General discussion, page-13732

Solid article, well worth the 60min read, thanks for the post.
https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/articles/australia-s-top-20-cannabis-companies.html

Good to read some quotes from Dr Sud as he has been quiet for a while.

Cannvalate co-founder Dr Sud Agarwal, who is also a shareholder and chief medical officer (CMO) in the new list leader Incannex Healthcare (ASX: IHL), says mergers and acquisitions are the number one emerging trend in the medicinal cannabis industry.

“The big M&A that we’ve seen has been a consolidation of Cronos Australia (ASX: CAU) with CDA Health, which was very notable,” Dr Agarwal explains.

“We've seen a lot of the other smaller companies merge with others – Zelira Therapeutics (ASX: ZLD) is merging with Health House International (ASX: HHI). That hasn’t gone through yet, but it will shortly,” he says of the company formerly known as Zelda, which narrowly missed out on another appearance in the Cannabis Top 20.

“AusCann (ASX: AC8) merged with CannPal, so these all show us that there's probably less space for multiple smaller companies, but perhaps more space for a smaller number of bigger companies.”

He says one of the reasons for this consolidation is that there’s less capital floating around than there was two years ago, adding that smaller cannabis players used to rely on more retail investment which is now “much drier than it was”.

“There's probably been quite lacklustre returns for cannabis investors in the last two to three years. I think they're finally grown tired of expecting this kind of multi-bagger return,” he adds.

Then bit further on some posts about Schedule 3 Over the Counter Legislation.

Dr Agarwal adds the Schedule 3 legislation was “extremely misunderstood” when it was first introduced.

“There was also a lot of public misinformation; I believe a lot of people turned up to their pharmacies expecting it to be available over the counter,” he says.

“In the cold light of day, everyone realised this is just a normal pharmaceutical drug development pathway. You have to put a drug to market and push it through the normal clinical trial pathway to demonstrate the quality, safety and efficacy like you would for any other medicine. I think now people have realised that.”

He believes when we see a combination of widespread adoption of medicinal cannabis prescriptions by doctors and the availability of the first Schedule 3 CBD products, there will be a major inflection point for the industry.

“When those two things happen, they will be the two major catalysts for Australian market caps across the board to increase,” he says.

“More likely to be in 2024 or 2025 as I don’t see anyone in the near term yet.”