“Fiscal 2019 was a transformative year for Medmen, with over two million completed retail transactions to date and revenues increasing 227% year-over-year,” said Adam Bierman, Medmen co-founder and chief executive officer in a news release that should see the company gutted on the markets Tuesday.
Despite Bierman’s attempts at turd polishing, you don’t have to dig far into his company financials to find spit take fuel. Racking up 2 million transactions should be a fine thing for any company, but the devil is in the details, and the devil in this case is that MEDMEN LOST $277 MILLION IN 2019, which means the company lost $138.50 for every one of those transactions.
Let’s just take a moment and appreciate that: If you walk into a MedMen store and buy a soda, it cost them $138.50 to sell you one.
Clearly, they ain’t got financial tegridy.
Bierman wasn’t, publicly at least, pissed off about the South Park creators literally displaying his executive team as pig fuckers in a recent episode. Rather, he decided it was a compliment.
“I’m humbled by South Park’s parody. You know, we’ve always said in order to mainstream marijuana, in order to build the mainstream cannabis brand, in order be open and welcoming enough for new people – the cannabis users of tomorrow… you’ve got to become relevant. That’s what a brand is.”
What Bierman has also built is a gigantic money pit that, every quarter, obliterates tens of millions of dollars.
Fun fact: $MMEN $MMEN.c doesn’t even have enough cash to cover currently outstanding payables… and those payables are higher than last quarters total revs. pic.twitter.com/dFxgrHrCgm
— The Deep Dive (@TheDeepDive_ca) October 28, 2019
Usually you have to dig a little to find the thing in a company’s financials they would really rather you don’t find.
- “Oh, if you look at page 32, they let the CEO borrow $50k!”
- “Oooh, cocaine costs have gone up this quarter!”
- “$4 million for sky-writing IR costs? That’s absurd!”
But in MedMen’s financials, there’s so much insanity to unfurl, my competitors and I were racing each other to tweet them out. every few minutes spawned a new fun fact, which brought about the hashtag #medmath.
Why do I call $MMEN the #PotStocks version of $WE @WeWork …
They have half a billion dollars in MINIMUM future lease payments. #PotStocks pic.twitter.com/Fj77gvJbVG
— Betting Bruiser (@BettingBruiser) October 28, 2019
Another $MMEN fact: Apparently, a single building (unclear which one) is being leased for $327,500 .. per month. pic.twitter.com/T2BOIOBmCZ
— The Deep Dive (@TheDeepDive_ca) October 28, 2019
The company lost $0.75 per share in the last year, which is hard work for a company for which shares sell for $1.80.
If the CEO found himself in some sort of Brewster’s Millions movie scenario, where he had to blow through $177m dollars by next year in order to receive his $1 billion inheritance, the MedMen business model might make some weird kind of sense. But what appears to be happening instead is, the powers that be feel improving their quarterly loss by 7% every four months is enough to warrant walking around in polite company without feeling abject shame.
MedMen is a money destroying device. It’s a paper shredder with 29 locations. It’s a 12k sq ft office complex in which complex schemes to eat shit are given life and financed by Green Gotham. If MedMen were a stepchild, he’d be the one who sets fire to things in the basement with matches his grandparents keep inexplicably leaving in the sock drawer.
MedMen’s financials are a work of outsider art in which the goal appears to be to do the opposite of what society demands – make a profit – and instead make an expensive and ongoing statement about the proletariat bourgeoise by destroying as much capital as one can before the bank figures it all out and puts everyone in jail to think about what they’ve done.
This fucking company is devoid of merit. It just keeps losing money, more and more of it, and yet there’s no shortage of clueless rubes on Facebook leaving messages in investor forums asking, “Is there any downside in buying MedMen at these prices?”
YES. THERE IS. STOP DOING THAT.
JUST BECAUSE YOU’VE SEEN THEIR AD DOESN’T MEAN YOU SHOULD BUY STOCK IN IT.
You know who does make money on MedMen, no matter what?
MedMen execs, who drew $40m from $21 million in share based compensation last quarter and another $19m based on bonuses owed from their go-public transaction.
To put that in perspective, the company drew $41m in revenues and handed $40m back in share based comp to execs.
If you’re not fucking fuming at that line, I’mma give you a moment to let it sink in.
ALMOST EVERY CENT THE COMPANY MADE THIS QUARTER WENT TO THE TOP EXECS.
We predicted this several years ago when the company went public, leading those same execs to threaten to sue us for saying this would happen.
Remember that? When they said they’d sue us for half a billion dollars for telling you guys they might be paying themselves a bit much?
SO WHY AREN’T THEY BEING FIRED?
Well, funny thing: They can’t be fired. The CEO, COO and, at the time, the CFO, couldn’t be fired because they gave themselves all the super voting shares which gave them control of the company. And even if you could fire them, you can’t, because the same deal that gave them absurd compensation and voting rights and bonuses, also gave them a golden parachute package that would bankrupt the company.
So you’re stuck with these guys, even as they blow through all the money, even as they’re derided on South Park, even as they lose $50 million a quarter and pay themselves $0.95 for every dollar the company earns in revenue, and spend $138.50 for every transaction a customer engages in.
It’s literally the worst public company out there, and it’s not going to change because financiers are giving them the dough to survive, in return for being paid absurdly high interest rates in return.
Eventually this ends with Green Gotham owning everything but, by the time they do, MMEN’s execs will have enough personal wealth to not give a shit about your losses or the prospect of future employment.
That’s always been the game. We’ve said so since day one.
— Chris Parry
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