Viridian Capital Advisors have announced that the marijuana industry has raised more than CAN$1 billion in 2016.
Last week, OrganiGram Holdings Inc raised C$40 million to help hit the billion dollar line. This figure will be used for the expansion and build out of the company’s derivative, extract, and cultivation facilities. Additionally, a private placement with Aphria Inc gave Tetra Bio-Pharma, Inc a sum of C$1 million to kick off clinical trials in PhytoPain Pharma.
The billion dollars was mainly made in North America, with other countries contributing little amounts, this is according to Scott Greiper, the president and founding partner of Viridian.
Greiper also described the Canadian market as a meaningful metric compared to the future U.S. market. Although the program was slow to build, medical cannabis has been legal in Canada for many years now. The medical marijuana industry started taking off after the election of Prime Minister Trudeau.
Greiper credited the investment boom in the country to Prime Minister Trudeau who has increasingly made legalization of recreational pot a key agenda in his administration.
“Publicly traded licensed producers are the largest deals in Canada,” said Greiper. “Another thing we’re seeing is underwriters there are buying deals and then selling it to their investor network. You don’t see this very often in the U.S.” Grieper said.
A biotech company by the name GW Pharmaceuticals was among the best performers of 2016 with two tranches of $250 million. GW Pharmaceuticals is a publicly traded company. Innovative Industrial Properties; the first NYSE-listed publicly traded cannabis company came in second. IIPR is a real estate investment trust that that buys facilities linked with cultivating marijuana.
With the election of Donald Trump in the U.S., marijuana investors and proponents wait to see if the president-elect will side with conservatives that hate the legalization of marijuana or move with the will of the people that have voted to legalize marijuana in a lot of states.
