Marlboro Maker Invests $1.8 Billion in Canadian Cannabis
(The AEGIS Alliance) – One of the world’s largest tobacco corporations is getting into the cannabis market with investing $1.8 billion.
The maker of Marlboro, Altria Group Inc. is placing a 45 percent stake into Cronos Group. Cronos Group is a Canadian recreational and medical cannabis provider and they confirmed this on Friday.
This agreement includes Altria being able to acquire more shares over the next four years. This would give Richmond, Virginia based Altria a 55 percent ownership stake in the Toronto based company Cronos Group.
This means Altria’s investment would become to be in the same league as the $4 billion spent earlier in 2018 by Constellation Brands to acquire shares of Canopy Growth Corporation, which is also a Canadian based producer of cannabis.
The Constellation investment happened in August, it is the maker of Corona beer and other drinks. It was the biggest to date by a major United States corporation in the marijuana markets.
There has been hesitation by large U.S. corporations to enter the marijuana market, but that appears to be fading if the financial aspects are justified.
The huge investment by Altria has lit up cannabis company stock shares in Canada that have started to set up shop, where recreational use was legalized nation-wide in Canada this year.
Trade shares in the U.S of Cronos Group Inc. jumped up by 22 percent on Friday.
Fast cannabis market growth is expected to continue on as legalization is expanding in the U.S. and as it becomes more socially accepted. Last Tuesday, the far conservative state of Utah became the most recent state to legalize medical cannabis.
It is expected that consumers will spend $57 billion a year worldwide on legalized cannabis by the year 2027, according to research by Arcview Market Research, which is an investment firm that focuses on cannabis. In North America alone, it is expected that cannabis spending will grow from $9.2 billion in 2017 to $47.3 billion by 2027.
Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
