You’re reading this week’s edition of the New Cannabis Ventures weekly newsletter, which we have been publishing since October 2015. The newsletter includes unique insight to help our readers stay ahead of the curve as well as links to the week’s most important news. We no longer send these by email as we did in the past, but we post this and all of the newsletters on our website here.
Friends,
I am a big fan of Green Thumb Industries, and I like its Chairman and CEO, Ben Kovler. I also like its President, Anthony Georgiadis. After the close on Monday, the world found out about their big stock sales that were made on last Friday. Kovler sold 162,500 shares at an average price of $6.50, and Georgiadis sold 125,000 shares at $6.50 as well. The total raised for these two was $1.87 million, and it was done at a price that was lower than where GTBIF closed on 8/8 ($7.13), the day before it and other cannabis stocks soared on renewed potential rescheduling. It was also 20.4% below where GTI closed on the last day of 2024.
The company made no disclosure beyond filing the Form 4s. So, the public and the GTI investors are forced to try to figure this out: Why did two executives unload so much stock? First, the good news: Both still hold a lot of exposure, with CEO Kovler holding over 692K shares in directly and another 158K shares indirectly. He also owns 57K Super Voting Shares directly and 86K indirectly. The 143K Super Voting Shares convert into 1.4 million Subordinate Voting Shares. President Georgiadis holds 760K Subordinate Voting Shares directly and another 20K indirectly. He also holds over 37K Super Voting Shares directly and another 3K indirectly.
While it’s not clear why the CEO and the President sold so much stock, they do still own a substantial amount and remain aligned with shareholders. I think it is interesting to look at what Ben Kovler has been buying, and that is stock in the other company that he leads, RYTHM, Inc. He last acquired shares on November 3rd, receiving a grant of 14,375 restricted shares, increasing his exposure to 83K shares. His position is still smaller than his investment in GTI, but it is big. On September 25th, he purchased 1000 shares on the open market at $37.08. On September 19th, he had paid $39.99 for 1000 shares. In November 2024, he bought 5000 shares at $45.89. RYM closed yesterday at $23.83.
It is also interesting to contrast these sales with the purchases that GTI has made on its stock. In 2023, the company introduced a repurchase plan and paid $9.96 for 2.5 million shares during September and then $11.14 for 1.34 million in December. In 2024, it purchased 3.97 million shares at an average price of $10.85. Even this year, the company has continued to buy shares, paying just $4.34 for 5.72 million shares. The company did not make any purchases in Q3, as those buys were mainly in June. So, the sales are way below where the company was buying GTBIF shares last year and the year before, but way up from where they bought them in June (5.46 million shares at $4.26).
It would be premature to conclude that Kovler and Georgiadis don’t like GTBIF, as they still hold a lot of exposure to the stock. Another big holder is AdvisorShares, which controls 23.22 million shares in MSOS as of 11/12:
MSOS holds greater exposure to to other ETFs, and the amount in these three seems insane to me at 67.5%. While it is quite large at 20%, the exposure to GTBIF has decreased from 36.4% at year-end. The share exposure has increased by 5.3%, but MSOS has seen a 44.4% expansion in its shares outstanding. Kovler and the ETF have been battling on social media, but MSOS still owns a lot at 11% of the Subordinated Voting Shares outstanding and at 9.3% of the shares on a fully-diluted in-the-money basis (that converts the other types of shares and includes RSUs and in-the-money options).
Investors may be concerned about this large stock sale by two Green Thumb Industries executives, but I think the stock is relatively attractive to its peers and hold a large position in my model portfolio at 420 Investor (9.4% compared to its 3.1% weight in the Global Cannabis Stock Index). MSOs make up 26.4% of the index currently, and my MSO exposure is 23.7%, a bit underweight. Here is how MSOS and its top 6 holdings have performed in 2025:
GTBIF is the only stock to decline this year, and is down 38% since the end of 2023, which is slightly less than the 38.4% decline in MSOS. Looking at the valuations, the stock seems very cheap at an enterprise value to projected adjusted EBITDA for 2026 of just 5.4X. Most importantly, from my perspective, is that its balance sheet stands out compared to its peers, with net debt very low. More importantly, it has positive tangible book value that is quite large, while all of its peers have negative tangible equity. If 280E ends up being eliminated, it will be good for GTI. Of course, it will be more helpful to its peers. It seems like there is a lot less downside risk to GTI than to other large MSOs.
