Aurora Cannabis May See a Pop When It Opens for Trading on NYSE
*By Conor White*
The Canadian marijuana company Aurora Cannabis is preparing to make its New York Stock Exchange debut on Tuesday, but the public offering will be far from traditional.
"This isn't \[a typical\] IPO," Debra Borchardt, co-founder, CEO, and editor-in-chief of Green Market Report, said Monday in an interview on Cheddar. "It's not like what we saw with Tilray, it's just a movement from one exchange to another."
This past July, Tilray ($TLRY), another Canadian cannabis company, became the first pure-play in the industry to go public in the U.S. and raised roughly $153 million in the process. That stock has more than quintupled since.
Since Aurora's shares were already trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange and available over-the-counter, Borchardt pointed out this listing isn't technically an IPO. Still, she expects plenty of demand from investors.
"You've got so many people that want to be in this industry and want a piece of it that they'll take anything that they can get," she said. "If they have a chance to buy it, then they will."
Aurora, which grows cannabis for both recreational and medicinal use, has seen its market cap double since August to almost $10 billion, as both major corporations like Coca-Cola ($KO) ー which has said it's "closely watching" growth in the CBD market ー and individual investors look to cash in on marijuana stocks.
There could also be opportunity from institutional investors that didn't have a way to play the market before.
"ETFs and mutual funds that might not have been able to pick up shares of this company because they were on the OTC can now take them and put them in their portfolios," she said.
Borchardt is optimistic about Aurora, but she also has concerns.
"They've made a big play for Europe and the European market," she said. "We don't quite know where that's going, they haven't shown the interest in adult use cannabis like we have and our Canadian neighbors have."
Shares of Aurora have fallen a bit since hitting all-time highs last week, just before Canada legalized marijuana at the federal level.
The stock will begin trading at the NYSE on Oct. 23 under the ticker "$ACB." They will continue to trade in Toronto with the same ticker.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/aurora-cannabis-prepares-to-light-up-the-nyse).
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