How it started
History
Aurora was founded in 2006 by Terry Booth, Steve Dobler, Dale Lesack and Chris Mayerson. Booth and Dobler collectively invested over $5 million of their own capital. The founding group secured a 160+ acre parcel of land in Mountain View County, Alberta, where they established Aurora's first facility. The company received its license to grow cannabis in 2014, making it the first cannabis producer to obtain a federal license in that province. They decided to establish the company in Alberta due to comparatively low corporate tax rates and an ideal farm credit program. On November 27, 2014, Health Canada issued Aurora's first license to sell medical cannabis. Since then they have built, and are operating, numerous growing facilities throughout Canada, Europe, Asia, Latin America and Oceania. On January 10, 2017, Aurora received a license from Health Canada to sell cannabis oils, having been granted a license to produce the oils in February 2016. Sales of four product lines of cannabis oils commenced in April, 2017.
After legalization in Canada - October 2018
Canada legalized the retail sale of cannabis nationally on October 17, 2018. Due to its significant capital investments, particularly in large growing facilities, Aurora had about 20% of the Canadian retail market for cannabis during early 2019.
At its year-end in June 2019, Aurora had a market capitalization of US$4.8 billion. An October 2019 report stated that cannabis stocks had "crumbled to their lowest level since 2017"; Aurora shares were also at a two-year low. The fall in stock price for Aurora and other Canadian cannabis stocks in late 2019 was attributed to the missed benchmark revenues, general lack of profitability in the industry, slow rollout of retail stores in Canada, rise in vaping-related illnesses, non-competitiveness of pricing with black market cannabis, oversupply of commercial cannabis, termination of capital expenditures, and an FDA warning that cannabidiol may cause liver injury, among others.
Public trading and acquisitions
From Wikipedia’s article on Aurora Cannabis, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3