Some readers may be wondering why Ben Kovler and Anthony Georgiadis are selling GTBIF, as I am questioning as well. I think a better question might be: Why is Ben Kovler so excited about RYTHM? The stock has collapsed due to the recent move by the federal government to recriminalize THC from hemp, which may or not play out a year from now, but this isn’t the big issue in my view. The valuation of RYM is very high when one looks at the fully-diluted share-count. The stock is now down year-to-date by a bit more than GTBIF, falling by 17.8% so far. In November, it has dropped 47.8%. I think that the RYTHM stock, which is in the Global Cannabis Stock Index, remains expensive and risky.
Sincerely,
Alan
New Cannabis Ventures publishes curated articles as well as exclusive news. Here is what we published this past week:
Exclusives
Michigan Cannabis Sales Bounced a Bit in October
Financial Reports
Ascend Q3 Revenue Drops 12%
To get real-time updates, follow Alan on X.com. Share and discover industry news with like-minded people on the largest cannabis investor and entrepreneur group on LinkedIn.
View the Public Cannabis Company Revenue & Income Tracker, which ranks the top revenue producing cannabis stocks.
Stay on top of some of the most important communications from public companies by viewing upcoming cannabis investor calendar.
Based in Houston, Alan leverages his experience as founder of online community
420 Investor, the first and still largest due diligence platform focused on the publicly-traded stocks in the cannabis industry. With his extensive network in the cannabis community, Alan continues to find new ways to connect the industry and facilitate its sustainable growth. At
New Cannabis Ventures, he is responsible for content development and strategic alliances. Before shifting his focus to the cannabis industry in early 2013, Alan, who began his career on Wall Street in 1986, worked as an independent research analyst following over two decades in research and portfolio management. A prolific writer, with over 650 articles published since 2007 at
Seeking Alpha, where he has 70,000 followers, Alan is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and a
frequent source to the media, including the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, and Bloomberg TV. Contact Alan:
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Get Our Sunday Newsletter
You’re reading this week’s edition of the New Cannabis Ventures weekly newsletter, which we have been publishing since October 2015. The newsletter includes unique insight to help our readers stay ahead of the curve as well as links to the week’s most important news. We no longer send these by email as we did in the past, but we post this and all of the newsletters on our website here.
Friends,
I am a big fan of Green Thumb Industries, and I like its Chairman and CEO, Ben Kovler. I also like its President, Anthony Georgiadis. After the close on Monday, the world found out about their big stock sales that were made on last Friday. Kovler sold 162,500 shares at an average price of $6.50, and Georgiadis sold 125,000 shares at $6.50 as well. The total raised for these two was $1.87 million, and it was done at a price that was lower than where GTBIF closed on 8/8 ($7.13), the day before it and other cannabis stocks soared on renewed potential rescheduling. It was also 20.4% below where GTI closed on the last day of 2024.
The company made no disclosure beyond filing the Form 4s. So, the public and the GTI investors are forced to try to figure this out: Why did two executives unload so much stock? First, the good news: Both still hold a lot of exposure, with CEO Kovler holding over 692K shares in directly and another 158K shares indirectly. He also owns 57K Super Voting Shares directly and 86K indirectly. The 143K Super Voting Shares convert into 1.4 million Subordinate Voting Shares. President Georgiadis holds 760K Subordinate Voting Shares directly and another 20K indirectly. He also holds over 37K Super Voting Shares directly and another 3K indirectly.
