Goodness Growth Holdings, Inc. (PNK:GDNSF) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Josh Rosen: Let me attack this in parts. First, there’s the cultural side of this. So, part of the push around this Fire principle is really understanding what quality flower looks like, what it is and having a passion for producing it and having a greater understanding through our people of what that is. And what I would say is, coming in and working with some folks going back quite some time on this topic, the opportunity set to improve flower quality, even within, let’s call it, mature markets, really exists from beginning to end. It’s problem identification in early stage cultivation, mid stage cultivation, it’s how you handle the product postharvest, it’s from beginning to end. And it’s not just SOPs. It really does come back to the cultural side from my vantage point in terms of really seeing what works well.

Having that as a backdrop, what I would say is there are things to do kind of regardless of facility infrastructure that can improve. Now, certain infrastructure is going to be more constraining than others relative to what that portion can go to, how much quality, et cetera, what the yields might be, there are infrastructure constraints that come into play. And that’s where the CapEx question becomes more relevant. If we just do a quick little rundown of the states that we operate in on the core side, if you look at it from a pure opportunity standpoint for us, there are two things that jump out meaningfully. One is the State of Minnesota and our position in the State of Minnesota and our ability to be a long term winner in the state and provide great value and access to customers in the State of Minnesota.

And so, getting this right over the intermediate, longer term in Minnesota is vital. Near term, the sell-through of higher quality flower is pretty immediate for us. Call it, the cash flow cycle that would happen just from making those improvements to this infrastructure is really quick and efficient. And so, near term, the low hanging fruit is just modestly taking that number higher. Longer term, it’s how you win producing quality and value. Minnesota is where we see the most intermediate, longer term value and we will continue to have the focus around that. New York, as Amber identified, we see a great opportunity for indoor flower producers with how that regulatory structure works. And so, we are fairly far along in completing the large, what we refer to as, the Bluebird facility .

It is a large indoor cultivation and the rest of our the rest of our infrastructure on the cultivation side is greenhouse. So, in New York, we are hitting that market as we move forward with indoor product, and we’ve got the infrastructure fully mapped there. Obviously, it’s a fairly large CapEx project to begin with, but not meaningful incremental CapEx for us at this juncture. Maryland is the one where we’ve got both some low hanging fruit as well as adult use catalysts coming, what we think, very quickly here this summer. And it’s also the place that we’re probably the most constrained from an infrastructure standpoint. The greenhouse and environmental controls in Maryland leave a little bit to be desired relative to producing quality flower and we’re working through that.

But what’s nice is similar to what I described in Minnesota, what we produce, we move really efficiently. And there’s low hanging fruit to be had with some pretty modest CapEx improvement. When I mentioned no-brainer investment decisions, we’re talking some six-figure type investment decisions, we’re not talking about large CapEx decisions. Covered a lot of ground. I’m not sure I hit 100% of what you asked.