Good day. Welcome to the iAccess Alpha Virtual Best Ideas Summer Investment Conference 2026. Our next presenting company is GrowGeneration Corp. If you'd like to ask a question during the webcast, you may do so at any point during the presentation by clicking on the Ask Question button on the left side of your screen. Type your question into the box and click send. I'd now like to turn the floor over to today's host, Darren Lampert, Chairman, Co-Founder, and CEO of GrowGeneration Corp. Please go ahead. Thank you so much. Good morning, everybody. It's a dreary day outside, a dreary day on Wall Street. Certainly, I hope I can bring some light to your morning. Look forward to the presentation. Hopefully I bring you guys another stock that you can invest in because I certainly believe the story is just resonating right now, and I think it's just the perfect time within the cannabis industry. I'm going to get going. Certainly would love to take some questions at the end of the presentation. Our next slide, what you're going to see, is our forward-looking statement. Take 10 seconds and look through it. It's customary. Just read through it quickly. We're going to move on to the next slide. Guys, the GrowGen story. What is it? Where are we right now? I think in order to really understand the story, we need to go back to 2014, where our mission statement back in 2014 was to become the largest retailer of hydroponic equipment in the world to service the cannabis industry that was pretty much just getting started in 2014. You saw adult use legalization in Colorado on 4/20, and that was kind of the mantra for us. What we saw was an industry that was pretty much professionalizing; money was coming in, and what you saw on the other side of it was the pick-the-shovel side of it. It was the side of it that didn't touch the plant but helped the plant grow. And we figured that this was the side of it that had less regulation, was easier to understand, and there was a path to Nasdaq listing. So it's something that really excited us, and we got going in 2014 with a really small acquisition in Pueblo, Colorado. The thought pattern was that as cannabis grew, and we certainly believe that it would mimic the wine and spirits industry, it would really grow from a small industry up to a trillion-dollar industry. People were really looking at compounded annual growth rates for many years to come in that double-digit 20% range. We believe that as the underlying business grew, people would need equipment, people would certainly need everything to grow a plant. What we really were: we were nothing more than the picks and shovels for a growing industry. You can see what we did in 2014. When we started, we did a million and a half dollars in business. We bought a few stores out in Pueblo, Colorado. The thought was to consolidate the hydroponic retail industry, plus build our own stores along the way. Between 2014 and 2016, we brought the company public. It was a self-underwriting, an S-1 to a 15c2-11, and we got the company public. In 2014 to 2016, we saw tremendous growth in the industry. We kind of built out the plan for the future. We grew the business from a million and a half dollars almost to $8 million in those couple of years. In 2017 and 2018, we began this aggressive acquisition strategy. We were buying stores, and we looked at it—it was time, we wanted to get to that 100-store mark. In 2018, we hit $30 million of sales, and we started making money. The explosive growth of this company really started in 2019. We did $80 million in business. We uplisted to Nasdaq. We were the first ancillary company at the time that got uplisted to Nasdaq, and it was really quite a feat. We saw this company that was growing 50% same-store sales year-over-year. The company was growing like no one could really imagine. In 2020, we grew this business from $80 million - $190 million. The interesting part about 2020 is we went out and we raised money. We were Nasdaq -listed at the time. We went over to Oppenheimer. We raised $50 million in an equity financing. We followed that up at the end of the year with another $170 million from Oppenheimer and Stifel at $30 a share. By 2021, this company grew from $180 million in revenue up to $422 million in revenue. Adjusted EBITDA numbers were about $35 million that year. The stock exceeded $60 a share. This company was trading from a startup, a dollar a share, almost up to about a $3 billion market cap. I think most people that understand the cannabis industry really saw the top of the industry at the end of 2021. Many reasons for it. There was an oversupply of cannabis around the country. Legalization kind of hit this pivot point where it didn't seem like it was ever happening. There was something that was called 280E taxes on cannabis growers, so the cannabis growers really couldn't earn any money. They weren't able to deduct expenses off their income statements. The one thing we always knew was that we