for inviting me to be here today. It's really a pleasure. I'm gonna back up a little bit from the relationship with Canopy and just give sort of a 30-second overview on Wana, to put it in a little bit of context. So I actually, we've been talking about, being an OG, excuse me, in the industry. And thank you. Somebody's reaching for a water. Jason, thank you so much. Thank you. I actually started Wana in 2010, so that makes me, like, 107 years old in cannabis years. Started the company in Colorado. At that point, of course, it was one of the first medical markets. We were just in Colorado, just in the medical market until 2013, when Colorado led the nation in adult use. We did our first out-of-state partnership the following year in Oregon. Fast forward now, we're in 16 states, plus Puerto Rico, 9 provinces in Canada, and we've got 3 more states coming on board first quarter of 2024. The brand has always really focused on innovation. We've really led the market on a number of sort of the gummy breakthroughs. You wouldn't think there'd be gummy breakthroughs, but in fact, there were. You know, we were the first to have class-specific gummies, the first to bring CBD ratios to market, the first to bring quick onset to market, and most recently with our Optimals line, very highly formulated use case-specific products, which is what keeps us in that premium category. So along the way, as I mentioned, we came to Canada, and therein lies the beginning of our relationship with Canopy. Canopy was one of many companies that we spoke with in Canada, and we actually didn't end up partnering with Canopy initially. We started working with someone else, but we quickly built our toehold in Canopy, and then several years later, we kind of found each other again. And it's almost two years to the date today, that we completed our transaction with Canopy, who purchased the option to purchase Wana, when either federal permissibility allowed, which is beginning to seem a little farther off than we were hoping for two years ago. But we're in the process of rolling the Canopy US entities into a subsidiary called Canopy USA, or CUSA, for short. So that's a little bit about our, our history with Canopy, and one of the wonderful outcomes of that has been that, they had this relationship with TerrAscend. So that also was the beginning and the entree of our relationship with TerrAscend. Thank you. And clearly, for a different company's investor day, the whole concept of the U.S. Holdco is really about unlocking the value of these brands. Yeah. I mean, let's be clear. And with all due respect to a great and pioneering Canadian business at Canopy, the investments in the U.S. have been about this. So, so BJ, just quickly about brands, but maybe we've talked a little bit about it, and you've talked a little bit about the evolution. So maybe a little snapshot on what you... Some trends you see. Maybe it's segment, maybe it's form factor, however, you want to handle that. Yeah. Some of the trends we're seeing, we talked a little bit about with Legend. It's the segment, it's the form factor, but it all, to me, comes down to the quality of the product at the end of the day. The quality of the product is what drives the consumer first and foremost, at least from my perspective and I think our perspective as a marketing team. So as long as we start with quality, and then we work on the brand, the look and feel, we're gonna be in a good position, as opposed to just creating this beautiful image and then putting product in it. That's how CPG kind of works a little bit, where I feel like cannabis is in the other side of it, where if we start with the product and we have a really good product, then we can work on what the brand is and what it represents. Because if the product isn't good, the consumer's never coming back at the end of the day. So starting with that, and I think you're starting to see it a little bit, and obviously, our partners have been paving that path. You know, the Wana team and their innovation and the formulation and the things they're doing, that's, that's our direction. That's where we go, as opposed to just, "This is a beautiful image" type of thing. It sounds very also consistent with some of the things Jason said in terms of, you know, you lead with the product, the product you have that's good, that's winning market share. Sounds a little bit like, you know, not trying to be everywhere. It sounds like being deep and narrow and taking those products. Yeah. And so, Ziad, let's transition this conversation about brands and marketing and, and into a dynamic that I think is important to, for folks to think about, because is it the product or is it, is it the footprint? So on some level, thinking about retail versus branding, it, it's clear that on some level, the brand has been the retail presence so far for this industry. So if we want to put it in very clear marketing and branding terms, you know, are you CVS or are you Advil? Obviously, the choice of that, of those comps are, are interesting because we all see this as an OTC market at some point, and a lot of the things that everyone is consuming cannabis for are some of the same reasons. A lot of it is basically Advil. You know, this is part of the evolution here. So I'd just like to hear where TerrAscend has focused. Clearly, there are brands. Clearly, that is part of it, but there's a lot to kind of evolve through. Yeah. You know, we think about it as the quality brand that lives inside the channel, whether it's retail, whether it's online, whether it's any channel that the consumer can reach us in, but the quality is the anchor of the brand. Are we, did you ask if it's a Walgreens or Advil? Well, I said CVS, but Walgreens- Yeah, okay. I mean, you know, I would prefer CVS because I own Walgreens. It's been one of the worst investments I've made in the last ten years. Seriously, it has. CVS isn't much better, but however, you know, whatever you want to- Yes. Yeah. So, currently- Sorry about that. Currently, currently, TerrAscend is CVS, Advil, and ibuprofen. They're all three of them. We are the retail store that is creating the relationship with the customer and with the patient. We are the quality of Advil, but we are the choice of ibuprofen that offer the same quality. I think the winner in this space, the long-term companies, are the companies that are going to out-localize the national and out-nationalize the local. Wana does that extremely well, and we're experiencing that success in New Jersey. We're experiencing that success in Maryland, and I believe that we will continue to gain that momentum, even both post-federalization. When the borders open, we will be able to continue to get the synergy between our retail stores, our quality brands, and how we can have that premium brand and value