Glen Ibbott
Analyst · Aurora Cannabis
Thank you, Miguel, and hello everyone. Before my remarks, as a reminder, last year, Aurora changed its fiscal yearend March 31, so the period ended June 30, 2023 that we are reporting on marks our first quarter of fiscal 2024.
Aurora reported a strong quarter in Q1. In Medical, our international business continued to grow nicely as demand for our products are outpacing supply, and Canadian Medical delivered yet another solid quarter of meaningful revenue and gross profit. In Consumer, our business was up year-over-year, down only slightly sequentially despite the halt in our popular Glitches product. And finally, Bevo had its best quarter to date in our plant propagation business unit.
I'm also very happy to report that along with good traction on our topline, we delivered the highest adjusted gross profit we've had in 3 years, and we are on track to generate the further cost efficiencies we've discussed, which will reduce cash outlay without impacting growth opportunities in our business. Add it all up and we delivered our third consecutive quarter with positive adjusted EBITDA, a record for us at $2.2 million.
Looking at our Q1 results in more depth, et revenue was $75.1 million compared to $50.1 million in the year ago period. We saw growth across all business units, including record revenue at Bevo which we acquired in August of 2022. Our Global Medical cannabis business generated $41.6 million in revenue at a 61% adjusted gross margin. More specifically, International Medical revenue was $16.2 million, up 40% from last year. And Canadian Medical cannabis was $25.4 million, up 2% year-over-year and 5% sequentially. This strong performance in our highest margin channels was due to several factors, including the positive market reaction in Europe to our new Canadian grown high-potency cultivars, driving our best quarter of European revenue ever with record quarters for us in Germany and Poland. And the continued growth of the Australian Medical market, where we also had our best quarter ever of sales in that market, more than offsetting the $1 million of Israel revenue from last quarter that did not repeat in Q1. And of course, our focus on supporting and growing sales to our insured patient groups in Canada.
Q1 adjusted gross margin for Medical cannabis was 61%, within our target range of 60% above and consistent sequentially. However, it was down from 67% a year ago. As Q1 revenue mix contains more volume to certain international bulk export markets, it produced a slightly lower adjusted gross margin.
As usual, driven by our leadership in global medical markets, our medical cannabis business represented about 75% of our Q1 cannabis revenue and 88% of adjusted cannabis gross profit, an important distinction from our peers. Consumer cannabis net revenue was $13.2 million, up 5% from a year ago as we continue to drive new and innovative products to all of our markets. We were pleased with this performance, particularly given that we only had a partial quarter of sales in Q1 of the popular large pack Glitches prior to the Health Canada industry-wide halt on certain ingestible extract products. That said, we have a strong product pipeline with compelling new innovations planned for launch in late Q2. We expect to overcome the loss of large pack Glitches revenue as we enter Q3.
Adjusted gross margin in the consumer channel was 27% compared to 26% in the prior year quarter, with the difference driven mainly by higher efficiency cultivation and production.
In our plant propagation business, Bevo contributed $19.9 million in net revenue, an 85% increase sequentially. This reflects the seasonal cadence of the business and it reflects overperformance in the quarter. There was no revenue from Bevo in the year ago comparative quarters. We had not yet completed the acquisition.
Client propagation adjusted gross margins were 22%, down sequentially from 36% as expected due to the mix in annual timing of vegetable and ornamental plant sales.
Adjusted SG&A was well controlled at approximately $29.5 million, reflecting our commitment to keeping SG&A at or below $30 million. And as we've discussed previously, as part of our push for another $40 million in annualized cost savings, we have already taken actions that will reduce SG&A further. We expect those savings to begin to show up in Q2.
Looking forward, we expect Q2 cannabis net revenue to be largely similar to fiscal Q1, with the geographical mix weighted slightly more towards the International Medical segment. And for plant propagation, we expect to see reduced revenues and gross profit due to seasonality. Normally, Bevo earns about 25% to 35% of annual revenues in the second half of the calendar year, our fiscal Q2 and Q3. That said, as we accelerate Bevo's business plan, we expect first sales of orchids from the 800,000 square foot Sky facility to occur in Q3 of this fiscal year, and sales from the 1.6 million square foot Aurora Sun facility to begin in the first half of our next fiscal year. We are excited about the dependable yet rapidly growing contribution and diversification that the plant propagation platform brings to our company.
Now turning to cash flows and our balance sheet. We are on track to meet our objective of positive free cash flow in calendar 2024. And in fact, we made a lot of progress in Q1. Our operations used a net $11.2 million, down 58% from the year ago period. Driving this improvement were our actions to close less efficient operations and to supply our end markets from Aurora's cost-effective, high-quality Canadian EU GMP production facilities.
In Q1, we closed our Aurora Nordic facility and our U.S. CBD business, and we decided to sell the European R&D facility. These actions will positively impact cash flows and margins in the second half of our fiscal year by at least $16 million of annualized savings. We've also taken a number of further cost reduction initiatives in operations and SG&A during Q1 and those annualized benefits of approximately $24 million should start to show up in Q2 and be fully realized in the second half of this fiscal year.
I should note that Q1 cash flows did include payments for several restructuring initiatives, including contract terminations and severance. We do expect more of this in Q2, but it should become much lighter after that as we complete the restructuring actions we've already announced.
And of course, we've been diligently taking care of the convertible debt balance. During Q1 and shortly afterwards, we purchased $83.5 million of our convertible senior notes at an average 2.24% discount to par value for aggregate cash consideration of approximately $62 million and the issuance of 28.9 million common shares. Currently, we have approximately $63 million of convertible debt remaining, and we'll have it all paid within the next 7 months.
As at July 31, we're very pleased to have approximately $214 million of cash and cash equivalents, which is more than sufficient to fund operations until we reach positive free cash flow. To sum up, over the last 3 years, Aurora's financial metrics have gotten better and better, driven by a diversified global business delivering dependable revenue and strong gross profit. We've also strengthened our balance sheet, rationalized our cost structure, and we believe we are ideally positioned to take advantage of growth opportunities across our business units. Thanks for your interest. I'll now turn the call back to Miguel.