CLIENT SPOTLIGHT: AVICANNA INC. (TSX: AVCN)
Last week, irlabs hosted a webinar for Avicanna (TSX: AVCN), a Canadian biopharmaceutical company focused on the research, development, and commercialization of evidence-based cannabinoid products for global consumers, medical, and pharmaceutical market sectors.
Aras Azadian, CEO and Co-founder of Avicanna, and Dr. Karolina Urban, Avicanna’s VP of Scientific and Medical Affairs, presented the firm's operational and strategic roadmap. The company's strengths include a world-class R&D team, a strong intellectual property portfolio, world-class relationships, and a lean operational strategy, all the while consistently expanding to foreign markets.
They discussed Avicanna's success in making long term inroads to the medical pharmaceutical industry, highlighting their low-cost production capabilities and various certifications. These forays are effectively reinforced by pharmaceutical formulations designed to address major clinical indications including sleep, eczema/epidermolysis bullosa, pain management, epilepsy, anxiety, and depression, among other neurological disorders.
The firm operates within several market segments, including cosmetics, medical cannabis, pharmaceutical pipeline, and raw material supply. They have commercialized over 30 products across 19 international markets, with an extensive pipeline of pharmaceutical preparations in various stages of development.
Expanding their sales channels to include medical products for adult use and wellness products, Avicanna has a robust slate of 24 commercial SKUs over 4 brands with over 100 commercial listings. Maintaining a lean operational footprint, they have executed manufacturing partnerships with 6 licensed Canadian producers.
Avicanna also has an educational platform called Avicanna Academy that provides resources for doctors and patients to learn about medical cannabis dosing and titration. They also have a source of economical cannabinoid API to guarantee supply chain consistency. Moreover, they have several drug candidates in the registration/approval stage in three foreign markets, with one initial candidate in the final approval stage of registration.
Management prioritises medical and pharmaceutical cannabis over recreational cannabis because of its long-term competitive edge. They employ pharma industry sales channels and a grassroots strategy to tap hospitals to improve patient access to medicinal cannabis and reduce its stigma.
In terms of the future, the company is focused on expanding in Canada with increased marketing and sales efforts and then identify new geographies to expand into. They are on track to achieve profitability in 2023 and have found lucrative pathways to license technology and leverage partnerships with pharmaceutical companies involved in earlier stages to generate liquidity and build support to complete successive stages of drug approval.
To book a one on one meeting with the management team, please email happyinvestors@irlabs.ca.
