Canopy Growth’s quarterly earning is nothing but a disappointment for investors. But it’s co-Chief Executive, Bruce Linton, defends their paper loss by saying that it was caused by their policy of paying their employee’s stock-based compensation.
He even said that paying employees with stock is every cannabis company’s financial and social responsibility.
Last week, the cannabis-based company’s stock plummeted around 7% after they announced that recreation consumption in Canada went down considerably from the previous quarter.
Canopy announced its quarterly earnings report on Thursday after the bell rang and the announcement lead Canopy’s stock to decline as trading opens Friday morning. Canopy Growth Corp. CGC, -8.52% WEED, -8.29% reported Thursday fiscal fourth-quarter net losses of C$323.4 million ($245.2 million), or 98 cents a share, from a loss of C$54.4 million in the year-ago quarter.
The reported loss of C$130 million is yet to include the growth of its stock price in the first three months of the calendar year because of rules regarding the company’s convertible debt. Nonetheless, Canopy claimed an operational loss of C$174.5 million.
But Linton asserts that the loss should’ve been lower if they did not decide to pay employees with stock – a decision that the company is still proud of as it makes them “stronger.”
“I think people should say, ‘That’s awesome,’” Linton said. “It’s not like Bruce took it all. It’s distributed across the company in a very nice way so that everybody is aligned, works hard and wants to make it successful.”
“If we had zero stock-compensation loss, we would have a much lower loss and a much worse company,” he continued. “It’s an accounting element that I don’t think makes people appreciate the value of options, that I’m hugely in favor of.”
