With 2017 now officially in the record books, CEO of the Canadian Securities Exchange, Richard Carleton sat down with Peter Murray of Kiyoi Communications, to discuss the best year on record at the CSE. Included in the discussion were important developments that took place at the exchange, the evolution of the cannabis investment landscape as well as opportunities in blockchain, fintech and more that the CSE will be looking to next in 2018.
- Record-breaking trading volume
- Market participants: Proprietary traders and retail investors
- On tap for 2018: Cannabis, blockchain and more
- Growth in new listings
- Enabling innovation
- Enhanced disclosure: A better model for investors and companies
- Regulatory outlook for cannabis-related businesses
- Strength behind the bench at the CSE
- Hitting its stride as a full-service stock exchange
Record-breaking trading volume
PM: It has been a truly phenomenal year for the CSE in terms of growth in trading volume/value, capital raised and many other measures. This has particularly been true in the fourth quarter, with the most active issues routinely trading well over 20 million shares per day. As the exchange’s CEO, what would you point to as the highlights of 2017? What is driving the success?
RC: There are multiple factors working in our favour at the moment, but clearly our decision more than three years ago to welcome the original applicants for the MMPR (Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulations) licenses in the Canadian cannabis space is one that has proven to be quite sound as far as growth and development of the exchange is concerned.These companies have caught the attention of the retail investing public in particular, although the broader investment community is beginning to support and invest in them as they mature and grow.
We have seen a tremendous increase in trading volume in the cannabis space, and it has had a knock-on effect on technology, mining and other sectors on our exchange.
Overall, it has served to dispel a number of the incorrect, but in some cases widely held, beliefs about companies listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange in terms of liquidity and challenges to completing secondary financings. Given the trading turnover and secondary financings completed by issuers in multiple industry sectors on the CSE this year, I think we have laid those concerns to rest for good.
At the end of the day, our success in 2017 was simply a case of presenting companies to the marketplace that the investment community was interested in, and the community responded accordingly.
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Market participants: Proprietary traders and retail investors
PM: Looking at just trading volume for a moment, are program traders, algorithmic trading and high-frequency traders accounting for a considerable percentage of the activity? Some people in the markets don’t like their presence, whereas others appreciate the liquidity they bring. What is their status on the CSE?
RC: We have a pretty good idea where the trading volume is coming from, and we have seen increased participation from proprietary traders, which I would define as people who tend to pursue relatively short-term strategies such as market-making or cross market arbitrage. By and large, that activity is not driven by computers but by actual human traders pursuing these strategies in the market.
But far and away the largest percentage of participants are in fact investors and individual traders. It is human beings hitting the enter button, and doing that, generally speaking, through the facilities of one of the discount brokers in Canada.
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On tap for 2018: Cannabis, blockchain and more
PM: How do you follow up on a successful year like 2017? What is the 2018 game plan?
RC: We certainly think the cannabis space has a way to run, and we see that in our pipeline of applicants seeking to list on the CSE. We expect to see additional companies looking for growth capital to serve a particular segment of that market, whether it be recreational cannabis in the United States, cultivation internationally, or some aspect of the therapeutic market.
And, of course, with legalization anticipated at some point in Canada during 2018, it will be interesting to see how the industry develops specifically here at home.
We are also seeing a tremendous number of companies with some component of blockchain technology in their business development mandate, many of them looking to address some inefficiency, cost or risk for people on the payment side. There are quite a few interesting applications of blockchain technology to reduce the cost and risk of the payments process both for the customer and for companies.
We have a number of blockchain companies on the exchange already, there are more coming, and based on the funds raised and the interest in existing issuers, I think we will see a continuation of the high level of trading activity witnessed in the latter part of 2017.
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Growth in new listings
PM: The CSE welcomed over 50 new issuers in 2017. What is the pipeline looking like as we begin 2018, and where are the issuers coming from in terms of sectors?
RC: The interesting thing is that even as the pace of listings reached record levels in the fourth quarter, each month we received more applications than companies listed. In other words, even though we were listing more companies than we ever had before, the pipeline was growing.
As a general observation, the companies listing now tend to be larger, more mature and better capitalized than at any other time in the history of the Canadian Securities Exchange.
I mentioned the cannabis and financial technology sectors, with a particular focus on blockchain, but a number of the more traditional sectors are also seeing investor attention. There is certainly interest in the mining space. We have seen a number of transactions funded for later-stage mining projects, often with a clear path to initiating production. Those companies do tend to be larger and are looking to raise substantial amounts of capital to complete their business programs.
