Green Thumb Industries just handed the cannabis sector a rare piece of good news. Q1 2026 EPS came in at $0.07 against a $0.01 estimate, and revenue of $300.2 million topped the $296.8 million consensus — the clearest beat Green Thumb has delivered in recent quarters.
The result lands after a remarkable run in the stock. GTII has climbed 15% over the past month to CAD $11.11, and added another 2.3% this week before the print hit. The problem for bulls is that the insiders who should be most confident about that run were quietly selling the whole way through it. On April 1, CEO Ben Kovler, President Anthony Georgiadis, CFO Matt Faulkner, and General Counsel Bret Kravitz all sold shares at CAD $6.38 — a price that now looks like a significant underestimate of where the stock was heading. The same cluster sold again in late February at $6.58. Net insider activity over the past 90 days totals roughly 82,500 shares sold, worth about $554,000 in aggregate. The trades all carry the lowest significance rating and are likely tax-withholding sales on vested awards, but the pattern — four C-suite names selling in lock-step at the exact same price twice in three months — is worth flagging as the stock approaches two-year highs.
The borrow market has caught up with the price action, and the shift has been abrupt. Cost to borrow sat below 0.7% through most of April, then jumped to 1.9% on April 28 and has kept climbing to 3.6% this week — a 361% rise over the past month. That said, the absolute level remains modest. Short interest is a negligible 0.08% of the free float, and availability is very loose, meaning there is no squeeze dynamic at work here. The short score has also been declining, falling from 32.7 on April 30 to 28.4 today. What the CTB move more likely reflects is simple supply and demand: as the stock doubled off its lows, more participants wanted to borrow shares, and the lending pool tightened to reflect that. The borrow remains cheap enough that it imposes no real pain on existing shorts.
Analyst data is too stale to cite with any confidence — the most recent analyst coverage on file dates to mid-2023, nearly three years ago. What the valuation data does show is a stock re-rating in real time. The EV/EBITDA multiple has moved to 6.3x, up about 5% over the week and 5% over the past month, while the price-to-book has risen to approximately 1.0x from well below that level a month ago. The forward earnings yield factor scores near the 98th percentile for 30-day EPS momentum — suggesting the Q1 beat may have been visible in estimate revisions ahead of the print — while 90-day EPS momentum sits at just the 5th percentile. That divergence implies the near-term revision cycle turned sharply positive recently after a long period of cuts. The short score ranking of 90 out of 100 reflects how uncrowded the short base is, not an elevated short risk.
The peer group broadly gained on the day. Trulieve added 5.2%, Curaleaf rose 6.3%, and Cresco Labs climbed 7.2% — suggesting a sector-wide lift rather than GTII-specific alpha on the session. The one sector headline that cuts against the momentum is a new class-action lawsuit filed today targeting cannabis companies across a dozen US states, alongside a separate legal challenge seeking to reverse federal rescheduling of medical cannabis. Neither story is specific to Green Thumb, but both are live regulatory risks that the sector is now navigating simultaneously.
The next confirmed earnings event is June 16. Between now and then, the rescheduling lawsuit and the trajectory of cost-to-borrow against a backdrop of rising share price are the two data points most worth watching.
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