Namaste Technologies (CVE:N) is a global technology leader in the cannabis space, selling vaporizers and other accessories for consumption of medical cannabis through its 30 e-commerce websites across 20 countries. Despite the buzz around the legalization of recreational marijuana in Canada, the company continued to focus on the medical side of cannabis until very recently. However, now that there is clarity regarding the rules and regulations that will govern the recreational cannabis market, the online retailer has taken a proactive approach to capitalize on this vast opportunity. In this note, we discuss how Namaste plans to tap into the upcoming recreational cannabis market in Canada.

 Shares in marijuana company Tilray Inc. went on a wild ride -- surging by more than 90 per cent then briefly dropping into negative territory and rebounding -- one day after the licensed producer said it got approval to export medical cannabis from Canada to the U.S. for a clinical trial.

The stock closed at more than US$214, up 38 per cent, after being halted five times within one hour.

The drastic swings in the stock follow a nearly 30 per cent jump on Tuesday after the Nanaimo, B.C.- based firm announced it got the green light from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to export cannabis in capsule form to a researcher at a university in the U.S., where the drug is still illegal at the federal level.

Profit margins will be tight for cannabis retailers next month, an Edmonton business professor says, after the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission released its list of wholesale prices.

All legal retailers will have to buy through AGLC, and the commission recently sent them a list pegging their average price per gram at $8.90 including federal excise duty, provincial duty and GST.

“I think it’s a little higher than we expected, but it’s in the ballpark,” Kyle Murray, vice dean at the University of Alberta’s business school, said Wednesday.

“If they are going to try and sell it (to consumers) for $10 or $9.50 (a gram) it’s going to be a pretty tight margin. I think for a lot of stores this means it’s probably going to be more in the $10 to $12 range.”

The legalization of cannabis in Canada is about to bring big changes not just for medical cannabis companies but for hemp growers as well.

Shopify (SHOP), Canada's home-grown e-commerce firm, could become a hot marijuana stock owing to the country's legalization of recreational cannabis, says an analyst.

Recreational cannabis becomes legal in Canada Oct. 17. As it does, the Shopify(SHOP) platform could help drive merchandise volume and revenue, KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Monika Garg said in a note to clients. The company's headquarters is in Ottawa, Canada's capital.

Shares of British Columbia-based cannabis producer Tilray Inc. surged nearly 30 per cent on Tuesday after the marijuana company received a key approval related to a clinical trial in the United States.

While Tilray’s stock has enjoyed a heady rise since its initial public offering in July, Tuesday’s staggering gain — shares closed up more than US$34 at US$154.98 on the Nasdaq — was alone equivalent to more than double the company’s IPO price of US$17.

The shares have now increased more than 800 per cent since the offering, propelling Tilray’s market valuation to about US$14.4 billion, well ahead of previous market leader Canopy Growth Corp., which closed Tuesday with a market cap of around US$11.5 billion.

Canada’s measure of real gross domestic product will get a boost after the legalization of marijuana adds as much as $8 billion to the country’s economy, according to Toronto-Dominion Bank.

Statistics Canada will begin including “licensed and unlicensed cannabis activity” in its economic calculations after the Oct. 17 roll out, which will have an impact on measured growth rates in the final quarter of 2018 and first quarter 2019, TD says. The bank cautions that the increase to growth is actually an accounting illusion, because some of the cannabis-related trade already existed in the economy but wasn’t formally captured in most measures of output.

Doubling the staff; tripling the number of grow rooms; quintupling production.

These are just some of the goals that Ram Davloor, the general manager of medicinal cannabis producer 7ACRES, shares with employees in a company strategy session ahead of the legalization of recreational marijuana on Oct. 17 in Canada.

“All of you who have come in right now are coming into a business that’s right at the very beginning,” Mr. Davloor tells the three dozen employees gathered at company headquarters in Kincardine, a municipality of about 11,000 on Lake Huron. “And this industry is going to be around for the next 200 years. So all of you here, if you think you are coming late, you are wrong.”

The Canadian recreational marijuana market is set to open in one month, but the big news in the sector over the course of the next year might be focused on the United States.

Canopy Growth (TSX:WEED)(NYSE:CGC) is a market leader in the emerging global marijuana sector, and while much of the focus has been on the company’s partnership with Constellation Brands, which owns Corona and now has a 38% stake in Canopy Growth, the medical side of the industry remains a core focus for Canopy Growth in Canada and internationally.

There was a time when saying that sentence out loud would have gotten you laughed out of the room. But now it describes a product category that beer makers have got their sights set on. With alcoholic beverage sales more or less flat-lining, brewers are looking outside their traditional purview for increased sales. And it looks like cannabis-infused drinks are going to be a part of the new picture.