NEO emerging as CSE rival as U.S. pot company goes public with Canaccord’s help

Vanmala Subramaniam - thegrowthop.com Posted 5 years ago
image

American cannabis company Columbia Care Inc. made its rather unconventional public market debut on Monday, choosing to list on the little-known Toronto-based Aequitas NEO Exchange via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) created by investment firm Canaccord Genuity Group Inc.

The New York-based multi-state medical marijuana operator opened its first day of trading with a share price of $11.60 and a market capitalization of more than $2 billion, making it the first company worth over $1 billion to list on the NEO Exchange, which handles more than 10 per cent of total Canadian trading volume.

Columbia Care chose an atypical method of going public. Instead of the usual IPO or Reverse Takeover (RTO) transaction that most other cannabis companies have employed, the company merged with Canaccord Genuity Growth Corp., a SPAC created by the investment firm on the NEO Exchange with the purpose of attracting an American cannabis company to go public in Canada.

  • $3.4 billion deal to buy Acreage gives Canopy Growth gateway to massive American cannabis market
  • These are the cannabis companies the manager of Evolve’s U.S. Marijuana ETF is betting on
  • Canopy Growth is about to become the first pot stock to join S&P/TSX 60 index

“In this particular case we sold $40 million of effective blind pool cash into a public vehicle and then we said look, if someone wants to go public they can just merge with our SPAC,” Canaccord’s president and chief executive Dan Daviau told the Financial Post.

“Our plan was to make a cannabis company and we had generally discussed and contemplated a U.S. cannabis company. We tried to find the best candidate to put into this vehicle,” Daviau said.

With the transaction complete, Canaccord owns just under two per cent of Columbia Care, according to Daviau, who called his firm’s stake in the pot company “relatively negligible.” Canaccord will have no control over the management or ownership structure of Columbia Care, Daviau confirmed.

“It’s their company they run it. We just give them the SPAC,” he said.

In a straightforward IPO or RTO book-ended by an investment firm, the firm collects a percentage of commission from any transaction that ensues. In a SPAC transaction, the investment firm that creates the special vehicle usually ends up with stock in the company that uses the SPAC to go public, which could potentially be more lucrative than a flat commission from running a deal.

Columbia Care specializes primarily in medical marijuana cultivation, but touts itself as a leader in intellectual property related to the cannabis plant. The company operates in 13 U.S. states including California, as well as in the District of Columbia.

Cannabis companies with U.S. assets looking to access Canadian public markets are not allowed to list on exchanges operated by the TMX due to cannabis not being legal on a federal level south of the border. That rule has transformed the Canadian Securities Exchange into the primary pot exchange for American companies, especially over the last year.

But the NEO Exchange appears to be emerging as an alternative to the CSE for American cannabis companies or Canadian cannabis firms with U.S. assets — it is home to 70 listings, five of which are cannabis-related, including two cannabis-only ETFs.

“Because the NEO is a senior exchange, unlike the CSE, this was a transaction reviewed by the Canadian regulators, and required us to have three years of audit according to IFRS and US GAAP standards,” said Columbia Care’s chief executive Nicholas Vita. “We thought it was important investors knew everything about us.”

NEO Exchange CEO Jos Schmitt places his exchange on par with the TSX in terms of regulatory oversights and stringent listing requirements. “Companies listed on us are subject to governance requirements that are very different and much more stringent than the Venture exchange and the Securities Exchange. That’s our appeal,” Schmitt said.

NEO is owned by a variety of Canadian conglomerates including communications giant BCE Inc., and pension fund OMERS. ETFs make up the bulk of the exchange’s listings.

Schmitt told the Post that another American cannabis company is considering listing on the exchange in the “coming weeks and months.” Meanwhile, Canaccord recently announced it had completed an IPO for yet another SPAC called Canaccord Genuity Growth II Corp. listed on the NEO, raising more than $100 million in the process.

“Someone can merge with our newest SPAC,” Daviau said. “There are a lot of different innovative ways to go public. Quite frankly, you just don’t see that kind of innovation at some of the larger bank-owned dealers.”

• Email: [email protected] | Twitter: VanmalaS