Name: Scotts Miracle-Gro CEO on What Went Wrong With Its Cannabis Investment
Uploaded: 2025-04-29T19:27:00Z
Duration: 5 min 37 s
Description: Jim Hagedorn, CEO of The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, talked about what went wrong with the company's weed business—and how he plans to rescue the underperforming vertical.

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Jim Hagedorn, CEO of The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, talked about what went wrong with the company's weed business—and how he plans to rescue the underperforming vertical.

https://m.wsj.net/video/20250502/ca11ed1b-a9ec-4f0e-ab61-6fdb9cde186a/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Scotts Miracle-Gro CEO on What Went Wrong With Its Cannabis Investment

You mentioned the pot business, the weed business, some people call it, what went wrong? And I understand you're looking to spin that off now, right?

Not really.

No?

That's the story.

What went wrong? There are two questions.

Right.

Look, I think the government completely screwed the pooch on this. I think the, how we got into it was a Wall Street Journal, a couple of reporter ladies came to visit me on Long Island, this is more than 10 years ago, and said, "Pot, want a garden?" And I said, "It's a plant, needs food and soil and all that. Why wouldn't it be?" And so I made some trips out to the West coast and you started to see California, Colorado really developing. And a lot of those, remember, we're not selling pot. We sell supplies to grow pot. So called, you know, fertilizer, soils, just what we do in lawn and garden. And more and more of the shelf space was going to this new business, which nobody would, 'cause they thought everybody was a DEA agent. They'd basically say no. I'd say, "Dude, it's all pot, right? And these would be shopkeepers. And they'd say, "No, tomatoes."

Hmm,

Green tomatoes. 'Cause they just were nervous about it. But the business started to get more and more shelf space and it started to look as big as lawn and garden. And we weren't in it, so I went back to my board and I said, "Look, I think we should do this cultivation supply stuff." And they're like, "No." They read it in the Wall Street Journal and said, "No, Jim, we're not doing that." And I just kept on it for a couple years. I mean, if you look at the business today, I mean, this is the, what is so screwed up about it. More people smoke pot today than drink alcohol. And this, I'm not making this up, this is real data. It's bigger than the craft beer industry, is pot. And I think we decided that the board wanted to know it was legal. We were, me and my management team were willing to take some risk on this area. And we figured it will be an early entrance. And that the Feds, as these states legalized, that the Feds within three to five years, this is like 10 years ago, three to five years, they would make the laws so that it was not federally a schedule one narcotic. And you know, we had a lot of faith. We had a lot of faith the Democrats would do it, who said, "We should like make this a non-schedule one narcotic." And it's just, it's never happened. And between the states and the Feds, like, because it's a schedule one narcotic, you cannot deduct your business expenses. So your top line revenue is your taxable income. So you're paying about an 80% tax rate. Think about that. Then you throw the states on and local stuff and all the extra stuff you have to do because it's highly restricted. You cannot make money. And back in the early days, people were willing to put risk capital in,

Right,

Figuring they would legalize it and the tax rate would go back to 20%. But it hasn't happened yet and now all money's gone. There's no capital available in the space. Nobody in the space can make money. And it's legal in 75% of where people live

And what is, so what are you gonna do with that business? So you're not spinning it off or you're gonna keep it?

We're gonna spin it off, but we're gonna spin it off so we can get it back.

What does that mean? How's that gonna work?

We're gonna put it in friendly hands. We'll sell it for paper. We'll have the right to buy it back today. You know, our banks aren't that happy with us owning it because we have some plant touching assets that we have through a Canadian sub. And so a lot of our banks now are like, "Dude, I don't know. Even though it's a Canadian company, it's legal there. We don't think you guys should own it." And I think that our business is suffering as well. This is a business that made, you know, go back three years ago, it was earning 150 plus million per year. It was probably worth, in our equity, more than $5 billion, Today, it's worth, if I'm being generous, zero in our equity. So it's probably a negative number in our equity. And I think the lawn and garden business that people said, "Dude, it is such a good business for us. It's high cashflow that's not very sensitive to the environment or, you know, the economy. And so why don't you just move it over to someplace else? Why don't you just get rid?" They want to get rid of it. The problem is we've invested about $2 billion in that space and I don't wanna burn it. I think that, that we can save that business, but it's not a great place for us to be in our SMG public equity.

But you don't hear anything from the Trump administration about federal legalization, do you?

Oh, of course we do. Definitely. I have spoken to President Trump a couple times about this. I'm a supporter of his, and I think he's in favor of rescheduling, which would solve the, it's 280E, the IRS code. It would solve the 280E issue. It would help us with banking issues. So the two issues that are really hobbling that business is nobody can make money because of the tax rate and you can't bank at any normal bank.

Right, right. Well, I just, I guess I haven't heard about it, but there's been a lot going on, so maybe we will get to it soon.

Yeah, I hope, I hope so. The empty promises from politicians to fixing this, if you look and say, "When did the equities in pot companies, were they at a peak when Biden got elected and you had a Democratic senate and a Democratic house?" Everybody said, This will get fixed finally." But it hasn't happened yet.

Yeah.

Scotts Miracle-Gro CEO on What Went Wrong With Its Cannabis Investment

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