Canada Cannabis Spot Index (CCSI)
Week Ending September 24, 2021
*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, up 0.4% from last week’s C$5.10 per gram. This week’s price equates to US$1,823 per pound at the current exchange rate.
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This week Statistics Canada released retail sales data for July 2021, with nationwide legal cannabis sales reaching a new monthly high of C$338.9M. We continue to see a strong upward trajectory in cannabis sales. To correct for the different number of days in each month, the chart below looks at average daily sales, which shows July 2021 sales reaching C$10.9M per day. This figure is C$3.4M per day more than what was sold the previous July; a year-to-year increase of 45%.
We attribute the strong sales to several key factors:
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Legal accessibility to cannabis continues to get better; specifically in Ontario, where we have seen 86 new cannabis retailers added each month in 2021 so far. This has helped Ontario achieve its 1,000 store goal by mid-August, well ahead of schedule.
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We are noticing seasonality in cannabis sales, with sales stronger during the summer months. July is typically a holiday month for post-secondary students; hence the increased sales can be attributed to that free time, as well as better weather that encourages social gatherings.
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Lastly, lower prices in the retail markets are pushing consumers to the legal channels and away from illicit sources.
For more data and analytics like this, subscribe to the Cannabis Market Insights report developed in collaboration Nasdaq. This in-depth monthly report provides exclusive data and analysis on the legal cannabis industry, focusing largely on the Canadian cannabis market, as well as the cannabis equities market in the U.S.