It really is a situation where, with the possible exception of the oil and gas space, we are firing on all cylinders.
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Enabling innovation
PM: Cannabis is a relatively new business sector for public markets and the CSE deserves credit for providing a platform enabling a substantial number of these companies to obtain the funding needed to carry their businesses forward. We now see a similar dynamic with companies in the blockchain space. Does the CSE have a unique proposition for these companies and is the exchange itself looking at opportunities with this technology?
RC: Let me begin with the first part of the question. The CSE’s proposition is really the same for all companies looking to access the public markets. We seek to facilitate the lowest cost of public capital for these companies, principally by providing a very streamlined listings process, and then once the company is listed to provide cost certainty in the form of fixed fees, regardless of how active the company is in secondary financings, changing its business, making acquisitions and other activities.
Our promise is that those companies will be able to conclude those transactions with more disclosure to the marketplace, but with less interference and second-guessing of their business plans from the exchange as their principle regulator.
Fundamental to the DNA of the CSE is that we believe the marketplace is best suited to price the risk and benefits of management’s business decisions, and not somebody at the exchange. To ensure this is the case, we must make sure the companies are providing the best possible disclosure to the marketplace so those decisions can be made.
I think it is interesting to see how fintech, and blockchain in particular, has come to the public markets. In past years I have talked about the challenges the public markets in Canada have had in attracting technology companies. These types of companies have often elected to raise their capital from private equity and venture capital firms as opposed to seeking a public market listing.
The fintech and blockchain space seems to have taken on a different dynamic, as these companies are in fact coming into the public markets, and to be fair it is probably a result of the capabilities demonstrated by the public markets in funding the cannabis space. Entrepreneurs in the fintech and blockchain space look at the public markets and acknowledge that we were able to back the creation of an entirely new industry with significant amounts of capital at competitive costs vis-a-vis private alternatives.
As far as the CSE goes, we are very much interested in looking at the potential to apply new technologies to reduce cost and risk. We have a number of experts looking at smart contracts and in effect tokenizing a security with a view to a potential listing on the exchange. We are going to have more to say about that in the very near future and are looking carefully at the potential to adopt a number of those technologies.
I will say that our systems developers have deep experience in the space and as a result we do have some excellent partnerships already developed that will give us a real leg up if we choose to become early adopters.
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Enhanced disclosure: A better model for investors and companies
PM: One of your competitors suggested recently that the CSE’s suitability standards for officers and directors might be too lenient. What would you say to this opinion? And what about disclosure of issuers listed on the CSE in general?
RC: To be blunt, I was confused by that statement. I have no idea what that person was referring to. The rules in place for suitability for officers and directors are essentially identical across all exchanges operating in Canada, whether it be the NEO Exchange, the CSE, the Venture Exchange or the Toronto Stock Exchange. The spokesperson from the Toronto Stock Exchange would have no idea what our policies and procedures are in administering the rules. We can, and do with some regularity, exercise our discretion to prevent individuals being involved with particular companies. I think that was not an informed opinion being voiced by the spokesperson from the TMX Group.
The CSE believes that in return for the exchange not being as involved in a company’s decisions as perhaps other exchanges are in Canada, the company must agree to adhere to higher disclosure standards.
In addition to the work we do on a company’s initial listing statement, as well as their legal obligations to provide continuous disclosure, companies are required to file monthly reports that are effectively an update to the Management’s and Discussion and Analysis from the listing statement or prospectus. Companies find that it is a helpful part of their investor relations activities, and not a burdensome extra piece of exchange regulation.
That disclosure record builds for the companies and it is easy for people to see which companies are executing against the plan they set out, and which companies are not making the progress they set for themselves in their business plan.
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Regulatory outlook for cannabis-related businesses
PM: There was a degree of controversy this year about Canadian stock exchanges listing companies that operate cannabis-related businesses in the United States. Can you comment on the CSE’s policies and how your regulatory model held up in the face of this debate? Do you foresee policy at the CSE changing at all in 2018?
RC: The answer to the latter question is that I do not see our policies changing. We may learn things as time goes on from the legal position in the United States, but this to us was a relatively straightforward call.
The basic principle is that all companies listing on the Canadian Securities Exchange, and for that matter any exchange in Canada, must provide a positive representation that they are operating in accordance with applicable law in the jurisdictions in which they conduct business.