were only as strong as our customers. If our customers weren't making money, our customers weren't growing, and our customers weren't building, we were going to have some issues too. By the end of 2021, we started taking a really hard look at the industry. We saw issues. We saw cracks in the industry, and we saw the illegal markets were still prevalent. Our customers were running into tremendous issues. They couldn't raise any more capital. They couldn't build. Pricing was down about 80%. Cannabis went from $4,000, $5,000 a pound to under $1,000 a pound. Wall Street stepped away from the industry. I think that's something that's really, really important. What did we do in 2022 and through 2024, really to kind of get us to where we are today? We reset the company. This company was growing so quickly that we put so much money into the infrastructure of this company, into building stores. We went from three stores in 2014 up to 65 stores by the end of 2022, I think. The question is, what do we do? What we really started seeing was that the business-to-consumer side of the industry stopped. We decided at that time it was time to kind of put the brakes on, start taking a hard look at the portfolio, and take a hard look at everything that we've done to that date. We still believed in the industry. We then came to this conclusion with where the cannabis was growing, speaking to people, and just doing a lot of diligence and a lot of individuals on the street. We had almost 800 employees at the time. We're down about 200 employees right now. We had a $130 million inventory. We're down to $40 million in inventory right now. We put the brakes on, we started closing stores, and we really transformed the business. What you're really seeing right now is when you start looking at 2024 to 2026, the business just changed. What you saw really on the sales side of it, in 2021, we were $422 million in sales. We dropped to $278 million in 2022, $225 million in 2023, $188 million in 2024, and $161 million in 2025. You saw this tremendous degradation in sales. This year, we're forecasting $162 million - $168 million. This will be our first year of upward momentum. We just saw two positive quarters of year-over-year growth. What you see right now when you look at this company was fully transformed, and you'll see it throughout my presentation. We're now down to 19 locations from 65 locations. As I said, inventory is down from about $130 million to about $40 million of inventory. We still have $41 million cash on our balance sheet with no debt. We have told Wall Street that we will be EBITDA positive this year, coming off a $6 million loss last year and a $16 million loss in 2024. This is again, with 20 store closures over the last couple of years. Business is going in the right direction. What we really have done in the last couple of years is start bringing products to market. We turned GrowGen almost into a CPG company. You're going to see products that we've brought to market and the kind of products they're selling, and they're growing quickly. High-margin products that also have tremendous verticals to them, we believe, are lawn and garden, ag, and distribution overseas. It's something; right now, when you look at GrowGen, we're not a retail company anymore. We're a B2B company, business-to-business, with a tremendous fast-growing CPG component of it, which is the stickiness of it. Throughout the presentation, again, you guys will see that from me. Next page, please, Phil. Why GrowGen? Why invest in GrowGen right now? First, it's trading basically at cash and inventory, that I can tell you. We have some tremendous assets, again, within this company. We have a company called MMI that we'll discuss a little later, which is something that we bought in 2021. It's a vertical benching and racking company for agriculture. More importantly, most of its business right now is in mobile benching that moves. It's a $27 million business earning about $7 million. It's a tremendously valuable asset that's sitting on our balance sheet right now. What you have is high-margin proprietary brands driving sustainable growth at GrowGen. We've built a private label division from next to zero to 37% of sales as of last quarter. Last year it was 32% and 26% the year before. We're forecasting right now about 40% by the end of the year. It's really helping our revenue mix, as you saw in the first quarter. It's helping margins. Margins in the first quarter were 25.5%, something that certainly didn't make me happy. We closed four stores in the first quarter and took some write-downs on inventory. We are expecting, as we told Wall Street, 28%-29% margins this year. We believe that goes into the 30%s next year. You will see increased margins and increased profitability throughout the year this year. We've diversified our markets across controlled -environment ag. For people who don't know what CEA is, controlled environment ag, it's growing indoors. It's