brand live together to build that relationship with the customer and the patient. It sounds, from what we've heard from your team, state by state, this is what's happening. So Nancy, and as BJ emphasized, and we're emphasizing, this isn't a licensing deal, this is a partnership. Partnerships are great in terms of the opportunity. There's also an opportunity cost. You partnered with TerrAscend. You could have partnered with a lot of people. Why TerrAscend? Yeah, that's a great question. Well, excuse me. We thought, first of all, we do have the Canopy connection, which is a great connection, but it's so much more than that. And, I want to give a little context here. In the 10 years plus since we've been partnering with people, because we do use an asset-light model, we have currently 16 partners, and over the last 14 years, I have personally talked with over 50 potential and existing partners. So I think it's fair to say that I have a pretty wide range of context when I say that TerrAscend has been an exceptional partner, and I want to go into a little bit of the why of that. First of all, we have a market alignment, which is extremely important in New Jersey and Maryland, and we've helped each other in interesting ways there. New Jersey was a brand-new market for us. We were able to begin working with TerrAscend, who already had a great footprint in New Jersey, and was able to bring us into their stores with a meaningful presence. And in Maryland, where TerrAscend was newer, Wana had been in market for many years and had a strong reputation. So it was very synergistic in that sense. And hopefully, as the world evolves, and particularly Pennsylvania evolves with more formats, we're going to have more market overlap. But markets really are just the beginning. It really starts with the leadership team, starts with Jason, and then comes all the way down through Ziad. We just rarely find a team with such strength at all levels. So leadership on down, all through operations, and just a competency that we recognize and we appreciate and we don't often see. I would also point to communication. Communication is absolutely the key for partners. I know that if I have a question or a concern, I can pick up the phone, I can call Ziad, I can call Chantelle, I can get immediate input into whatever it is that's going on. I always say Wana is not perfect. We don't expect our partners to be perfect. What we do expect is that we have the communication, that we can talk about things openly and work them through. But then I would also point to something which is really rare with partners, is strategy. Some people look at sort of a licensing asset, like kind of a model, and they think, "Well, the brand just licensed their stuff and off they go." It so is not like that. It's a day in and a day out struggle, where, where it's a knife fight in the streets in most of the markets we're at, to be perfectly honest with you. And if you don't have a partner that's right in there with you, that you can be talking about pricing strategy, you can be talking about promotion strategy, how you're really gonna win in the marketplace.... then you really don't have a partnership. You just have either a hostage relationship, frankly, or you've got something just really suboptimal. And so, we have shared goals, and we have shared values, and I think both teams have some humility. We are proud of what we do. We believe in our brands, and we believe in our companies, but at the end of the day, we're willing to talk to each other and learn from each other. Sounds like a great marriage. Sounds like all the components that actually literally make up a great marriage, and being able to be self-reflective on, you know, what's working, what's not. So Ziad, maybe just tie this up for us. Any thoughts on either the critical nature of the brands we've talked about today, the partnership, the data, your call? Yeah, I think, Nancy, you summarized it very well. There are licensing deals, and there are true partnerships. I've had. I have asked BJ to discontinue any irrelevant licensing deal. I think we discontinued 70%-80% of those deals that we have acquired with some of the acquisitions that we've done since 2017. We have maintained two genuine relationship and partnership. Nancy and the team is one. How do I know it's working? Data is telling us it's working. How do I know it's working? When Nancy and I talk, we often talk to celebrate numbers and to celebrate the success of the team. But we know cannabis has a lot of challenges, so sometimes when we talk, remember the first call, we hit a small roadblock. Nancy said, "Hey, I am sure my team is as guilty as yours." And then within two minutes, we had solved and moved forward. So when you have a shared value, when you have a shared quality and vision, it makes that partnership so much more successful. It makes a partnership where one and one equal more than two in an equitable way. Wana had an established presence in Maryland. That's one of our important states. We came in, and we leveraged Wana partnership to open all 100+ doors. And because of Wana brand equity, we were able to start building our wholesale business pretty quickly. Well, in New Jersey, we were the established brand. We came into New Jersey five years ago or so, and Wana came into New Jersey, and you saw the numbers. Quickly, we got into 12%. We'll be at 16%, and together, we'll get to number one market share in the industry. So that relationship and that marriage of, quality, brands, and vision is, to me, what a true partnership is. Sounds like philosophy and And math. After philosophy, of course, comes the practical reality of the numbers. So let's wind up this fireside chat on brands, and let's bring in the CFO to talk a little bit about those numbers. Thanks, everybody. Good morning, everyone. It's great to see so many familiar faces in one room together, and not on a screen, like we always do. Just before I jump into it, just a little bit about myself. I've been with the company for three and a half years through a lot of this journey, with Jason, through a lot of ups and downs, more recently with the rest of the team that you've met here today. I'm kind of sitting here thinking, waiting for my moment and hearing everybody talk, and, for example, hearing Tim talk about his emerging markets experience and, and thinking to myself, how it is that I ended up here from companies like Procter & Gamble and Dell and Hershey, very traditional backgrounds, and I really had to ask myself 3, 3.5 years ago, would this work? And, and for me, it was that... And, and then Ziad was mentioning some things around it as well. It was that, the, the years that I spent overseas and not having the data, not having the right talent, and not having great information and, and having to make