To that end, and particularly with companies in the cannabis space in the United States, we can and do require the company to provide a legal opinion and analysis demonstrating how it is that they are operating in accordance with the licensing regime in place in the particular state or states in which they do business.
From an investor’s perspective, clearly there are risks in investing in these companies given the uncertainties in the legal framework in the United States. That is why companies who have come to us with US exposure, either in the listing statement or in a prospectus cleared with one of the provincial regulators, must spend a lot of time explaining the legal position of the company, and what the position of the company would be assuming various changes took place. Investors need to know what the impact on the company would be if the rules changed in the US.
This was formalized by the Canadian Securities Administrators in a guidance notice a couple of months back and it’s an approach, because it’s based on disclosure, that is entirely in line with the one we’ve taken to these companies coming into the public markets.
So, again, we see that there is considerable investor interest in these opportunities, there is considerable interest from entrepreneurs based in the United States to raise growth capital from the Canadian public markets, and we expect to see more of these companies, not fewer, coming to us in the months ahead.
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Strength behind the bench at the CSE
PM: The CSE’s largest shareholder is Urbana Corporation, which holds just under half of your common equity. This is different to the other major Canadian exchange groups, which often have a wider base of shareholders. Is there a benefit to having a concentrated ownership structure and, presumably, the relative independence it provides for?
RC: I don’t know if I can speak to the benefits of having a relatively concentrated shareholding. What I can speak to is the benefit of having Urbana Corporation as our principal shareholder, and that of course is that Urbana made its name some years ago for its successful investments in the exchange space, not just in Canada but around the world.
The team there, led by Tom Caldwell, who is also our chairman, is regarded as one of the most knowledgeable there is when it comes to the business of exchanges. Tom has access to many different types of people in the industry. Whether it be senior management at other exchanges or analysts and investment bankers, they all know Tom and if we need to meet these people, the opportunity is there because of our chairman and Urbana Corporation.
I believe we are very fortunate to have an engaged, supportive and extremely knowledgeable main shareholder. We really couldn’t have wished for anything more.
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Hitting its stride as a full-service stock exchange
PM: In some respects, the CSE is fighting a two-front war with other exchanges, both in attracting exciting young companies and in retaining your maturing issuers. Do you think it makes sense for companies to leave the CSE if they qualify for a “senior” exchange? Conversely, does the CSE still maintain its advantages as an exchange suited for early-stage companies? Can you realistically cater to both?
RC: Branding is obviously extremely important in the exchange world, and probably more than I understood when I became CEO. There is very little difference in what we do versus the so-called senior exchanges. The access that we provide, the systems that we deploy, the rules governing the companies and so on – there is an awful lot of commonality among us.
However, some institutional investors and retail investors believe, for some reason, that these senior markets will provide higher multiples, better liquidity, more access to investors both in Canada and internationally, and a better experience for the issuer.
I think that is a very difficult proposition to support, especially on a cost-benefit basis, when somebody looks at the increased costs of being, for example, on the Toronto Stock Exchange versus the Canadian Securities Exchange. It would be difficult to justify on an objective basis in a lot of cases.
The one area that really is one of the last mountains for us to climb as an organization is the institutional investment community in Canada. Some institutions have hard-coded into their mandate the requirement that a public equity in the portfolio must be listed on one of the TMX Group exchanges, or specifically on the TSX. They don’t mention the Canadian Securities Exchange and they don’t mention the NEO Exchange.
When we hear from a company that an interested investor has said they would invest in them but for the fact they were listed on the CSE, those are barriers that we need to continue to work to knock down. That is not just perception but a genuine issue that exists.
Our challenge as an organization is to try to reduce the number of institutions with those restrictions in their investment mandates. Our goal is to provide an identical or better experience than the other exchanges, where companies are going to pay considerably more for the privilege of being listed.
One other concern is that if a company believes it is on its way to joining one of the major indices on the Toronto Stock Exchange, there is a rule that to be in the long-established national indices, those stocks have to be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. It is sort of like back in the day on the S&P 500 when you had to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. And as a result, companies such as Microsoft and Apple and Cisco and Intel didn’t qualify for the S&P 500 for a number of years because they were on Nasdaq. Eventually it got to the point where S&P had to do the right thing and permit companies from exchanges other than the NYSE into the index.
Our goal is to have companies stay on the CSE and get big enough and relevant enough to the broader market that people lean on the S&P and TSX to allow them into the indices. I think we may have our first billion-dollar company relatively soon, and with that achievement we might then have investors lobbying Standard and Poor’s to change the rules.