July 3, 2026
The first-quarter numbers are in, and the cannabis earnings story for 2026 is a split screen. One of the biggest operators grew its top line. Another watched revenue slide and still printed more cash than ever. Same industry, same quarter, two very different businesses.
For anyone selling into this market, earnings season isn't spectator sport. It's a budget map. Profitable, cash-generating operators have money to spend on the things you sell. The ones bleeding don't. Here's how the quarter shook out.
Green Thumb Industries posted revenue of $300.2 million for the quarter ended March 31, up 7.4% year over year, with GAAP net income of $15.4 million ($0.07 per share) and normalized EBITDA of $93.5 million, a 31.2% margin (SEC filing).
The line that matters for a vendor is the $76.0 million in operating cash flow. A company throwing off that much cash has real budget for retail tech, packaging, marketing, and services. Green Thumb is the "buyer with money" profile.
Trulieve told the opposite story. Revenue came in at $286.8 million, down about 4% year over year as retail price pressure outweighed the volume from its 236 dispensaries (StockTitan).
And yet the business got healthier underneath. Trulieve reported a 59% gross margin, $100 million in adjusted EBITDA, positive net income, and $42 million of free cash flow (PR Newswire). Shrinking on the top line while fattening margins is a company optimizing, not expanding. That's a different kind of prospect: disciplined, cost-focused, and harder to sell a "nice to have" into.
Neither result happened in a vacuum. The federal move to put state-licensed medical marijuana into Schedule III in April lifted the 280E tax penalty for covered operators, and that change is starting to show up in margins and cash flow across the sector (see our rescheduling breakdown).
Strong cash generation in a quarter like this is partly operational and partly a tax story. The operators best positioned to convert that relief into spending are the ones with healthy balance sheets right now.
Read this quarter as a segmentation exercise:
Public-company filings give you this read for a couple dozen large operators. The harder part is the thousands of independent and regional dispensaries that never file an 8-K. You can't read their earnings, but you can read their license status, footprint, and ownership, which is the next-best signal of who's stable enough to buy.
Who reported the strongest cannabis earnings in Q1 2026? By revenue growth, Green Thumb Industries, up 7.4% to $300.2 million with $76 million in operating cash flow (SEC filing).
Did Trulieve make money in Q1 2026? Yes. Revenue fell about 4% to $286.8 million, but Trulieve posted positive net income, a 59% gross margin, and $42 million in free cash flow (PR Newswire).
Why are margins improving across cannabis? Part operations, part taxes: the April move of state-licensed medical marijuana to Schedule III eased the 280E tax burden for covered operators.
Earnings tell you who's healthy among the public names. For the thousands of dispensaries that don't file, license and ownership data is the read. See verified dispensary contacts. Free preview here.
Holden Leads
Holden Leads tracks every licensed dispensary across California, Michigan, Illinois, and Massachusetts — cross-referenced weekly against official state regulatory databases and enriched with phone numbers, emails, websites, and social profiles. Stop manually hunting for contact info. Get the full list today.