decisions on the fly and, and go with your gut. And I felt like, yeah, this can translate. Three and a half years into it, I feel like it really has. And we've all talked about the team, and so I just wanted to spend the first couple of minutes just also echoing everything, just how special it's been to be here and be part of this group. So now let's jump into the numbers. You've heard from everyone here this morning, and I think now we can kind of culminate it in some facts and figures that really illuminate what we're talking about. And the first thing I'd like to say is that you've heard that we have visibility into our year. We have strong confidence and understanding of our business. It's more under control, and for that reason, and the strong momentum, real momentum that we have in the business, in the press release this morning, we've increased our guidance, you see here, from $305 million to $317 million revenue, at least. And that's a 27% growth rate. I'll show a, another page in a minute that emphasizes that's top-level growth in the industry. And then adjusted EBITDA from $58 million to at least $63 million, 62% growth year-over-year and approaching that 20% mark, and you'll see in the back half of the year in a couple of pages, that we'll actually eclipse that, above 20% mark in adjusted EBITDA margin. So, really happy about the momentum here. It's driven by everything you've heard this morning. It's driven by adding in Maryland the way that we have, really giving us a whole other level of scale and another full state to operate in. Really strong momentum in New Jersey. You heard that from Chantelle. There's a lot of exciting things going on. We thought we were, for a little while there, kind of at a ceiling in New Jersey, and then we unlocked this additional yield and additional output just as more doors were opening, and now we're just reaching all new heights in New Jersey, and you heard all about that. That's really what's driving these results. We talked about, you heard from Mary talking about gross margin improvements in Michigan. That's driving the numbers. PA was stabilized, and now it's turned a corner and is growing again. That's driving the numbers. So it's really kind of, it's, it's no longer a couple of years ago, we ran into a wall, and we were just Pennsylvania only. We have four legs of a stool working in unison here that's driving what you're seeing here. So that 28% growth rate, that puts us top of the pack. That's essentially the industry that you see here on the page. These are full year, 2023 revenue growth numbers year-over-year. And this 28% puts us at the very top, and we're super excited about that. Our story is a growth story. It's all about growth, and you see it happening here, very clearly. If we break it down across the P&L metrics, what I'm showing here is by halves over the past couple of years. Again, you can start to really see the momentum forming across the P&L. Growth rates accelerating. Back half of the year will be 30% to get to that 20 overall for the year. Gross margins improving quarter-over-quarter, half-over-half, really starting to crank on all cylinders. The coming to fruition of all the actions that we put in place across all of our states. Again, New Jersey, first and foremost, is our workhorse. Top-level margins, very healthy market. Maryland, now that we're getting scale, we're utilizing more of our capacity. The gross margins are really kicking in in Maryland. Michigan, again, reiterating what Mary, what Mary mentioned, gross margins finally eclipsing that 40% mark, in Michigan, which is that high watermark that we put out there to ourselves and said, "Okay, we hit 40%," and that's what gets us to EBITDA breakeven in Michigan. So all that's driving, a statement that we made in the press release this morning, which is we are confident that we can deliver 50% gross margins in the back half of the year, 50% plus. Operating expenses. We, we put ourselves out there on our last quarterly earnings call and, and, declared that we will get to 30% operating expenses as a percent of revenue by the end of the year. We're reiterating that we're on track for that. We've been responsibly controlling our spending, investing and allocating where we need to, to continue to drive our growth, but at the same time, making sure that we get that leverage and we realize the benefit of the revenue growth and that dropping through in operating expense leverage. And all that leads to what you see then with the momentum on the EBITDA line, and the progression there, and really kind of getting to the, a whole other level, when you look at what we're expecting in the back half of the year. So that takes us to why are we doing all that? We're doing all that for cash flow. We-- that became our true north about a year ago, when we really started the turnaround plan, put all the initiatives in place, worked on our balance sheet, did all the things that we've been talking all morning about, and that has driven momentum, and some quarters, operating cash flow positive more recently, and also, really this morning, making a statement that that momentum will take us in the second half to very clearly delivering positive operating cash flow, even taking into account tax payments, which sometimes are made in quarters and sometimes are not. That's why we talk about even when taking into account accrued taxes, we will be operating cash flow positive in the second half of the year and beyond. Finally, that really leads to bottom line, free cash flow. Ziad mentioned this earlier. We're fully built out across our footprint in terms of all the CapEx that we've spent to operationalize all the assets that we have in place. There's a very minimal spending left to go. So everything you saw on the previous page from an operating cash flow standpoint will almost fully translate to free cash flow. And so that was another point we made publicly in our earnings or in our press release this morning, that we will be free cash flow positive again, all in taxes, everything, in the second half of this year. And that's sustainable again, now that we're seeing our business at this whole new level, both in terms of absolute size and all the progress we're making across all the operating metrics. So to wrap up, momentum across across all fronts, really. We've been stating how many consecutive quarters we've been delivering sequential revenue growth. It's been 7. That's through Q2. You can guess kinda where things are going in Q3 and Q4, based on what you've seen here. So that, that trend will continue. Hopefully, the biggest takeaway from today is that we are leading the sector in revenue growth, and, and our story is about growth. We have all these improvements across all the P&L metrics, across many quarters, showing really strong