Aurora reports $3.3 billion loss for full year, $1.86 billion for Q4
Aurora Cannabis officials say they have rebuilt the once-sprawling company into one that can earn positive cashflow in the coming year.
But, it seems that won’t include commissioning its half-completed greenhouse in Medicine Hat in the near term.
New CEO Miguel Martin told investors following Tuesday’s full-year financial release, that after 10 months of a strategic repositioning, the company is viable and ready to capitalize on any growth in the young sector.
However, current production facilities — following a closure of smaller greenhouses and a pause on Aurora Sun — are enough to sustain the company and meet near term growth in demand.
“We’ve done a lot of hard work in cost categories and we’ll take advantage,” said Martin.
“Aurora will be a global leader when the largest (global) markets open up.”
Last fall the company announced that it would focus the company by divesting subsidiaries and tangent industry partnerships. Lower than expected sales led to a capital pullback on new facility spending, including only a partial opening of the Aurora Sun facility.
This spring, the company closed down a number of smaller facilities to concentrate on it’s most cost-efficient greenhouses, including Aurora Sky in Leduc.
The schedule commissioning Aurora Sun, originally in June, is now on pause until market demand requires more stock.
“We’ve rationalized our production footprint ... and it’s very sustainable over the next number of quarters,” said Glen Ibbot, Aurora’s chief financial officer.
The Edmonton-based cannabis company reported Tuesday that it incurred $3.3 billion in losses in its 2020 fiscal year, including $1.86 billion in its latest quarter due to large impairment charges.
Martin, who was named CEO on Sept. 8, conceded that the company had slipped from its top position in the Canadian consumer cannabis market.
The fall is forcing him to stage an immediate overhaul even after Aurora laid off thousands of workers this year.
“The company really was distracted in a lot of ways by the reset both on the people side and on the production side,” Martin told analysts.