The Cannabis Company That Won't Mix Work With Pleasure
A limited supply of cannabis in the U.S. means those resources have to be divvied up carefully.
For Cronos Group, that means keeping its medical and recreational marijuana operations in completely different verticals, CEO Michael Gorenstein told Cheddar. That ensures patients’ needs are prioritized over those of recreational users.
“If you think about building a town, and you have a limited amount of building supplies, we want to make sure that we’re building a hospital before we’re building the bar,” he said.
Canada-based Cronos Group started trading on the NASDAQ on Tuesday, making it the first marijuana company to list on a major U.S. market.
“It’s a big milestone not just for us but for the entire industry,” said Gorenstein. “[It] just continues to show the acceptance that the cannabis industry is getting.”
And the industry does seem to be growing at break-neck speed. Arcview, a leading researcher of the cannabis market, stated in a [recent report](https://arcviewgroup.com/product/5th-edition/) that the industry brought in $9.7 billion in sales in 2017, and that number could grow to over $25 billion by 2021.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/inside-the-first-cannabis-company-to-list-on-nasdaq).
Student loan collection company Navient agreed to cancel $1.7 billion in debt and paid more than $140 million in other penalties to settle a lawsuit over abusive lending practices. Josh Shapiro, the attorney general of Pennsylvania who led negotiations in the settlement, joined Cheddar to go over the details of the company's predatory lending. "What Navient would do is charge [borrowers] these exorbitantly high rates, even though they knew people couldn't pay them or they would likely default on them," he explained.
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Retail platform operator and delivery company, Foxtrot,
raised $100 million in a Series C round led by D1 Capital Partners. Foxtrot bills itself as the modern convenience store that combines what it calls in-store curated discovery with 30-minute delivery and 5-minute pickup. Since launching first as a digital-only delivery service, the company has since grown into a popular local retailer, opening 16 brick and mortar locations across Chicago, Dallas, and Washington, DC. Foxtrot co-founder and CEO Michael LaVitola joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
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Monster Beverage is charging into the beer and hard seltzer biz with its $330 acquisition of CANarchy Craft Brewery Collective. The energy drink finalized the deal a week after Constellation Brands Inc. made a deal with Coca-Cola to acquire the Fresca brand.
Ford has seen a record 52-week high for its valuation, hitting more than $100 billion for the first time. The rise in its stocks comes amid its push for more electric vehicles, including the highly anticipated F-150 Lightning pickup, coming this spring.
