Curaleaf Prints $70M as Green Thumb Rides Minnesota and Trulieve's Revenue Slips 4%

Boris Jordan has been Curaleaf's chairman for years. For most of that time, his quarterly calls have been about losses — about a tax provision called Section 280E, about a federal drug-scheduling decision that the cannabis industry had spent the better part of a decade waiting on, about whether the underlying business would ever look normal on a GAAP income statement. On the evening of Tuesday, May 5, 2026, Jordan, now also the company's chief executive, finally had a different number to read out: $70.1 million in net income from continuing operations, on $324.2 million in revenue.

"The macro headwinds that constrained growth over the past three years are now beginning to turn into meaningful tailwinds," Jordan said in the company's release. The quarter was the first in which Curaleaf's medical-cannabis operations were not subject to Section 280E — the provision in the Internal Revenue Code that disallows ordinary business deductions for sellers of Schedule I and II controlled substances, and that for years had pushed effective tax rates at U.S. cannabis operators into the 70-to-75 percent range. The U.S. Department of Justice, acting through Attorney General Todd Blanche, signed the rescheduling order on April 22, 2026; the change took effect in the Federal Register six days later.

Curaleaf had not just printed a profit. It had printed the kind of profit cannabis-equity analysts had spent years modeling and never actually scoring. The question for the U.S. multistate operator model for the past three years has been whether it could survive Section 280E. The May 5 release did not answer that question for the whole industry. It answered it for one company.

Curaleaf's release was the loudest of three. Over six trading sessions between May 5 and May 12, the three largest U.S. multistate cannabis operators — Curaleaf, Green Thumb Industries and Trulieve Cannabis — reported the first full quarter in which federal rescheduling had been priced into their income statements. The aggregate read was not a clean sector rally. Curaleaf printed $70.1 million in net income. Green Thumb's revenue rose 7.4 percent year-over-year to $300.2 million, on the back of Minnesota's adult-use launch. Trulieve's revenue actually fell 4 percent year-over-year, to $287 million, despite a medical-heavy revenue mix that should have made it the largest 280E beneficiary of the three.

The first quarter under partial rescheduling did not separate the industry from its problems. It separated the operators from one another. With the Drug Enforcement Administration's expedited federal-registration window closing on June 22 and a broader administrative hearing on cannabis's full reclassification scheduled to begin June 29, the question facing the sector is no longer whether 280E ends. It is which operators were built to take advantage when it does.

Section 280E has been a familiar villain in cannabis since 2014. The provision, originally written to prevent illicit drug traffickers from deducting business expenses, applied to every state-licensed cannabis operator in the United States because cannabis remained federally classified as a Schedule I controlled substance. A typical multistate operator could not deduct payroll, rent, marketing or general overhead from its taxable income. Effective federal tax rates in the 70-to-75 percent range were the norm, even in profitable years.

The April 22 order, signed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, immediately moved state-licensed medical cannabis to Schedule III. The order did not touch adult-use cannabis, so 280E continues to apply to the non-medical portion of every multistate operator's revenue. The order also opened a 60-day expedited federal-registration window for medical operators wanting to keep selling under federal law; that window closes June 22, 2026. By early May, close to 400 operators — including Trulieve, Green Thumb, Verano Holdings and Glass House Brands — had already filed.

Green Thumb Industries reported on Wednesday, May 6, 2026, one day after Curaleaf. Revenue: $300.2 million, up 7.4 percent year-over-year. Normalized EBITDA: $93.5 million, a 31.2-percent margin. GAAP net income of $15.4 million. Operating cash flow of $76 million. Ben Kovler, the founder and chief executive, anchored the call on Minnesota. The state's adult-use program launched on September 17, 2025, and Q1 2026 was the first full quarter in which Green Thumb captured the seasonality of the new market. Adult-use revenue does not benefit from the April 22 medical-cannabis rescheduling, but Minnesota's launch was the single largest revenue driver of the quarter, with continued share gains in Connecticut and Florida adding the rest.