momentum. The cash flow story that I just mentioned, momentum there, all of this is about driving towards positive cash flow. The work we've done on our balance sheet, kinda well documented at this point, but again, it was all to reduce our leverage. reduce our interest expenses, which thereby reduces our hurdle to cash flow positive, and that's why we embarked on this journey to begin with. And so we've reduced our debt by 40% from its peak, right around this time last year. That led to reduced operating expenses by around 30%. And all of that is leading to improved, however you want to measure it, leverage ratios, debt as a percent of sales. We've kind of moved ourselves up the peer group and all those rankings, and really happy with the results, and certainly not finished, more to come there. So with that, I think what we're going to do now is bring the rest of the group up and open it up for Q&A. So I invite the rest of the TerrAscend team up here, and we'll start a Q&A session. And please, I, I think the first moments are always the most awkward, so jump in right away if you, if you have any questions. Right in the middle. And yes, so Ali is gonna have a mic if anybody... Oh, great. Excellent. Thank you, everybody. First of all, I just want to say, thanks to Jason and to the team for absolutely crushing it. As an early investor, I've invested in TerrAscend since 2017. It's great to see the progress. The question I have is: you mentioned that TerrAscend is a growth story, but you also have this focus on positive free cash flow. Can you talk a little bit about how you're planning to achieve both of those things in the next year or two? Sure. Ziad, you want to take that? I can start. We reverse engineer it by looking at what's below that EBITDA line. You have interest, and you have tax. We cannot control tax until the reform happen, and we know that when it happens, we talk about the number that we will benefit from. Interest we could control, and then we have reduced our debt by the 40% that we have shared. So when you look at our interest and our tax, we know the hurdle that we need to pass, and we work on our gross margin, we work on our OpEx. And then, starting from last quarter and moving forward, we will be able to clear that hurdle every single time. How do we do that? Starting by the COGS. We have managed our cost of cultivation. We have stabilized our pricing strategy. Michigan is a great example where we said: "You know what? Let other companies burn the furniture down to extend their runway. We want to protect our brand, our quality, and we want to get to the 40% gross margin that we had, the 1,800+ basis points that we have improved, in order to build the business on those fundamentals." Starting with the COGS, going to the pricing, going back to the—going down to the OpEx, is what will allow us to generate that cash flow from operation. The CapEx is already spent, so we're fully built, so we don't have a drain from the cash flow from the operation, and that's what will lead us, and that's what excites us about that free cash flow. Keith, any numbers you want to add to what I shared? No numbers, but I think it also just goes back to, you can do both because back to our lineup of states, which are going to drive the growth, and then while that's happening, we can work on the rest of the P&L and the balance sheet to deliver the cash flow. Did we answer the question? Danny is next. Really exciting opportunity in New Jersey. You guys just talked about how far along you are in terms of identifying partners and sort of how the economics would work in terms of going back to TerrAscend. So I'll start with the priority, and, Chantelle, maybe since you're doing a lot of the meetings, I'll pass it to you. So, it's our top priority, so our 1 A priority from actually, from acquisition perspective. You know, the bill was just signed, but the work started a few months ago when we had confidence in the bill and the conversation started. The opportunity is big because you could have up to 7 locations. You could start with a 35% of the economy of the store. You could rebrand the store to mimic or to look like your store. But I think the most powerful engine behind that opportunity is the numbers that we saw on the screen, how we improved from 3 to 1, and how we'll get our number 1 market share. It's the brand that is speed and volume, and it's the reach that our brand is reaching way outside of our retail store from a wholesale perspective, that velocity of the sales that is happening. So the opportunity would be, you know, we increase our cultivation by 40%, so that would be enough to supplement some of those stores, but then thoughtfully, we'll increase cultivation to be able to have supply and demand in balance. So, a new store and, you know, we talked about our stores run rates between the $30-$40 million, depending on the stores. Some of the newer store will be less volume, so you take the economy of a store that could start at $5, $10 or $15 million, and that's the size of the pie for us. As far as how that discussion is happening, Chantelle is having a lot of those discussions in the field and building some of those relationships. Yeah, the discussions are going really well so far. As Ziad mentioned, this is a huge priority for us, you know, towards the back half of the year, and we feel that we'll be able to secure those seven partnerships, hopefully by the end of Q1. I can't tell you where, but I can tell you that they're going very well. It's gonna follow a similar strategy to our other states, right? We wanna make sure that we've got, you know, them strategically located throughout the state. We've got, you know, our Maplewood and Lodi store in the northern part of the state, Phillipsburg, which is kind of in the center part, on the border of Pennsylvania. So, you know, if you think about the map of New Jersey, we're looking at, you know, where best to secure those partnerships and really anticipating, you know, where the growth is going to be based on some of the demographics and some of the saturation in some of those bordering locations, either on the state side or within the actual state of New Jersey itself. So they're going really well, and I'm, you know, very, very committed to getting it done in the next six months. Just continuing on New Jersey. We've seen a pretty meaningful ramp in terms of new retail stores coming on. I think right now it's 57 that are on. How are you guys seeing that impact your retail business? Obviously, wholesale is gonna be huge, because of the yield improvements and everything else, but how is that impacting the retail business right now? Yeah, I saw those-- I see those numbers every single week from Chantelle, with how many miles they are from our stores, what our reaches are. So, Chantelle, if