If cannabis investors want to pick the winners, then they need to focus on the companies based in the U.S. Headset just released a report highlighting a long-term forecast into the U.S. and Canadian cannabis markets. Specifically, forecasting the sales, sales volume, and market shares for 2021 and 2022 compared to 2020.
The data estimates that the U.S. cannabis market will reach $28 billion in sales by 2022, dwarfing Canada's $5.3 billion. Although Canada's market is expected to grow twice as fast as the American market from 2020 to 2021, and nearly three times faster from 2021 to 2022, it still can't match the sales numbers of its southern neighbor.
The United States is predicted to see a 23% growth rate in 2021 and 24.4% in 2022. Check out the predicted (and last year's) sales volume in both countries:
2020
U.S.: $18,504 million
Canada: $2,624 million
2021
U.S.: $22,751 million
Canada: $4,057 million
2022
U.S.: $28,308 million
Canada: $5,351
Flower Wins The Race
As always, the form factor of flower is expected to dominate future markets and did dominate the 2020's market.
- Flower accounts for a majority of total annual sales, reaching $11 billion and $12 billion in 2021 and 2022, respectively.
- Despite flower's consistent popularity in both markets, the combination of other form factors like edibles, vapor pens, and concentrates hold more market shares than flower alone in 2020, 2021, and 2022.
- Edibles and concentrates are expected to have larger market shares (at the expense of flower and pre-rolls) in 2022.
- In the U.S., flower is expected to command 41% of the sales and is expected to grow to 48.7% in 2022.
- In the U.S., vape products are expected to drop from a 23% market share in 2021 to 18% in 2022.
Biggest U.S. Cannabis Companies
The top 10 largest U.S. cannabis companies by sales is a good place to start looking for opportunities in the market. These companies all report their sales in U.S. dollars versus Canadian dollars. Cannabis stocks overall have traded down since February by almost 48%. The North American Marijuana Index fell from 342 in February to 176 as of April 27. However, this is off a low of 163 on April 20. While some believe this is a bad time to buy -- catching a falling knife -- the group has been in an overall uptrend since March 2020. The most recent pullback already looks like it has found support and is beginning to move higher again.
| Company | Qrtly Sales | Qrtly Growth | Yearly Growth |
| Scotts Miracle-Gro (SMG) | $309.4 | -8% | 71% |
| Curaleaf (CURLF) | $230.3 | 26% | 205% |
| Green Thumb Industries (GTBIF) | $177.2 | 13% | 134% |
| Trulieve (TCNNF) | $168.4 | 28% | 111% |
| Cresco Labs (CRLBF) | $162.3 | 6% | 292% |
| GW Pharma (GWPH) | $148.2 | 8% | 36% |
| Turning Point Brands (TPB) | $107.6 | 2.2% | 18% |
| Columbia Care (CCHWF) | $76.1 | 56% | 228% |
| Harvest Health & Recreation (HRVSF) | $69.9 | 13% | 85% |
| GrowGeneration (GRWG) | $62.0 | 13% | 144% |
Of course, just logging big sales is no indication that the share price will follow. However, it does seem like the big cannabis companies continue to gobble up the smaller companies, and so it would make sense to isolate the large brands that are clocking big yearly growth figures.