controlling environments to get the best yields, best quality, and the same plant every time. One of the things with growing outside is you're dependent on weather. Growing inside, you're not. Everything is built these days indoors. Control systems. People aren't feeding plants anymore and working around facilities. Everything is automated. That's what we do. That's what we sell. That's our specialty. We believe, right now, that 90% of fruits and vegetables are coming in from overseas. That's going to change. Our main business still is cannabis. It's 85%, 90% of our business, we believe as the years go on, as you'll see later in the presentation, that we are diversifying into lawn and garden, into ag, into overseas. We believe that's going to certainly drive growth into the future. Right now, we have a debt-free balance sheet, over $41 million in cash, and over $40 million of inventory paid for. A CPG component of GrowGen is private label brands that we own. That's a $45 million-$50 million business right now and growing. We also own MMI. Our progress to profitability is pretty clear. Lost $16 million on an EBITDA basis in 2024. Lost $6 million last year. This year, we're, again, told Wall Street we will be a bit positive. We believe that we keep growing into the future on those numbers. Right now, as I said earlier, you're buying GrowGen for cash and inventory. Next slide. The strategic evolution of GrowGen. It's gone from typical retail, boring typical retail, expensive stores, shrinkage, inventory loss, and that whole nine yards of running a retail platform. We've turned it into a B2B platform, commercial-focused. Two large warehouses, 100,000 sq ft in Ohio, 60,000 sq ft in Sacramento. A lot of the stores that we do own, we don't call them stores anymore. They're more hubs for us. We use those as mini hubs for shipping and for marketing. Again, most of these places are right by where our commercial customers are, so easy shipping and just easier for our customers. Right now we have platforms that you can go online and purchase from, websites. We have portals for our commercial customers. We've totally evolved shopping at GrowGen. From going into the stores from nothing more than direct-to-farm shipments, commercial salesmen at GrowGen. We have facility advisors when people have issues. We send people to the facilities to help them fix their issues. That's really where GrowGen's gone. It's much more efficient than the store, than the stores that we used to own. We've cut millions and millions from our expense lines, basically closing stores and just turning it into a B2B, more online business, commercial salespeople, affiliates, and different ways to sell. Controlled environmental ag: we are the leader right now within the industry we're in. As we grow up, we want to be leaders also in the ag side of it. Like anything else, it's going to take time, but we are moving and moving in the right direction. Proprietary brands have been growing double -digits every year. This year is no different. We believe we'll hit that 40% mark this year, up from 32% last year and 20%, I think, the year before. From there, we do believe we go into the 50%s by 2027/2028. Diversified distribution, strategic reach. Again, we reach everywhere. Through our warehouses and through our shipping and transport and our supply chain, we reach every customer in the country right now. We are starting to expand into the international markets through distribution channels and distribution agreements that we've signed with some nice-sized companies overseas. Next slide. Guys, the growth flywheel. It's an interesting slide. It's the commercial cultivation side of it, the controlled environmental ag side of it. What it's really doing, it's lumping what we're doing with our proprietary brands, the market expansion, the B2B and digital infrastructure scaling that we're doing, and the consolidation of our stores. That's what's gotten us here today. Every time we do close a store, we lose some business. There are people that still enjoy walking into stores and shopping in stores. We've basically lost a tremendous amount of our small consumer customers, and they do add up. We're starting to make it back on our private label division sales, our portal sales, and our overseas sales. Also into lawn and garden. What we're doing is working. Next slide. Expanded market opportunity. What this slide will show you guys is just the total addressable market of where we are right now and what we're moving into. The CEA infrastructure market is controlled environmental ag. That number includes a lot of different areas right now. We're looking at cannabis cultivation at a couple billion dollars. Greenhouse produce at $6 billion. Specialty crops are another $4 billion. International garden markets and CapEx infrastructure. What we're doing is we're widening our TAM. When we looked where we were on the cannabis side of it, the TAM wasn't big enough. We believe