Questions America Wants Answered: "The High Times IPO – Skunk Buds or Brick Weed?"
From Nanalyze:
It was just a few weeks ago that we sent some of our brightest MBAs over to Europe to explore the recreational cannabis culture over there while trying not to get arrested or deported. Turns out, there aren’t many opportunities for investors over there – yet – and experts say the shortest path is the legalization of medical marijuana. That’s something we’re going to take a look at next, but in the meantime we noticed that High Times has announced plans for an IPO. That may present the closest thing to an investment opportunity for cannabis aficionados outside of Canada (aside from all the OTC stocks that have sprouted up like weeds). It’s also a great opportunity to see inside a pretty unique media business that’s graced our bookshelves since high school. Without further ado, let’s open up this sack and give it a big old sniff.
In their own words, “High Times has been the world’s leading source for daily cannabis news, weed information, and marijuana culture since 1974″. That sounds about right, but digging a bit deeper we see that the digital properties under the “High Times Holding Group” actually consist of two major sites. The first site is of course High Times which began publishing their magazine digitally in 2010 and which sees about 4 million unique users a month. The second property is actually the bigger “Green Rush Daily” which sees about 5 million unique users a month. (To put these numbers into perspective, political commentary / tech news site Tech Crunch gets about 12 million unique visitors a month.) In terms of market penetration, High Times estimates that about 30 million Americans puff the magic dragon so they still have some room to grow.
While this all sounds cool on paper, digging deeper into their IPO Filing shows things aren’t all that great. They’re looking to raise about $50 million and that’s mainly because they’ve been burning through some serious cash. From January 1, 2015 through September 30, 2017, they incurred net losses of over $19 million which may explain why they now have about $46.5 million in debt on their books. That debt also includes some “unpaid executive compensation and professional fees” which doesn’t bode well for employee morale. Things may be tight because as of the filing date, they had just $94,000 in cash on hand....MORE
I had to go to the
Urban Dictionary for "Brick Weed":
"Really shitty weed that comes from Mexico or some other place like that. It's dehydrated and stored in kilo bricks for travel, and when the dealer hits you up he just breaks a chunk off and weighs it out. It is usually only 5-10% THC.
'All the little goth kiddies here be smoking that brick weed, but we got some fire ass Mauwie Wowie green.'"
