The American Herbal Products Association (AHPA)’s second annual Hemp-CBD Virtual Congress, which is slated to begin on Aug. 27, will include a deep dive into the financial aspects of the marketplace surrounding hemp products. Speakers who will be on the Hemp-CBD Farm and Retail Financial Snapshot panel are deeply involved in investment and analytics behind this rapidly-growing sector.
 
Roy Bingham, executive chairman and co-founder of BDS analytics, will discuss the channels and product categories through which CBD is currently being sold, and his company’s projections for the growth of each one respectively. BDSA tracks CBD sales in the licensed and regulated cannabis market, as well as in other channels.
 
“We think this is important because although the dispensary channel product is not hemp-derived, as far as consumers are concerned it says CBD on the bottle and its source is less important than its benefits,” Bingham said. “Also, the 2019 market of $2.6 billion was 43% dispensary sales, as it was by far the largest channel and many cannabis brands have now also entered into the unlicensed hemp-CBD channels. Additionally, the dispensary customer tends to be a well-informed consumer, at least when it comes to cannabinoids, who is likely to influence others who shop in other channels.”
 
BDSA projects that the $2.6 billion 2019 U.S. CBD market, which includes $1.1 billion in dispensary sales, will grow to $18 billion by 2024. Dispensaries will still be the largest channel, but even though legal cannabis is the fastest growing industry in the U.S. today, its market share will have fallen to over 24%, while 10 other channels will grow even more rapidly. These channels include e-commerce, natural/vitamin, grocery, mass retail, convenience, drug, beauty, veterinary, and an assortment of smaller channels. They project that CBD will be incorporated comprehensively into ten product categories.
 
“Today, we see a few products incorporating CBD within product categories including sublingual, inhalable, confection, skin/beauty, wellness, supplements, food, beverages, and pet care,” Bingham said. “By 2024, BDSA expects to see products with CBD as an ingredient to be a significant part of many categories, including many of the leading products. They also expect other cannabinoids to be featured in many of these products too, as consumer awareness expands from CBD to cannabinoids.”
 
Ian Laird, another speaker, is the co-founder, CFO, and general counsel of New Leaf Data Services, LLC, the parent company of Cannabis Benchmarks and Hemp Benchmarks. They publish weekly reports on the wholesale price of cannabis flower and trim in the 18 legal, non-vertical U.S. state markets and Canada, and a monthly report on the wholesale price of hemp biomass, dried flower, and hemp-derived end products, with the reports covering both price assessments and the drivers of price change. His presentation will look at the dramatic compression in wholesale prices from 2019-2020, with a comparison of the projected supply of CBD hemp biomass in 2019 and 2020 – which will impact future wholesale prices. He will also discuss hemp economics for farmers and extraction capacity across the U.S.
 
“Supply and demand data is critical for forecasting future prices,” Laird said. “In competitive markets, commodity prices tend to move toward the marginal cost of production as supply and demand reach equilibrium. Hemp Benchmarks is forecasting a significant reduction in hemp biomass this season, which may help to stabilize biomass prices above the marginal cost of production, if the demand for CBD and other cannabinoids can grow in line with some of the more aggressive projections.”
 
Others speaking on the financial analysis of the hemp-CBD market include John Grubb, managing partner at Summit Venture Management, and Rich Maturo, vice president of Cannabis Product Management at Nielsen.
 
The event is slated to take place on Aug. 27 from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., PST.