Acreage Holdings Raises $119 Million, Possibly Largest Private Round In U.S. Cannabis Industry

Acreage Holdings continues to quickly take charge in dominating the U.S. cannabis scene. Today’s news of raising $119 million will comfortably position the company to go public on the Canadian Securities Exchange this year. In addition to raising what could be the largest private round in the U.S. cannabis industry, Acreage completed the roll-up of control positions in several U.S. states.

“The response we received from our investor partners was profoundly encouraging. The combination of monies raised and the rollup cements Acreage as one of the best capitalized companies in the industry with a footprint that is second to none,” Kevin Murphy, founder and CEO of Acreage Holdings said. “This gives us an exceptionally strong investment proposition to bring into the public markets in our upcoming listing.”

Currently, Acreage is one of the largest cannabis companies in the U.S. with a presence in 13 states. Now with the money it has raised, Acreage will be able to acquire additional licenses, brands, and other properties.

Acreage currently owns or operates licenses in 13 states (but is close to pushing that number to 15) and plans to use the monies raised to acquire additional licenses, brands and other properties to increase its reach, breadth of offerings and depth of management team.

“We are planning on listing on the CSE for many reasons, including the positive reception that the Canadian institutional investment community has shown to the U.S. cannabis industry and to Acreage in particular. Additionally, the CSE has become the exchange of choice for U.S. companies like ours,” Murphy continued. “The liquidity on the CSE is incredibly attractive to Acreage, and we know that retail investors in the U.S. have become comfortable with that exchange. We expect to see a tremendous response to our offering this fall.”

Initially, the company had planned to raise $50 million, but the addition of former Speaker of the House John Boehner and former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld drew widespread interest from investors. The round was quickly oversubscribed and accomplished in less than three months. In addition to that, Acreage had no need to hire bankers in order to bring in the investors and was able to accomplish this task on its own.

In a move that hasn’t been commonly seen in the cannabis industry, Acreage plans to put its investors before the executive team by making the new shares in the company senior to the management held shares. In a recent interview on the Midas Letter, Murphy said, “Every round of financing that we’ve ever done we’ve subordinated our own shares to those investors because it’s our goal; yes, to enrich ourselves but I often say you know I don’t like losing my own money but I’ve got a very, very hard time losing somebody else’s money and so that’s the way we’ve done it and that’s the message we’ve conveyed to our investors and that is why on this last round of financing that we’ve just done, we were about 5 to 6 times oversubscribed for it.”

“Our objective with our investors is to set the standard in terms of professionalism and competency in order to remove as much risk from cannabis investing as possible,” said George Allen, the President of Acreage Holdings. “It is a mission that will remain paramount to us as we transition from a private to a public investor base.”

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