Akerna Flash Report: 4/20 Cannabis Sales Reached…

Akerna Flash Report: 4/20 Cannabis Sales Reached $154.4M, Setting New Single-Day Sales Record

Akerna (NASDAQ:KERN) announced that this year's 4/20 holiday broke all previous cannabis retail records, bringing in a total of $154.4 million in adult-use and medicinal sales.

The company noted that compared to last year's 4/20, which until last week was the industry's largest sales day to date and brought in nearly $112 million, this year's 4/20 was a significant 38.1% growth over last year's.

When looking at the period around 4/20, according to Akerna, US shoppers spent a total of $485.3 million on cannabis products.

To put that into perspective, the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division recently reported the state's largest year of liquor sales ever – which surpassed $400 million for the first time. This means that the U.S. cannabis retail industry brought in more sales in just six days than Iowa did for liquor sales in a record-breaking year of their own.

"Using our historical Akerna data, we released a prediction report that the period around 4/20 would bring in a total of $494 million, only –1.79% variance from the actual sales of $485.3 million. This is a testament to the power of our data analytics. By leveraging data-driven insights, cannabis businesses can make strategic predictions and decisions for their businesses," stated James Ahrendt, business intelligence architect at Akerna.

Akerna data shows increases in cannabis sales market share for women shoppers over the past few years. This trend continued with this 4/20, with women's market share of sales breaking the 40% mark for the first time ever.

As more markets legalize cannabis and more Americans become comfortable with the legal cannabis industry, these year-over-year increases are expected to continue. Data shows cannabis has a broad appeal to people of all demographics.

Other predicted values for the long holiday weekend (4/15 - 4/20)