While it’s not clear why the CEO and the President sold so much stock, they do still own a substantial amount and remain aligned with shareholders. I think it is interesting to look at what Ben Kovler has been buying, and that is stock in the other company that he leads, RYTHM, Inc. He last acquired shares on November 3rd, receiving a grant of 14,375 restricted shares, increasing his exposure to 83K shares. His position is still smaller than his investment in GTI, but it is big. On September 25th, he purchased 1000 shares on the open market at $37.08. On September 19th, he had paid $39.99 for 1000 shares. In November 2024, he bought 5000 shares at $45.89. RYM closed yesterday at $23.83.
It is also interesting to contrast these sales with the purchases that GTI has made on its stock. In 2023, the company introduced a repurchase plan and paid $9.96 for 2.5 million shares during September and then $11.14 for 1.34 million in December. In 2024, it purchased 3.97 million shares at an average price of $10.85. Even this year, the company has continued to buy shares, paying just $4.34 for 5.72 million shares. The company did not make any purchases in Q3, as those buys were mainly in June. So, the sales are way below where the company was buying GTBIF shares last year and the year before, but way up from where they bought them in June (5.46 million shares at $4.26).
It would be premature to conclude that Kovler and Georgiadis don’t like GTBIF, as they still hold a lot of exposure to the stock. Another big holder is AdvisorShares, which controls 23.22 million shares in MSOS as of 11/12:
MSOS holds greater exposure to to other ETFs, and the amount in these three seems insane to me at 67.5%. While it is quite large at 20%, the exposure to GTBIF has decreased from 36.4% at year-end. The share exposure has increased by 5.3%, but MSOS has seen a 44.4% expansion in its shares outstanding. Kovler and the ETF have been battling on social media, but MSOS still owns a lot at 11% of the Subordinated Voting Shares outstanding and at 9.3% of the shares on a fully-diluted in-the-money basis (that converts the other types of shares and includes RSUs and in-the-money options).
Investors may be concerned about this large stock sale by two Green Thumb Industries executives, but I think the stock is relatively attractive to its peers and hold a large position in my model portfolio at 420 Investor (9.4% compared to its 3.1% weight in the Global Cannabis Stock Index). MSOs make up 26.4% of the index currently, and my MSO exposure is 23.7%, a bit underweight. Here is how MSOS and its top 6 holdings have performed in 2025:
GTBIF is the only stock to decline this year, and is down 38% since the end of 2023, which is slightly less than the 38.4% decline in MSOS. Looking at the valuations, the stock seems very cheap at an enterprise value to projected adjusted EBITDA for 2026 of just 5.4X. Most importantly, from my perspective, is that its balance sheet stands out compared to its peers, with net debt very low. More importantly, it has positive tangible book value that is quite large, while all of its peers have negative tangible equity. If 280E ends up being eliminated, it will be good for GTI. Of course, it will be more helpful to its peers. It seems like there is a lot less downside risk to GTI than to other large MSOs.
Some readers may be wondering why Ben Kovler and Anthony Georgiadis are selling GTBIF, as I am questioning as well. I think a better question might be: Why is Ben Kovler so excited about RYTHM? The stock has collapsed due to the recent move by the federal government to recriminalize THC from hemp, which may or not play out a year from now, but this isn’t the big issue in my view. The valuation of RYM is very high when one looks at the fully-diluted share-count. The stock is now down year-to-date by a bit more than GTBIF, falling by 17.8% so far. In November, it has dropped 47.8%. I think that the RYTHM stock, which is in the Global Cannabis Stock Index, remains expensive and risky.
Sincerely,
Alan
New Cannabis Ventures publishes curated articles as well as exclusive news. Here is what we published this past week:
Exclusives
Michigan Cannabis Sales Bounced a Bit in October
Financial Reports
Ascend Q3 Revenue Drops 12%
To get real-time updates, follow Alan on X.com. Share and discover industry news with like-minded people on the largest cannabis investor and entrepreneur group on LinkedIn.
View the Public Cannabis Company Revenue & Income Tracker, which ranks the top revenue producing cannabis stocks.
Stay on top of some of the most important communications from public companies by viewing upcoming cannabis investor calendar.
Get Our Sunday Newsletter
In This Article:
Anthony Georgiadis, ben kovler, Green Thumb Industries, gtbif, gtii gti, msos, rym, rythm
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