💸 The Tape

Every quarter, someone asks why a cannabis company owns twenty-one beer brands. Tilray's fiscal 2026 numbers made the question louder: beverage revenue of $254.0 million against cannabis revenue of $268.3 million, with cannabis down to 29% of the company — and just 25% in Q4.

The conventional read is diversification. Cannabis got hard, beer was for sale, Irwin Simon likes deals. That's not wrong, but it misses what's actually being assembled. Look at the asset list and one thing keeps appearing that has nothing to do with beer.

What Tilray actually owns

The portfolio is now genuinely large. SweetWater, Montauk, Shock Top, Breckenridge Brewery, Breckenridge Distillery, Blue Point, 10 Barrel, Redhook, Widmer Brothers, Alpine, Green Flash, Terrapin, Atwater, Hop Valley, Revolver, Square Mile Cider, Hi*Ball Energy, Casa Breck, Liquid Love, Mock One, Mountain Shot.

The build ran in three waves. SweetWater in 2020, then Montauk, Alpine and Green Flash. Then the eight-brand Anheuser-Busch package in 2023 — Shock Top, Breckenridge, Blue Point, 10 Barrel, Redhook, Widmer, Square Mile, Hi*Ball — which vaulted Tilray from ninth to fifth largest craft brewer in America. Then the 2024 Molson Coors transaction, which brought more brands plus, notably, Mollo and XMG, Canadian THC beverage brands.

And in March 2026, BrewDog — £33 million for worldwide IP, UK brewing operations and eleven brewpubs, followed weeks later by the US assets: the Columbus, Ohio brewery, pubs in Columbus, New Albany, Cleveland and Las Vegas, plus a hotel.

Simon's framing on BrewDog is the tell. He described acquiring world-class brewing infrastructure and strategic real estate at a fraction of the capital and time to build it, noting the Ellon brewing operation alone represents over £100 million of invested capital — and adding that Tilray is not entering Europe from scratch, not leasing capacity, not testing distribution relationships market by market.

Read that sentence again and substitute "THC beverages" for "beer." It works perfectly.

The thing beer buys that cannabis can't

Here's the strategic core. In the United States, alcohol moves through a three-tier system: producers sell to licensed distributors, distributors sell to licensed retailers. Those distributor relationships are the single hardest asset to acquire in beverages. They take decades to build, they're governed by state franchise laws that make them nearly impossible to terminate, and they determine which products get cold-box placement in every grocery, convenience store, bar and stadium in America.

Cannabis companies have no access to that system. State-licensed cannabis moves through state-licensed dispensaries, period. A Curaleaf or a Green Thumb can build the best THC beverage in the country and it will never touch a Kroger shelf.

Tilray, by owning five of the largest craft beer brands in America, sits inside that system. It has TTB permits, it has distributor agreements in all fifty states, it has retail relationships, it has brewery infrastructure that can produce non-alcoholic and functional beverages, and it has brewpubs and taprooms — controlled on-premise venues.

That is not a beer strategy that happens to look useful for cannabis. That's an option on federal beverage policy, purchased with beer cash flow.

Where Van Duyne changes everything

Which brings us to the Beverage Regulatory Parity Act, introduced August 10 by Reps. Beth Van Duyne (R-TX) and Greg Landsman (D-OH).

The bill would exempt hemp beverages from the November recriminalization and instead regulate them through the TTB, HHS and USDA, permitting adults 21 and over to buy drinks containing up to 5 milligrams of total intoxicating THC per serving — defined as a 12-ounce single-serve container or a 750ml multi-serve bottle. It imposes a federal excise tax of 8 cents per milligram of intoxicating THC, mandates testing, packaging, labeling and advertising requirements, bans synthetic cannabinoids, and lets states impose stricter rules or prohibit outright.

And critically: it establishes a three-tier distribution system modeled directly on alcohol.

If that passes, the competitive landscape reorganizes overnight. THC beverages stop being a dispensary product and become an adult beverage category — permitted by TTB, distributed by the same wholesalers who move Bud Light, sold anywhere beer is sold.

Now ask who is positioned for that.

Tilray would need essentially nothing new. It already holds TTB permits. It already has the wholesaler agreements. It already owns brewing and canning capacity across Georgia, Colorado, New York, Oregon, Ohio and Scotland. It already operates brewpubs that could pour THC beverages on-premise. And through Mollo and XMG, it already has THC beverage brands with Canadian formulation and production experience.