you wanna share a little bit about... Yeah, I'll tell you from a retail perspective, our retail is steady. Our retail business is steady. Our wholesale business is exploding. We know what will happen as more retail comes in. There'll be pressure on some of our stores, but there are case studies out there in Illinois and Massachusetts, that a good brand, a first to market, those stores will continue to be a first-tier store. But we have multiple models that will show that our business will continue to grow based on that wholesale business, and will far exceed, exponentially exceed the pressure that we see on our retail store. Yeah, we are seeing it, and, you know, we will continue to see it a little bit, right? So I mean, as Ziad mentioned, the wholesale business is booming. You know, we've seen in some of our other markets where we'll start to see some of that pricing compression. We're not seeing it at the same level in New Jersey. I think we still have a pretty substantial runway. One of our stores is, you know, maybe a little bit more saturated than the others, but we've taken, you know, a lot of those learnings from our past and things that we've done on the pricing and promotions and the experience and how we're marketing to make sure that, you know, those stores are continuing to grow at that same rate. Yeah, and then just to add on to that, we're paying attention to it, so we know when it's coming, and we're not just hanging out. So it's one of those, if you're gonna open by us, you're gonna have a fight from a marketing perspective and a customer retention perspective. So it's not one of those things that we just kind of like, "Oh, great, more dispensaries are opening." We're sitting there saying: "You're not gonna take our consumer." So we have playbooks that we're working on and, you know, we're going to battle on it all. Question from Morgan. Yeah. Good morning. So if I understood, you're saying $317 million-$600 million+ without additional CapEx needs, right, over the next year of change. So what gets you from $600 million to north of $1 billion? Is it a resumption of a CapEx cycle? Is it M&A? Like, what's just a little bit of a longer-term view? Yeah, I'll start. Organically, the number is right that I shared. Michigan East, up and down the coast, one or two states will get us to that $1 billion. We have our priorities on those states. We have some conversations early, but that's what will get us north of the $1 billion. And the M&A, the acquisitions within the states where we operate. Yeah. So the internal acquisition in New Jersey and Michigan, then the new states, potentially. But as I often say, and I'd be remiss if I didn't- Yes ... add it now, is the best way to get the best deals is to not need to do any deals. And we've got a, you know, a really nice runway, completely organically. But that's why we're gonna get really good deals, because there's other operators out there in other states or within our states that like what they see in terms of what we're doing, and they, and they want our, they want our currency. I'll add one thing. Our currency is what started in this building and a lot of the conversations we're having from an acquisition perspective. Because we are on the TSX, they look at our liquidity, and they look at our stock as more, more of a live currency than others, and that played... That came into play in Maryland and in other conversations. Yep. Adam. Yeah. Hi, guys. How much torque do you think you'll have to a potential Pennsylvania flip, if and when it comes? Yeah. Yeah, we have that model pretty clear in front of our eyes, and that's what gives us that confidence to doubling our volume. Look, Pennsylvania is fully built. Let's talk a little bit about when and whether it happens. Common sense has to prevail, and on cannabis, it has not always. You have Maryland and New Jersey around the corner that flipped to recreational. Just to quickly say, almost every government affair expert is aligned that in the next 12-24 months, it will go to recreational. We are sitting ready with a fully built facility, with a switch of fly to go fully from where we are today, around 15% of utilization, to full 100% utilization. Just building a conservative yield, a conservative, conservative output from that facility. Some of the conversations we've had from competitors that would love to make a supply deal with us, that's what gives me the confidence on the numbers that we said, where Pennsylvania will be our largest state and will take us to that organic growth that we talked about. Yep. Plus the six retails which are already, growing, back to growing, year-over-year. You want to get in trouble again? No, I'm not gonna say anything else. I'm not gonna give a—I'm not gonna quantify anything, but obviously— He's looking at his microphone. Yeah. Six stores, going from what? Roughly $50 million in sales to something larger than that. Between that and the cultivation and, Ziad, I mean, what is... Maybe you could share sort of the capacity of our facility there, our cultivation and manufacturing, if we're—if we go back to running at 100%, I mean, that's a pretty substantial number. Doubling number. Yeah. Conservative number, and that's where Pennsylvania will produce as much as all our states together from a cultivation perspective. Yep. Have I shared how excited I am about Pennsylvania? I'm super excited about Pennsylvania. The Ohio vote is in three weeks, so PA will be surrounded. Yeah, right. Thank you. We heard a lot of positive news today, and the trajectory looks fantastic for the North, Northeast areas. We didn't hear too much about the West Coast of California. So I was wondering if anybody can kind of touch base on that. I know the West Coast tends to have its own challenges with expenses, politics, and everything that's happened in the last couple of years. Just seeing if what that situation looks like. Yeah, I'll start. Look, California is a smaller business for us, but that's where we started, right? We went from Canada to California, but it's a very mature state, and we declared that every state will be financially independent and will be EBITDA positive, and California is one of those states. So California is not a drain on us. It's a stable business, but the value of California for us is, you know, I call it R&D, but I call it learning. There are two major learning we do from California. Cultivation is first. The cost of production per pound in San Francisco, compared to other states, was the highest... was the lowest cost and the highest yield. So we took a lot of those learnings from California. While in California, the financial size is not as big because it's small growth, when we send it to New Jersey, and Chantelle shared with us the 50% yield improvement that came from all the practice and