*The provincial excise taxes vary. Cannabis Benchmarks estimates the population weighted average excise tax for Canada.

**CCSI is inclusive of the estimated Federal & Provincial cannabis excise taxes..

The CCSI was assessed at C$5.12 per gram this week, down 0.7% from last week’s C$5.15 per gram. This week’s price equates to US$1,844 per pound at the current exchange rate.

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This week we provide an update on our cannabis retail sales estimate for the remainder of this year and next year. Over the past three years, the Canadian cannabis industry saw sales grow each month at a similar pace as the number of new retail outlets opening across the country. At the end of September, we crossed the milestone of 2,500 stores. We recently forecast that monthly retail sales across Canada reached C$333 as of September 2021.

For the remainder of 2021 and through 2022, we forecast that sales growth will continue as provinces such as Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec make legal cannabis more accessible by adding more retail stores. In 2022, however, we expect growth to moderate as certain highly populated pockets of Canada become saturated with cannabis stores, leading to lower sales per store and a continued downtrend in retail prices across the provinces. Additionally, the conversion rate of buyers from the illicit market has slowed as some buyers remain committed to their informal sales channels. Overall, we see sales climbing to C$383M by December 2022, a 12% increase to July 2020, which is the last monthly figure published by Statistics Canada.