that we needed to grow the TAM. What did we do to grow the TAM? We started taking products that we brought to market Through basically from start to finish. We have our own marketing division at GrowGen and our own packaging division at GrowGen. We have our own, again, registration division at GrowGen, but more importantly, we have the staff that understands what growers need. From cannabis to specialty crops. We use a lot of farms out in California to trial these products through testing and through labs. Really from inception to launch, and we've done a tremendous job at it. When I show the products, the next slide is the products that we've brought to market to get a better understanding of really what we're doing on the consumable side of it and really the legs that it has into the future. Next, Phil. These are our brands. Drip Hydro was launched about three years ago. The powders were about a year ago. It's the most cost-efficient soluble nutrients on the market today. Healthier plants, richer terpenes, tighter controls on each feed. This is about a million-dollar-a-month product for GrowGen right now but is growing double -digits. It only entered the market, as I told you, a couple of years ago. It's something that really excites GrowGen right now. It's in hundreds of trials across the country right now. Every time you switch a feeding schedule for a grower out there, you go through trials. It's trials, it's sending our technical advisors out to the larger farms in the country, and it's changing fertigation systems and everything else. There's only one way to get it done. One is price, two is quality, and three is yield. If you hit all three, people are willing to switch. If you don't, they're not. Drip is hitting those marks and metrics. We're starting to sell Drip overseas right now. We believe that this is going to be a double-digit grower for many years to come. Char Coir right now is the cream of our private label division. It's a $25 million product and growing. There's a lot of different segments of Char Coir right now, but Char Coir comes in from India, single source operator, RHP certified. We are one of the number one coco sellers in the country right now. It's replacing peat. It's a growing media. We sell it in a lot of different ways. It comes in coco pots. As opposed to growing in plastic pots, people are now growing in coco pots. It's a much easier way to grow, a much healthier way to grow. We believe a much quicker uptake in roots. This is a product that we have launched a lot of different products under that same name. It's going into the lawn and garden. We just launched Coco Coin for propagation, which starts a plant's life. We believe that this product will be in every lawn and garden store in the country in years to come, and we couldn't be any more excited about it. ION Lighting is our lighting division. It's a $+5 million division for GrowGen right now. Our lights, we believe, are best of breed. It's been a decent division for GrowGen. Power Si is a silica product that we've owned for about six years right now. It's a pretty steady product for GrowGen. We do also believe it's going to be in lawn and garden. Those are kind of our bigger products. MMI Storage Solutions is almost a $30 million business. We bought it at a $10 million run rate. It's a company that we believe is worth in excess of $50 million by itself right now, which we get no value for. We put it up for sale a couple of years ago. We had offers up in the high $30 million - $40 million mark, and we didn't take it because of the amount of money it was making. It is growing. It's back to growing this year. Something that we're pretty excited about. Harvest Co. is something we launched a couple of years ago. It is growing probably 100% year-over-year right now. Sells into Home Depot, into Lowe's, online, and getting into some more of the big-box stores online, and we believe they will be in the stores within the next couple of years. The Harvest Company is the knick-knacks to grow. It is scissors, it is pots, it is trellising, it is gloves. It is everything you need to grow a plant, whether it is cannabis or whether it is typical lawn and garden. Something that, if you went onto its website, each one of these products have separate Instagram pages, separate websites. You can go online and buy them at growgeneration.com. Something that is really exciting. We would love you to go take a look at these products, the packaging, the quality of these products. We believe best of breed in lawn and garden. Next page, Phil. Guys, it is scaling into mainstream lawn and garden. We spoke about it. Some interesting things. Viagrow, which we acquired about a year ago, had agreements with Home Depot and Lowe's and some of the other big-box stores. They were pretty far in, a small online retailer into lawn and garden. We have done a lot with it. We have changed packaging and certainly have helped with the supply chain, purchasing, and