all the pilots and all the small investment we've done in some of the technology in cultivation that allowed us to capitalize on it in other states. That's one. The second learning in California is on the buying side, on the retail side. That gross margin that we shared started in the 30s, all the way to 50s, and the confidence that we shared about this, some of it comes from California on the buying side and still in California today, our five stores, keep me honest, Keith, our five stores are still averaging, from a gross margin perspective, the numbers that start with the 5, and that is smart buying, and that is using the shelves in an effective way with the non-vertical partners. Anybody else on California? Yeah. We're getting some Michigan questions and some legal questions in here, too. Is it on? Yeah. Hi, Jason and Ziad. Hey, there. I'm Sarah Paré. I'm from Canopy Growth. You guys present as such a wonderful, cohesive, engaged team that really enjoys working together. And as Nancy spoke to, I think that's part of what we love about our relationship with you. But I'm curious, with all the alignment that's being presented up front here, after we all leave, what do you guys fight about? Like, no couple is gonna last if they never fight about anything. So if you guys are in it for longevity- I wanna take this one. Where are the fights? You take this one then. We're we're probably about to say the same thing. No, well, you start. So we all wanted Jason to wear a jacket today and... No, seriously, that was you know an interesting, very constructive and fun conversation. Jason seemed to not have heard the five or so times that Ziad said, "We're all wearing jackets." And, yeah, a dozen. He seemed to say, "I don't recall that conversation," to which I said, "You were there for that conversation." Anyway, that's just an example. We do have... There, there's banter, there's... But, you know, when there's disagreements, I'm sure this is maybe where you want to go. No, no, that was where I wanted to lead with. Like, when we disagree- But, Sarah, you know what? You know what we do so very well with this team is, often we agree on a topic because it's a very easy topic to agree on, and then we just challenge each other. So we say, "Who's going to play the devil's advocate, and who is going to debate the opposite decision, just in case we're wrong?" And we create tension, and we challenge each other to say, "Are we missing anything?" And that puts a great check and balance for us, and we don't have anybody who is a yes, ma'am, yes, sir, here, like, we don't. We agree that we close the door, we debate the heck out of it, we argue against it, but when we open the door, we make decisions based on data, based on facts that we have today, and we never look back and regret it. I think that's our strongest. I'll add in, and this is serious, like, in my shoes, I, you know, take a position a lot of times that's completely opposite Jason, who is extremely exuberant and enthusiastic and everything. It goes back to the diversity of thinking and viewpoints, and we always find a way to come to the best- ... well thought through outcome on these things, but it's not without a lot of debate on a lot of these topics. Yeah, the only thing I would add is I think it's because we don't have a lot of very large egos from the perspective of needing to protect our, whatever our position is. I think we, you know, I certainly have strong views about things, but I also embrace realizing that I'm wrong about something and changing my view. You know, I think that's the way we've even run our business and all the changes we made, we made a year ago. Like, when the facts change, you need to be willing to change and not to, you know, I find a lot of other people don't, they don't wanna, they don't wanna admit that something was a mistake because they've already stated it or whatever it is. I think that none of us really dig in when presented with the facts. And oftentimes, like, for cult, it's not all sunshine and roses because with cultivation, the products that sell aren't always the most fun at the end of the day. Meaning, the cultivation groups and the facilities, like, their passion is so strong that they might wanna go down one path, but from a market perspective and a consumer perspective, we're saying: But this one is where we need to go. So there's a lot of this that turns into healthy debate, but it goes back to the data- Yeah. At the end of the day on it all. Yeah. Yeah. There was a lot of, I think, before, say, a year and a half ago or so when we started standardizing everything, there was a lot of what we would call, people were relying on, like, "I've always done it this way." You know, "The guy who taught me always did it this way, and it's the best." And we're like, "Well, let's look at the data and see if that proves itself out." And if it is, like we said, we don't have any ego, we'll do it that way. And that is essentially a lot of the changes that we made, in our methods on cultivation. We had Jeremy out at State Flower, and they were, as Ziad mentioned, amazingly, when we were looking at all the cost per pound of production in all of our facilities, we couldn't believe that California was our lowest cost per pound to grow, you know, in the city of San Francisco, with what some might consider a subscale facility. But we have rolled out those methods in all of our other facilities and the yield increases that Chantelle mentioned. And not just yield increases, but increased or better quality as well, which is not easy in a larger scale facility. You You can do it in a little one. It's harder to do it in a big one. Yeah, I wanna add one more thing. It's not for everybody. It's not for everybody. We have to have a highly engaged chemistry team, and we have turned some of our team members. The talent was good, but we did not fit well with each other. So we set our guidance, we set our principle, we set our strategy, and we start building the machine, and some of the pieces did not fit. So the message was always delivered in a nice way, but the accountability was high, and we did, we made the changes when we needed to. Yeah. Ziad is able to deliver the message in a nicer way. In a nice way, maybe. Well, I've learned a lot from him in terms of, you know, trying to do it that way. We have time for two more questions. We'll take one. Michael. First of all, let me say, like, how amazing everybody is today. It's kind of amazing to see how the company's grown and matured operationally, more financially and leadership, diligence and savviness going into it. So excellent work, everybody, and it's quite amazing to see how it, how it kind of developed over time. So great to see. Thank you, Michael. The question has to do more with the IR strategy. Obviously, we have