Green Rush to Grown Up
Cannabis Investment No Longer Needs Hype.
Investment in the cannabis industry has long been dominated by specialists, speculators, and momentum traders, but that is beginning to change.
Over the last decade or so, cannabis companies followed a similar playbook. They raised capital, expanded rapidly, burned through their cash reserves, and repeated — leaving investors not only out of pocket but turned off the industry entirely.
That dynamic has gradually shifted as the sector has matured. In the US, Trulieve’s listing on the NYSE earlier this month, the first of its kind in history, marked a turning point, opening a path to institutional capital that the sector has never had access to before. North of the border, the reckoning arrived earlier and more quietly.
“Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me,” says Philip Campbell, Chief Executive of Herbal Dispatch (CSE: HERB).
“Investors are much more disciplined and cautious about deploying capital into this sector now.”
The investors now looking at Canadian cannabis operators, Campbell argues, are more focused on fundamentals and considerably more sceptical. With the ever-changing financial and regulatory landscape of the cannabis sector now baked into evaluations, the winners are no longer the biggest companies, but the ones built to last.
Three reasons to be public
Herbal Dispatch, a BC-based cannabis e-commerce and distribution platform, is now listed on multiple smaller exchanges in Canada, the US, and in Germany.
“There are three main reasons to be public,” Campbell explains. “One is access to capital, two is deal flow, and three is exit liquidity for investors.”
On a junior exchange like the Canadian Stock Exchange (CSE), all three of these elements are constrained. The company received OTCQB approval in the US earlier this year, providing some exposure to American investors, and holds a Frankfurt listing.
With the dynamics finally shifting in cannabis’ favor, Campbell says that in the next two to three years, he expects to pursue an uplisting onto a more liquid exchange like NASDAQ.
“Currently, these valuations make it hard to participate in M&A because the dilution on transactions is pretty significant,” he continued.
“But as our share price increases and our market cap increases, we’re going to increasingly look at M&A opportunities.”
There has been endless speculation about an M&A wave across the global cannabis industry, but the recent spate of major acquisitions across Europe suggests it could already be well underway.
For those with a healthy balance sheet, it is a buyer’s market.
“There are some good opportunities to purchase if you’re in the position to do that,” Campbell noted. “Lots of distressed operators who got really close to being successful but didn’t quite get there, ran out of gas at the last minute.”
The wreckage of the overcapitalisation era, specialist equipment, inventory, almost finished facilities and even IP is now commonly available at a hefty discount.
Herbal Dispatch completed a CA$2m private placement in October 2025, and maintains strong insider ownership, a structural signal, Campbell argues, that management’s interests are aligned with shareholders rather than with the kind of empire-building that defined the first wave.
Not a Technology Company
Campbell positions the company carefully and deliberately: “We’re not a technology company, but we’re a technology-enabled company that allows us to make better decisions.”
Rather than building software, Herbal Dispatch is using data from its own direct-to-consumer medical platforms to inform decisions that many cannabis operators make blindly. Which products to manufacture, for example, which markets to enter, how to price products, and where the margin can actually be found.
The company operates three medical websites serving thousands of patients across Canada. Those platforms generate real-time data on what is selling, at what price, and with what margin profile. That data feeds directly into product development decisions for its portfolio of five proprietary brands, and informs its approach to the recreational market.
“If you’re not adopting AI and using data and technology in any business, but especially in the cannabis industry, you’re at a significant disadvantage,” Campbell states.
Herbal Dispatch’s HeroDispatch platform serves veterans and first responders whose medical cannabis is covered by Blue Cross under Veterans Affairs Canada, a programme that distributes over CA$250m annually to licensed producers across the country.
Campbell explained that customer acquisition cost in this channel runs approximately CA$300 to CA$400 per patient. Annual revenue per patient is approximately CA$6,000. Direct-to-consumer medical revenue grew 98% year-on-year in Q1 2026, from CA$383,912 to CA$761,375. The company is currently onboarding approximately 50 new insured patients per month.
“When you go from zero dollars to a million dollars, you just figure things out as you go. To go from a million to ten million, you have to put in some systems. But to go from ten million to a hundred million, you need completely different systems in place.”
The company’s current investment in technology and automation is, in his view, preparation for that next phase rather than a cost of the current one.
Because the platform, warehousing, supply relationships, export infrastructure, and brand portfolio are already built, additional revenue does not require proportionate investment in overhead. It drops to the bottom line.
“Investors would underestimate the leverage in our business model,” he added. “Our cost base is very lean, and the platform is already built. So incremental revenue goes to the bottom line. It doesn’t get absorbed by overheads.”
The company has posted three consecutive years of triple-digit annual sales growth. Its export network now spans Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Australia, and several other regulated markets, with CA$200,000 in export financing secured through Export Development Canada. Branded product launches in Germany and the UK are targeted within the next three to six months.
Whether the renewed investor attention flowing into cannabis following the US uplisting wave reaches operators like Herbal Dispatch remains to be seen.
The sector’s recent history has conditioned most investors to focus on the largest names. The companies that have spent the last four years building something different have largely done so without an audience.
“Any company that is well run financially will be desirable by investors,” Campbell says. The market, eventually, tends to agree.
This is Third-Party content and does not reflect (or not not reflect) the views of Cannabis Confidential or CB1 Capital.
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