Curaleaf Holdings’ battle to acquire Aurora Cannabis has shifted in favour of the Canadian producer on multiple fronts over the last week.
Not only has Curaleaf raised its hostile bid by 25% to an implied US$5.00 per share, but media reports suggest the BAT-backed (British American Tobacco) Organigram Global is now also in contention to merge with Aurora.
Alongside the completion of a major expansion of its German EU-GMP facility expected to double its annual flower production, Aurora is now in a considerably stronger position than just a week earlier.
Curaleaf raises bid
Despite the unusually public and often heated criticism of Aurora’s management team, Curaleaf’s CEO and chairman, Boris Jordan, confirmed that the bid price had now been raised.
According to an October 05 SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) filing, each Aurora share would now receive 0.4013 Curaleaf subordinate voting shares plus US$1.00 in cash, up from 0.3463 shares and US$0.75.
Curaleaf has also raised the ceiling on what it is prepared to pay to US$6.00 per Aurora share, and pushed the deadline for shareholders to accept back by three days. As a significant part of the offer is paid in Curaleaf stock, this cap stops the overall value climbing further if Curaleaf’s own share price rises.
The revised offer represents an 86% premium to Aurora’s unaffected 30-day volume-weighted average price of US$2.75 as of August 10, the month before news of a bid first moved the price up.
Curaleaf said the combined company would operate across 17 countries, with combined revenue of more than US$1.5bn over the past 12 months, around US$350m in underlying operating profit, at least US$40m a year in expected cost savings from merging the two, and a combined market value above US$3bn.
Jordan told shareholders: “We are enhancing our proposal despite Aurora’s refusal to engage and provide access to customary due diligence. “Shareholders deserve a fair and open process that includes Curaleaf.”
In response, Aurora’s chairman and CEO Miguel Martin said: “The filing of a revised hostile bid is simply the next step in the process, not a deadline to make a decision.”
The board’s September 02 recommendation that shareholders take no action remains in force while the Special Committee of independent directors reviews the amended terms with advisers Fort Capital, Torys LLP and Kingsdale.
Jordan said Curaleaf had spent ‘the past several weeks’ meeting Aurora’s shareholder base, the same window in which reports suggest Organigram’s discussions with Aurora were already under way.
Player 2 has entered the game
Just days later, Cultivated Daily’s Jeremy Berke broke the news that Organigram has been in merger discussions with Aurora for several weeks. Neither company has publicly confirmed the talks, but Curaleaf’s statement, carried by MMJDaily on October 12, left little doubt that it believes they are live.
“We continue to be baffled by Aurora’s actions,” Curaleaf told the publication. As has become increasingly common since the takeover bid was first placed, Curaleaf made its frustrations clear, stating it was ‘outraged, and Aurora shareholders should be too’, while saying the process ‘defies all fiduciary logic and reason’.
It went on to question why a ‘small Canadian company’ had been admitted into Aurora’s process while it was ‘being denied customary due diligence access’.
Compared to Curaleaf, now the largest cannabis company in the world by revenue worth around $2.6bn, Organigram is relatively small, with a market capitalisation of roughly $200m. However, the tobacco giant British American Tobacco (BAT), worth more than $100bn, now owns a roughly 45% stake in Organigram.
The tobacco major has not publicly commented on Aurora, and any Organigram-led proposal would still have to be structured, approved and funded in a form regulators and shareholders would accept.
The European chessboard
As we reported in August, Curaleaf’s interest in Aurora hinges around its European market footprint, one that Aurora significantly expanded the same week.
On October 08, the company announced the completion of its expansion at the Leuna site in Saxony-Anhalt, now renamed Aurora Horizon, with a widened EU-GMP licence from the state’s Office for Social Affairs, Youth and Health. Aurora said the expected annual flower output at the facility had ‘more than doubled’, although the release did not give a baseline or a target in kilograms. The company describes itself as one of only three in-country producers in Germany.
“The completion of our Leuna facility transformation is an important milestone for Aurora,” said Alex Miller, Executive Vice President of Operations and Supply Chain at Aurora. “Now known as Aurora Horizon, the EU GMP-licensed facility strengthens our ability to serve patients in Germany.”
Prohibition Partners valued the German medical cannabis market at €1.15bn in 2025 and expects European medical cannabis sales to more than double by 2028.
Aurora’s European medical revenue rose from C$41.0m in FY2024 to C$131.8m in FY2026, and Curaleaf’s August communications identified European assets as the strategic prize.
Aurora’s Directors’ Circular on the revised terms is due in the week of October 20. Shareholders have until 11:59pm Mountain Time on December 04 to tender into Curaleaf’s offer.
In the meantime, the Alberta Securities Commission has an open application from Aurora identifying what it calls deficiencies in Curaleaf’s bid disclosure, including the absence of pro forma financial statements and failure to hold the bid open for the minimum deposit period.
Curaleaf said in its October 06 filing that it ‘does not agree’ with the technical comments but had addressed them ‘voluntarily, and not in response to any action by any regulator’.