gone from the CSE, from listing on the Pink Sheets now to the TSX, and it's almost like a different group of investors that you need to tackle now. It's not the regular retail investors that you would see on Twitter, and much more different needs that they would have. How do you see TerrAscend positioning itself to engage this new group of investors as we go forward? Sure. Ziad, do you want to kick that off and talk about a little about our European road tour? You are, I—you're I—I.R. genius, but I'll start. Look, the TSX has unlocked for us a few conversations, right? We have the old friends, we have the current friends, and we have new friends, or I can divide them, the one with scars, the one who have not had scars, and the one who are eager to start those scars. We, we started a mini roadshow. We've had some conversation with some of the new friends who are eager and excited to hear about our story. I won't, I won't share the last story, Keith. I'll skip this one. I shared it at dinner, but—Yes. Yes, but the conversation that—we are having is, "Tell us about this. Tell us how sustainable that is, and tell us why should we invest in you, and we have that much money that we want to bring in." And look, we've made promises. We've made pretty big promises, and we kept each one of them. And we are committed that never to make a promise that we will not keep. We have one of our partners or lender asked us to make a promise, and we said, "Buzz off, we can't keep that promise." So that's what we are sharing with the investors. So there are some institutional investors that are in big cities in the U.S. that are excited about this. Michael, we've had conversation about European investors who wants to learn our story. Keith and I have a meeting coming up with an exciting conversation. But then also going far, further east, there are some interest also to hear about our story. So I think the TSX has enabled or has unlocked the door for us. But Jason, I'd like, you know, maybe you can add more because, you know, Jason brings tons of connections. You know, the sponsorship that I talk about, you know, yeah, daily, he brings all his relentlessness and challenges and contagious leadership that I shared about. But that I shared. But JWAM presents us daily with opportunities, both on the obvious side, the financial side, but potential partnerships and innovation. Jason will give me weekly at least one or two opportunities to get a free pilot to test and build our data before he makes a decision whether he invest on the JWAM with that company. So think how beneficial that is for us as TerrAscend to look at that technology, look at those potential partnerships. So, Jason? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, that's more from the opportunity set side. We're still-- we invest in the space, you know, through my fund. We see a lot of, we see a lot of businesses. Very often, some company comes in and, yeah, 90-plus percent of them we pass on. Somebody comes in, and if I think it's an exciting business and I think it could be a good fit with TerrAscend, I would always rather have it be part of the TerrAscend platform as opposed to just a company that we invest in. I think that's, you know, one way that I've, you know, thrown some opportunities sort of over to TerrAscend. Also, in terms of the service providers and being able to do trials and things like that. Although Ziad has pulled his weight as well. He had us all do this, I don't know, $50,000 personality test that he got for free. Look at that! And, I don't know, maybe at some point in the future, we'll share some of those, some of the results that we got on that. But, I think we're all sort of, from that perspective, we're just, we're scrappy. We're, I think, maybe a little bit more entrepreneurial. And, we think I know Ziad, and everybody here treats the company's money like they would, like they would treat their own money. And I think that is, I don't know, maybe a major differentiator versus other companies. I joked last night, we stayed at this hotel that was not expensive, but the rooms were actually really nice, and it had a living room and a kitchen and all of that. Ziad was asking me if I liked it. I said, "It's great." I said, "No, but maybe next year." I mean, I was mostly joking with him. "Maybe next year, this room's so big, maybe next year, you and I share it, as opposed to Okay. But, yeah, that's generally the approach we take. Back to institutional investors and opening up to more of them. We've definitely had multiple or many inbounds from new investors. A lot of them being or several of them being European institutional investors, U.S. institutional investors, Canadian ones as well. So we are in the process of... We've done a few small non-deal roadshows. We dropped into the financial hotbed of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a few weeks ago. Mm-hmm. That was the story, right? Right. But we are planning on going to Europe and possibly even further away in the coming months, because we feel like we've, you know, we've fixed the plumbing to a certain extent that now will allow these bigger investors to invest in us. But now we've got to go out and tell them the story, and we happen to have a really good story to tell, and we're really proud of it. So that's all. Yeah, that's, that's what I was gonna add, is just putting ourselves out there. That's part of our strategy and, and part of the genesis of today even- Right ... was to have this day, to keep just taking every opportunity we have to put ourselves out there and gain more eyeballs. Yep. Yep, and share the story and share our strategy. I think we've evolved over the last few years to be able to, I think, or help to be able to tell our story in a relatively simple way. It's sort of a common sense approach. We go into the details of each state. I've dealt over the years as an investor at stocks with a lot of companies that sort of, they want you to, they just want it to be a black box. They don't want you to know where they're making their money, where they are, and all of that. I feel like we help the investors, or we strive to help them by putting together all the building blocks so they don't just, you know, we're not just saying: Trust us, we're gonna do over $317 million in revenue, but here's, here's how we're gonna do over $317 million in revenue. We have time for one more question. You guys, you guys have launched, Legend, and, and I guess previously you were always seen as a high-end brand. How has that launch gone in terms of customer retention? Obviously, the everyday price-savvy customer is probably the most important customer in the market or in the cannabis market, just, in terms of total use. I think that quadrant probably, you know, surpasses all the top quadrants in terms of