Stay clear of TGOD stock, this analyst says

Don’t look now but the downside to The Green Organic Dutchman (The Green Organic Dutchman Stock Quote, Chart, News TSX:TGOD) could keep growing, says technical analyst Hap Sneddon, who thinks that the Canadian pot producer’s misfortunes are representative of a sector-wide inability to live up to the hype.

It’s been a rough couple of months for Mississauga-based The Green Organic Dutchman which has seen its share price cut by more than half since the start of September. The company announced earlier this month that its bank financing discussions related to the buildout of its operations had failed to produce any funding, leaving TGOD to review its options.

Citing “changing market conditions,” TGOD said that it would have to pursue financing alternatives in order to complete its Ancaster, Ontario, facility along with its major expansion plans at a facility in Valleyfield, Quebec. Already in sub-$2.00 territory for the first time in its less-than-two-year existence, the stock dropped a further 35 per cent on the news. The stock dropped further last week with the company’s announcement of a new strategic plan, one which involves lowered ambitions for its production rollout.

The Green Organic Dutchman stock could fall further, Hap Sneddon says…

“While we are committed to – and our strategy continues to leverage – our unparalleled scale as an organic producer as well as our international assets, we have identified areas where our scale would not provide for meaningful returns in the near term given the slower pace of legal market conversion. We will optimize our operating efficiency by deferring excess capacity and expenses, whether they centre on production facilities, international expansion projects or technology,” said Brian Athaide, CEO of TGOD, in a press release.

The news came one month after it was revealed that licensed producer Aurora Cannabis had sold off the rest of its stake in TGOD and at a 14.5 per cent discount to the current share price, to boot. Edmonton-based Aurora had bought a 17-per-cent stake in TGOD in January, 2018, in a deal that included an option to own more than 50 per cent of the company. But earlier this year, Aurora acquired another organic cannabis company, Whistler Medical, which meant that the writing was on the wall for its TGOD investment.

And while the chart looks bad for The Green Organic Dutchman, Sneddon, chief portfolio analyst and founder of CastleMoore Investment who spoke to BNN Bloomberg last Friday, says that it’s a symptom of the greater malaise coming over Canada’s pot industry, which continues to deal with issues beyond lowered expectations for demand, including further delays in the provincial rollout of stores and a distinct lack of profitability from the sector’s bigger names, now one year in from legalization.

On TGOD’s chart, Sneddon says, “Long term, this thing has not been good, with long term being a little less than two years. It got as high as $10.50 and from where we are right now, that’s a pretty big haircut. The only thing that I see holding it up is that low that we see at around $1.00 – $1.10, where we’re kind of at right now.”

“The one thing that I do understand about the pot stocks is that the pent-up demand from it becoming legal has been way overstated. I think that you’re going to see very few of these stocks around in ten years,” Sneddon says.