CANNAINVESTOR Magazine May / June 2017 | Page 99

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IIPR is what caught my attention. A important and long-established investment banking firm, Ladenburg Thalman, established back in 1876 (141 years strong), backed an IPO for IIPR whose business was Initially, the raise was $175 million but was ultimately due to pricing changes raised closer to $67 million. Though the devil is in the details, but the main point was that Wall Street had recognized a new emerging industry. The IIPR IPO was very exciting for the cannabis industry, as it provided many investors with the potential to participate in the ancillary market with a liquid investment vehicle. Any company in this industry, including IIPR will need to deploy its initial capital, build confidence with investors and raise additional capital so that it can begin paying a substantial dividend that reflects the underlying yields of its assets and can scale its operations. Though I am favorable on this investment space, IIPR may have made some poor initial investment decisions.

From its public debut, IIPR raised approximately $67 million dollars in cash, intent on using these proceeds to purchase properties across a host of states that provide legal cover to grow medical-grade marijuana. Unfortunately, IIPR was focusing on deploying too much of its capital on a single property to purchase a 127,000 square foot property, inclusive of surrounding acreage, in Montgomery, New York. The purchase price for this fertile piece of property - $30 million dollars. IIPR bought the land from a company called PharmaCann, who has a license to grow and dispense medical marijuana in the state of New York. Because PharmaCann already has the license in place, IIPR will now turn around and immediately lease the land back to PharmaCann so they can cultivate the land and start turning buds into dollars. In that sense, IIPR will soon be generating revenue, a relative first for most in the industry.

Green Leaf Investment Fund, Inc. (GLIF), the focus of this report, hopes to be a bit more diversified. GLIF is a startup. They have recently launched a Regulation A+ offering on CrowdVest. It is what is known as a crowd-funding offering which allows the very small investor (I'm told as little as $480.00) to participate. I don't know for sure, but I doubt Ladenburg Thalman accepted that small of an investor commitment. Officially, the offering will allow Green Leaf to raise up to $10.2 million, with a goal of $5 million set by the company. The offering is up to 21,250,000 shares of common stock, priced at $0.48 per share.