total sales. How is that retention? I know the data is probably short, but how are you guys, keeping that customer? Yeah. So, BJ, maybe you can give some color, but I want to share a couple of things BJ educated me on. First, there's no mid-tier brand. There's either premium and value brand, and we have a long case study in Canada, where anybody who tried to do a mid-tier has failed miserably. It gets squeezed up and down. So, and then, value and premium do not sacrifice quality. Quality is good on both. That is a different customer and different patient that you can offer to. So BJ, maybe you can share a little bit about, the super, super loyal- Yeah ... the super loyal and the loyal that we measure. Yeah, we talk a lot about, internally, SKU rationalization inside of our retail doors. ...We have an advantage because we're also the retailer at the end of the day, so we can constantly see customer trends on the daily. So from Legend's perspective, to have the ability to have on the shelf a Cookies and a Legend at the same time, gives our customer the variety to make a decision. But separating pack sizes out on a lot of it is part of the strategy, which you can't buy a smaller pack size of Legend. We're only making the 28- and 14-gram sizes. So if it's priced right and the quality is there, it's all coming from the same cultivation. So it's not like Cookies is coming in from a completely different cultivation facility. Our growers are growing Cookies. They're also growing Legend. So it's a strategy that we're fortunate enough to be able to use because it's a talking point for our budtenders, meaning that the same person who's growing their superstar strain is growing the Legend strain. So the product quality is there, and it's helping us bring new people in that might just want to buy Cookies. But they're seeing Legend, so they're trying it out, and they're like, "Oh, this is actually a really, really good strain, and it's priced properly for me, and I can get more of it." So it's just allowing us to add to the consumer experience for ourselves. Have you seen them, I guess, is there a margin difference? Obviously, Legend is probably the fastest-growing brand within your portfolio right now. Is there a margin difference between that and your other brands? Yeah. So we launched Legend in Michigan, we launched it in New Jersey, we launched it in Pennsylvania, and we launched it in Maryland, and our margin is continuing to be and improved to be north of 50%. So the answer is no. It actually has been accretive because we are buying and we're acquiring the right product for the right price from a cultivation perspective, and we are growing in our facilities between outdoors and indoors in a strategic way. So the answer, the impact on our overall margin has not been impacted at all. It continues to improve. Legend is the biggest driver of our north of 40%, 1,800 basis points improvement in Michigan, and it has gained huge market share, and I'm super excited about this. Mary and I were in Michigan, visited a few, was... We pulled into some cultivation centers, and Mary pulls in her long boots, and I'm going with the white shoes like a rookie. And we talked to three, four, five potential suppliers and partners, where 2023 to us is in the books from a safety perspective. We're thinking about 2024 and thinking of that margin, and that's the confidence we have with Legend, with the 40+ in Michigan and the 50+ at TerrAscend. I have zero anxiety about Legend driving gross margin down. We wouldn't have shared it this way, I promise, and I promise we'll keep. All right. Thank you, everyone. I think we'll close quickly. So I want to sincerely thank everybody for investing half of your day with us today to learn more about TerrAscend, to meet the team. In today's technology, you could have stayed in your office, you could have Zoomed in, you could have done it through the webcast, you could have read about it and still got the same thing that is going to be published. But we really... I personally thank you for spending the time with us today. We've talked about a lot of things. We talked about our team, we talked about how proud- We didn't mention that. I want to just point out, sorry to interrupt you. Ari Unterman, who is the longest serving TerrAscend employee, and was a major factor with Lynn and the legal team in terms of the TSX, getting the TSX listing on time, on budget, and, you know, he's great. Wanted to definitely acknowledge Ari. Yeah. So you get to... Thank you. But now when you start this, I got to acknowledge Julie, who's on- David Wheeler ... on, on her second week with us as leading the communication, and she came right in on her second week, flew in yesterday just to organize us and keep us coordinated. David Wheeler, who leads IT for us, is also in here. But look, we showed you half of the team. We've talked internally that on the second event, we'll share our cultivation leader, our IT leader, our HR leader. Today, we want to talk financials, we need- we wanted to talk brands, and we wanted to talk states. But Jason, you're right on, and we will bring more of our team members forward. We talked about our strategy. We've talked about our team members. We've talked about our sponsors. We've talked about our partners today. We talked about our story. If I want to leave you with one summary of today, it's a growth story. It's a growth story that today is leading the industry. It's an organic growth story that will double us in size with an opportunity to go further. We shared with you an internal promise, not external yet, but we will fine-tune it to be the best cannabis company in North America, and we will not rest until we accomplish this. Jason? Yes. I mean, I agree with everything that Ziad has shared there. I don't know that there's much that I would add. I just appreciate, of course, Ziad and the whole team. I appreciate you guys. It hasn't, you know, always been so easy, and I'm sure there's going to be lots of things in the future. Lots of what Ziad taught me to use the word opportunities instead of problems or things like that. There'll be lots of opportunities in the future. That's what attracts, I think, this whole team to being in this industry, is that we feel like we're, it's like an Ironman triathlon of extreme problem-solving every day. And I couldn't be happier with the team that we've got here. Other than that, I'm just so excited about where the business is. It's much better to be sitting in front of everybody or even when we're on conference calls and all of that. It's better to... It feels a lot, a whole lot better to be delivering and feel like we're winning, especially in a tough environment, and we plan to continue to execute in the same manner going forward. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.