everything else. It is a growing business for us. Basically, everything from Viagrow now sells under The Harvest Company name. We signed an agreement with Arett Sales a little over a year ago to distribute these products into thousands of IGC stores. It has been slow, but we do believe that you will see pickup there. We couldn't be any more excited. Like anything else, the first year getting into lawn and garden takes time. It is usually a couple -year uptick, and then you should see steady sales growth thereafter. We will keep everyone posted, again, on our size as we move into lawn and garden. Next, Phil. Supply chain advantages. As I said, we have two large distribution centers right now and four hubs. We can ship anywhere within our country within a day or two. Just-in-time mixed pallets. We make the lives of all our customers much easier. It is something that we are getting better at every year. Like anything else, the price of gas certainly hasn't helped, and I don't think it has helped anyone on the supply chain side of it. We are getting more efficient. We are starting to charge a slight charge because of transportation costs right now. It is something that has helped us close stores and really cut expenses over 50% out of this company. Next. Why GrowGen? Why now? Catalyst. Converging in 2026. The cannabis rescheduling. They just rescheduled medical cannabis from one to three. What that does is bring money back into the industry. 280E taxes. Cannabis companies right now were unable to deduct expenses off of income. What you will see is more money coming back into the industry, more research coming into the industry. This week, hearings are starting to hopefully reclassify recreational cannabis, the hearings will be a couple of weeks, we should have some news in July on that. The CEA market secular tailwinds, guys, they are happening. Growing is happening, people are starting to grow indoors. It is a specialty. It is working with, again, control systems and irrigation systems and dehumidifiers. It is basically replacing the outdoors to make more consistency out of your crops. It is something that is here, it is only getting bigger. Cost structures, you can read through it, 23.5% OpEx reduction, first quarter of 2026. We've taken out $27 million into 2025. 19 stores' profitable footprint, no more restructuring charges, $41 million cash, no debt, three years of operating runway. Again, guys, now is the time. We spent the last three years right-sizing this business, the set of cost structure, brand, platform, and market catalyst. Everything is aligned right now. We have a $10 million buyback that we instituted about six months ago. We did a $6 million buyback a couple of years earlier. You've seen insider buys over the last three years. The insiders believe in it. The company believes in it. It's just that the market's starting to believe in it, and we think as this company turns profitable, you'll see the market come back to it. Next, Leadership team. I'm our CEO, Co-Founder, and Chairman of our Board. I've been a securities attorney since 1985, traded on Wall Street, and have been running GrowGen since 2014. Michael Salaman is our Co-Founder and President. He, again, founded this business with me in 2014. An incredibly gifted marketing and sales and marketing side of it and also the public market side of it. Greg Sanders, our CFO. He was our controller for four years before becoming the CFO. Greg's been with us for some time, comes with a wonderful background, and does a tremendous job. We have no material weaknesses within our financials this year. Haven't missed one since we started back in 2016 on the public markets. Next. Financial highlights. The first quarter: $38.5 million in sales, 37% private label, and 25.5% gross margins. We believe that you'll see that much higher this quarter and going into the future. OpEx down. Everything's going in the right directions, guys, you can certainly see from taking a look at it. Next, Phil. Adjusted the EBITDA page. You can look through this. I certainly don't need to explain it to you. Next. Why GrowGen? I think, guys, we've gone through this. Again, I think we got a minute for questions, I'm going to take a question or two, then we're going to end it. Okay. I think we have no questions, I'm going to wrap it up. It was an absolute pleasure. Again, if anyone has any questions, please give me a call or give Bill Carson a call, and we certainly will get back to you on it. Again, I think the time is now. Our company is buying back stock again; you're buying a company really for inventory and cash right now, a company that is going to be profitable and we believe will be profitable for many years to come. Thank you. Have a beautiful day, and look forward to sharing our second quarter numbers with you guys in August. Thank you. That concludes GrowGeneration Corp.'s presentation. You may now disconnect. 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