Trulieve reported first, on May 8. Its $287 million in revenue was the smallest of the three. The 4-percent year-over-year decline came despite the company's heavily medical revenue mix — exactly the mix that should have produced the largest Section 280E tailwind. Adjusted EBITDA of $100 million, at a 35-percent margin, was the highest of the three on a margin basis, and free cash flow reached $42 million with $353 million in cash on hand. CEO Kim Rivers credited the Trump administration and Attorney General Blanche directly for the rescheduling decision. But underneath the tax line, the operating business contracted. The 280E relief did not make Trulieve grow. It made Trulieve profitable.

Curaleaf's $70.1 million net income masked a more complicated story. Sequentially, the company's revenue fell three percent from the fourth quarter of 2025. Year-over-year growth — six percent — was the slowest of the three MSOs. What carried the quarter to a 21.6-percent net margin was a combination of three things: 280E relief on the medical-cannabis side of the U.S. business, $47 million in international revenue (up 35 percent year-over-year, untouched by U.S. tax law from the start), and a gross-profit margin of 49 percent that suggests cost discipline more than category growth.

Anthony Georgiadis, Green Thumb's president, framed the change as a flexibility story rather than a windfall. The Section 280E relief on the medical portion of the business, he said on the May 6 call, creates room to reinvest in operations, people and communities. Green Thumb backed up the framing with capital allocation: the company repurchased about 6.0 million shares in the first quarter alone and 29.0 million shares cumulatively since September 2023, signaling internal confidence in the post-rescheduling cash-flow profile.

“The macro headwinds that constrained growth over the past three years are now beginning to turn into meaningful tailwinds.”

— Boris Jordan, Chairman and CEO, Curaleaf Holdings

Not every voice on the Curaleaf call was a chorus. Pablo Zuanic, a longtime cannabis equity analyst who runs Zuanic & Associates, pressed Jordan on a tension that the April 22 order did not resolve. Companies that register with the DEA under the medical-cannabis pathway become federally registered entities, Zuanic noted — but the cannabis they produce and sell remains federally illegal because it is not FDA-approved. He asked whether that contradiction would create implementation problems as Curaleaf and its peers move to operate within the new Schedule III framework. Zuanic also pressed Jordan on whether Curaleaf would spin off its international business, which trades at roughly five to six times sales, while the U.S. business trades around two-and-a-half. Jordan did not commit on either question.

Kim Rivers, on Trulieve's own call, took a more political tone. She applauded President Trump and Attorney General Blanche, in her prepared remarks, for what she called bold, decisive action on Schedule III. Trulieve filed for federal medical-cannabis registration on 206 of its retail locations during the 60-day window. Whether those registrations clear in time to capture the second-quarter cycle is an open question; the DEA has not committed to a processing timeline beyond the expedited window itself.

1. May 28, 2026 — Written-notice deadline for participation in the DEA's broader rescheduling hearing.
2. June 22, 2026 — DEA expedited federal-registration window closes for state-licensed medical operators.
3. June 29, 2026 — DEA administrative hearing on broader rescheduling (adult-use included) begins.
4. August 2026 — Q2 2026 earnings; second read on whether 280E relief translates to sustained P&L improvement.

Jordan ended his prepared remarks on May 5 with the headwinds-into-tailwinds line. He did not dwell on the June 29 DEA hearing, which will decide whether the rescheduling moves beyond medical cannabis to adult-use as well. He did not have to. The number on the income statement — $70.1 million — had already said what he wanted said. Behind that number sat a mix of medical-cannabis 280E relief, international revenue that had never been taxed under 280E in the first place, and a fourth-quarter revenue figure that the first quarter had not actually exceeded.

The first post-rescheduling quarter answered one question — whether U.S. multistate cannabis can produce a GAAP profit at scale. It did, at least at one company. The question for the next quarter, and the one after, is whether the printable profit becomes a printable trend, or whether Trulieve's 4-percent revenue slip is the more honest signal. Jordan has the rest of 2026 to find out.