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The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) published adult-use sales figures for April 2021 earlier last week. In a press release, IDFPR announced that adult-use cannabis retailers in the state generated over $114.9 million in gross revenue in April, a new record. April’s sales are up 5.3% from March’s over $109.1 million.
Combined with April’s medical cannabis sales, which we examine below, total retail cannabis revenue in Illinois reached over $150.2 million last month, up 3.7% from over $144.8 million in combined sales in March.
Sales to out-of-state customers increased in April, but made up a comparable proportion of total sales relative to March. According to IDFPR, residents from states other than Illinois were responsible for 30.5% of sales in April, or over $35 million. In March, out-of-state shoppers accounted for 30.6%, or over $33.4 million, of the total revenue tallied. In February 2020, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, out-of-state sales made up 36% of Illinois’ monthly adult-use revenue total.
Average daily adult-use sales increased month-over-month for the thirteenth straight time in April. Mean daily sales figures for the trailing three months are shown in the table below.
The IDFPR’s latest update also includes the number of “items” sold. An item can represent a single product of any type, be it flower, concentrate, or edible.
Reported wholesale flower prices in Illinois’ adult-use market fell again in April. From March to April, monthly average rates for flower in the state’s adult-use sector decreased by 3.9% per pound. The state’s Spot Index, which includes both medical and adult-use wholesale transactions, also declined in the same span, by 1.6% compared to March.
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH), which oversees the state’s medical cannabis program, also recently issued an update on patient numbers and sales figures for April. IDPH data shows retail sales of medical cannabis in April totaled over $35.2 million, down by 1.1% compared to March’s revenues of over $35.6 million.
April 2021’s retail revenues are up by 13.2% year-over-year, compared to over $31.1 million in sales recorded in the same month in 2020. The year-over-year growth rate in monthly sales in April subsided relative to that recorded the month prior, which was 19%. Illinois medical cannabis sales data shows that sector of the market appears to have leveled off recently in terms of patient demand, after experiencing robust growth in 2019 and 2020.
Of April’s sales total, 47.1% – or over $16.6 million – went to purchase flower, a proportion up from the month prior, when the percentage was 46.7%. Flower’s proportion of total medical cannabis sales in Illinois trended upward through most of 2020, but leveled off around 48% in the latter months of last year.
As of the end of April 2021, IDPH had approved 156,224 patient applications since the opening of the state’s registry in September 2014, up by about 1,250 from the month prior. 55 dispensaries served 69,257 unique patients in April, down by about 50 unique patients compared to the previous month.
Each patient purchased, on average, 18.2 grams of flower in April, down from 18.5 grams in March. The average retail price of a gram of flower in Illinois’ medical market in April was $13.18, up from March’s mean retail price per gram of $13.00.
On the wholesale side of the market, Illinois cultivation centers recorded over $33.2 million in revenue in April, down by 0.9% from over $33.5 million in supply side sales documented in March.