The MSOs would need to build all of it, and mostly couldn't — a plant-touching operator can't hold a TTB permit while trafficking a Schedule I or III substance federally.

The honest caveats

Three.

The bill is one of several competing proposals, none of which has yet gained traction with congressional leadership. The Senate's continuing resolution moved the ban to December 11; the House hasn't acted.

Tilray's beverage business is not itself a profit machine. Fiscal 2026 produced a $105.2 million net loss and negative $69.1 million in operating cash flow. The optionality is real; the current returns are thin.

And the 5mg cap plus 8 cents per milligram creates a low-dose, taxed category — closer to seltzer economics than dispensary economics.

The read

Tilray spent six years and hundreds of millions buying its way into the American three-tier system under the cover of a craft beer roll-up. If Van Duyne-Landsman becomes law, that looks less like diversification and more like the best-timed regulatory arbitrage in the industry.

If it doesn't, Tilray owns a mid-sized craft brewer in a declining category. The beer was never the point. The shelf was.

📈 Dog Walkers

$ACB ( ▲ 1.94% ) Barks Back With No Merit

Curaleaf Holdings (TSX: CURA) (OTCQX: CURLF) formally commenced its unsolicited take-over bid for Aurora Cannabis (TSX: ACB) (NASDAQ: ACB) — US$4.00 per share, comprised of 0.3463 Curaleaf subordinate voting shares plus US$0.75 cash. Aurora's response arrived the same day, and it is considerably less diplomatic than last week's.

Executive Chairman and CEO Miguel Martin stated plainly that Curaleaf made a strategic decision to go public in order to pressure shareholders into a short-term decision for the benefit of Curaleaf shareholders — and that Aurora will not do that.

The sharper accusation follows. Martin says Curaleaf's objective is to acquire Aurora's highly strategic EU-GMP facilities and leading medical cannabis platforms at the lowest price possible, depriving shareholders of the value those assets generate.

Aurora also expanded its correction of the record. Dialogue with Curaleaf dates to June 22, 2026 and continued as recently as August 12 — the day after Curaleaf's public announcement. The June 23 letter contained no financial terms; the July 7 letter gave no detail on the cash-versus-share mix.

And Aurora repeated the line doing the most damage: the US$5.00 cap sits below where Aurora shares traded on December 18, 2025.

Procedurally, shareholders are told to take no action. The offer stays open a minimum of 105 days — until at least December 1, 2026. A special committee of independent directors is reviewing with advisors, and a Directors' Circular with a formal recommendation is due within 15 days. Kingsdale Advisors has been retained.

Martin cited strong shareholder support at the 2026 AGM as backing the standing strategy.

Curaleaf has 105 days. Aurora has 15. The circular is the next real move.

MM WSWA Op-Ed

By Dawson Hobbs, Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America 

The cannabis industry has spent years asking Congress for something more durable than prohibition, enforcement discretion and state-by-state improvisation. That is why cannabis stakeholders should seriously consider the Beverage Regulatory Parity Act even if they have been skeptical of hemp-derived THC products or worry that new federal rules could further complicate marijuana’s uneven treatment.

That concern is understandable. For state-licensed cannabis operators, it can feel backwards to watch hemp-derived THC beverages seek a federal regulatory pathway while marijuana remains federally illegal and licensed cannabis businesses remain locked out of ordinary banking, interstate commerce, tax treatment and mainstream retail channels.

But Congress is not choosing between comprehensive cannabis reform and a hemp beverage bill. It is choosing whether a product category that is already being sold and consumed will remain unregulated, face an ineffective federal ban or be properly regulated and taxed.

Full Op-Ed On Marijuana Moment

📺 Trade To Black

New Poll Reveals Hemp Ban's Real Impact | TTB Presented by Flowhub

• New weekly segment launches: the Check-In Poll of the Week, presented by NuggMD — fresh data on how the hemp-THC ban is landing on patients rather than on balance sheets.

• The results are genuinely mixed. Roughly 50% of respondents got their medical cannabis card as a result, 8% had trouble finding products, 20% reported no real impact, and 8% weren't even aware the state-level changes were happening.

• Marc Cohodes returns with a contrarian call. The accredited cannabis investor makes his case for why he doesn't think the hemp ban goes through — and why he expects regulation instead — walking through the reasoning and what a realistic framework could look like.

• Plus his read on Glass House Brands (NYSE: GLAS). The latest quarter brought rising costs and margin compression — Shadd Dales and Anthony Varrell get his take on how that fits his broader investment thesis on the company.