With the purchase of Nuuvera Incorporated, Leamington's Aphria has moved into the top 5 in scale among Canada's cannabis industry.
The $826-million purchase of Nuuvera comes after the recent $230-million purchase of Broken Coast Cannabis and the $100-million expansion with Double Diamond.
BNN host Andrew Bell spoke with Aphria CEO Vic Neufeld about the rapid growth of the company.
The company now has a market capitalization of $3.2-billion.
Bell says the question is how long it will take to pay investors back.
"We've heard calculations now that the marijuana stocks in Toronto have a market cap now close to $30-billion. Now it's going to take a long time before people get $30-billion worth of dividends from Canadian marijuana and really a stock is only worth what dividends it pays in the long run."
He says the attraction for Aphria to buy Nuuvera is it's overseas business plan.
"Nuuvera has a deal, they have an application into Germany to grow there and also into Italy to import there. The Canadian cannabis companies are telling investors that Canada is a world leader in legalization and the standards being set and the management techniques will be exportable around the world."
Bell says there will eventually only be a handful of large companies.
"We'll have to see if the public really will gravitate in a big way to legal cannabis. What will probably happen here, like the cigarette industry and the booze industry, ultimately it'll consolidated down to two or three big players."
Bell agrees Aphria is positioning itself to be a major global player.