illinois cannabis insights

Illinois has amongst the most strict regulatory environments in the US cannabis landscape. Very few licenses are awarded leaving a highly competitive, expensive and time consuming process.

Each operator is capped at 10 retail licenses. There is a cap of 210,000 sf of canopy grow for the current cultivation license holders. There were over 4k applicants for 75 retail licenses and projected 400 for 40 craft grow licenses. Illinois has one of the most stringent social equity programs. More information can be found at the Illinois Department of Agriculture Website.

Operators are also required to collaborate as each retailer is only allowed to move 30% of an individual cultivators product. This regulatory framework encourages operators with 210k square ft cultivations to own the maximum of 10 retail locations so they can enjoy the vertically integrated boost to margin.

Wisconsin - $5.8 million
Iowa – $6.7 million
Missouri - $6.1 million
Kentucky - $4.4 million
Indiana  - $6.7 million

29.7 million directly surrounding without legal cannabis. This limited license nature will keep operators highly profitable for the foreseeable future, making them prime acquisition targets for public companies to grow their balance sheets. As the Illinois market grows by revenue and the limited license structure allows for profitable operators, public companies will continue to be rewarded for their presence in this rapidly growing and highly profitable geography.

Illinois is poised to become a national leader in the cannabis industry.

As the headquarters of some of the biggest cannabis companies in the world by revenue and amongst the most progressive adult-use program outside of the West Coast, Illinois is positioned to be a global leader in the cannabis industry.

In 2020, Illinois continues its transition into the adult-use market with the addition of 75 retail licenses and 40 craft cultivation licenses. This limited license nature is amongst the most attractive from an operator perspective as there is far more demand than the number of retail locations can reasonably accommodate.

This supply/demand imbalance will likely persist for the foreseeable future as less than ~200 licenses, will slowly become operational over the next two to three years. These locations will struggle to satisfy a population of ~12 million people with an estimated ~1.5 million in state consumers. This also does not account for the ~30 million people surrounding the state that lack access to adult use cannabis.  The following states add a compelling bull scenario to the ~3 billion dollars of projected revenue by 2024.

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