Minnesota’s medical cannabis manufacturers have lost $11 million over the last two years, as Leafline Labs lost $4.7 million last year after losing $2.5 million in 2015; while Minnesota Medical Solutions recorded $1.2 million in losses last year after running $3 million in the red in 2015, according to a Star Tribune report.
A spokesperson for MinnMed said the company hopes to break even this year but indicated it “is a bit premature to make a projection” on sales just yet.
“From a financial perspective, 2016 was a much better year than 2015,” the spokesperson said in the report. “Revenues increased from less than $500,000 to more than $2 million, while losses decreased from approximately $3 million to $1 million.”
The Health Department added intractable pain to the state’s medical cannabis qualifying condition list last August, and by early September one-third of the Minnesota patient roster was represented by chronic pain patients. MinnMed CEO Kyle Kingsley indicated that the addition of intractable pain “is going to be the difference” that helps licensed operators turn the financial corner. According to the report, the addition of the condition doubled visits to the state’s eight dispensaries.
“We put patients over profit,” said Dr. Andrew Bachman, co-founder and CEO of LeafLine.