Conference call goes to pot
Back in April, Scotts provided guidance on income for its Hawthorne Gardening subsidiary of $120 million by the year 2020. The cannabis-and-hydroponics play hasn’t lived up to expectations.
During the Scotts conference call on Wednesday, an analyst from Cleveland Research asked about the recent negativity – especially after the company seemed so optimistic just 90 days earlier when it bought Sunlight Supply, a large U.S. distributor of hydroponics.
Scotts CEO Jim Hagedorn, responded by explaining that Hawthorne was off in its first year and the company was working to figure it out. Then, in language more at home in a dispensary than a Wall Street conference call, he added:
“I went back to Hawthorne and said you guys show us like where you're going. And dude, those bastards are gun-shy as shit right now, OK. So, kind of – I'm just telling you real-time, living my life. What do you expect they're going to throw back at us? So they throw these numbers back at us and I was like, what the hell? And I think just recognizing the world they're living in which is head down day to day, OK?”
Hagedorn added: “And so, when people ask me what do you think about those numbers that came back from Hawthorne, I said it's a [expletive] negotiation – sorry for the language. it's a [expletive] negotiation and they're gun-shy at the moment.”
So far this year, the share prices of SMG are down 28%. [Read about the company's third quarter results here.]
According to Stratistics MRC, the global hydroponics market is expected to grow from $226.45 million in 2016 to reach $724.87 million by 2023 with a CAGR of 18.1%.
At Scotts CFO Thomas Randal Coleman said this year has turned out to be worse than expected on the hydroponics front. Hagedorn said that getting back on track is just a matter of time – “and I don’t think it’s a tremendously long time,” he said.
A survey of HBSDealer readers back in December found readership almost equally split on the issue of decriminalization of marijuana possession. The results showed 46% had negative feelings about the trend, while 45% felt positive.
During the Scotts conference call on Wednesday, an analyst from Cleveland Research asked about the recent negativity – especially after the company seemed so optimistic just 90 days earlier when it bought Sunlight Supply, a large U.S. distributor of hydroponics.
Scotts CEO Jim Hagedorn, responded by explaining that Hawthorne was off in its first year and the company was working to figure it out. Then, in language more at home in a dispensary than a Wall Street conference call, he added:
“I went back to Hawthorne and said you guys show us like where you're going. And dude, those bastards are gun-shy as shit right now, OK. So, kind of – I'm just telling you real-time, living my life. What do you expect they're going to throw back at us? So they throw these numbers back at us and I was like, what the hell? And I think just recognizing the world they're living in which is head down day to day, OK?”
Hagedorn added: “And so, when people ask me what do you think about those numbers that came back from Hawthorne, I said it's a [expletive] negotiation – sorry for the language. it's a [expletive] negotiation and they're gun-shy at the moment.”
So far this year, the share prices of SMG are down 28%. [Read about the company's third quarter results here.]
According to Stratistics MRC, the global hydroponics market is expected to grow from $226.45 million in 2016 to reach $724.87 million by 2023 with a CAGR of 18.1%.
At Scotts CFO Thomas Randal Coleman said this year has turned out to be worse than expected on the hydroponics front. Hagedorn said that getting back on track is just a matter of time – “and I don’t think it’s a tremendously long time,” he said.
A survey of HBSDealer readers back in December found readership almost equally split on the issue of decriminalization of marijuana possession. The results showed 46% had negative feelings about the trend, while 45% felt positive.