High Times, one the best know brands in the cannabis industry, has put its assets up for sale as it scrambles to gather enough cash to pay its creditors.
The 50-year-old magazine, which has since expanded significantly into further publications, events and dispensaries, has called for offers for its array of assets after being put into a ‘court ordered receivership’.Â
Greenlife Business Group, which is handling the sale, has called for offers ahead of May 17, by which time any assets without bids will be put up for auction.
The property on offer includes the intellectual property, including branding, domain name, and URLs for its flagship High Times magazine, Dope Magazine, Culture Magazine, alongside its famous Cannabis Cup and Chalice Cup events brands.
According to Greenlife’s CEO, the media properties could fetch around $7m.
The 420.com brand is understood to be the only asset to have received bids so far and is expected to sell for around $100,000, well below the $300,000 plus it was originally acquired for.
After the founder, Thomas Forcade, sold the brand to a consortium of investors led by Adam Levin in 2017 in a deal worth $70m, the brand has struggled financially.
Levin is understood to have used considerable capital loaned from ExWorks to finance the acquisition, with initial plans to take the group public on the NASDAQ.
After this plan was put on ice due to the companies plant-touching cannabis cup events, the group announced a string of acquisitions in an effort to bring in more revenue.
These focused largely on further events companies, and later included a number of dispensary licences acquired from Have a Heart group in California.
With many of these deals failing to close, and the company continuing to sell shares to fund further acquisitions, the company eventually ran into trouble.
Last year, Levin was charged with fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to disclose paid promotions around the stock offerings.
He was subsequently banned from serving as a director of the company for three years, and the company was forced to pay a combined total of nearly $700,000.
After defaulting on a $28.8m payment to ExWorks, sending the lender into receivership also, High Times’ was ordered to sell off its assets to pay creditors.
