The marijuana industry was shaken up when it learned earlier this month that former Canopy Growth CEO Bruce Linton was abruptly fired from his job.
Linton has his own ideas on why he was let go.
“Many companies that trade on exchanges are measured on earnings per share every 90 days,” Linton said on Yahoo Finance’s YFi PM.
He added, “That’s a good model, but there are other companies that are in a growth and creation phase — Amazon might have done a bit of that, Netflix … where what they’re doing is looking at … how do they build this thing out and emerge as a massive dominant player.”
“I was of the view this is a rocket ride that will measure earnings per share sometime, but not in an immediately required time and I have $4 billion in the bank so the point of that is to spend it,” Linton said.
It had been days before Linton was fired that Constellation reported a $39 million loss from its stake in Canopy. The Corona beer maker has a $4 billion investment in the marijuana producer.
“I have this idea that massive creative energy focused on a field that’s just coming out of prohibition should be measured on intellectual property achievement [and] novel creations of products as those will be the branded differentiated goods versus a rolled joint,” said Linton “and all of these things come with a big cost, and how much is it worth? Call me in five years I’ll tell you.”
