The Canadian cannabis company Tilray Brands announced on Tuesday that it is expanding its beverage portfolio with the acquisition of popular New York-based craft brewer, Montauk Brewing.

“Tilray Brands continues to strengthen our U.S. footprint and operations through investments in and growing our portfolio of leading lifestyle CPG brands that resonate powerfully with consumers,” said Irwin D. Simon, chairman and chief executive officer of Tilray. “Montauk Brewing is an iconic brand with leading market share and distribution in the northeast. Tilray Brands intends to leverage SweetWater’s existing nationwide infrastructure and Montauk Brewing’s northeast influence to significantly expand our distribution network and drive profitable growth in our beverage-alcohol segment. This distribution network is part of Tilray’s strategy to leverage our growing portfolio of U.S. CPG brands and ultimately to launch THC-based product adjacencies upon federal legalization in the U.S.”

For Tilray, the acquisition provides another foothold into the coveted United States market. Like other international cannabis brands, Tilray is circling the U.S. ahead of an anticipated change to the country’s federal marijuana laws.

President Joe Biden last month announced pardons for all individuals with simple cannabis convictions. In the announcement, Biden also signaled a change to federal marijuana laws, saying that he had directed “the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General to initiate the administrative process to review expeditiously how marijuana is scheduled under federal law.”

“As I often said during my campaign for President, no one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana,” Biden said in the announcement, “Sending people to prison for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives and incarcerated people for conduct that many states no longer prohibit. Criminal records for marijuana possession have also imposed needless barriers to employment, housing, and educational opportunities. And while white and Black and brown people use marijuana at similar rates, Black and brown people have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted at disproportionate rates.”

Tilray’s announcement on Monday said that following “federal legalization in the U.S., Tilray plans to take full advantage of its strategic infrastructure, operations and consumer loyal brands across beer, spirits, and snack-food categories to parlay into THC-based products and further expand its commercial opportunities.”

The acquisition also helps Tilray expand its collection of alcohol brands.

In the announcement on Monday, the company said that Montauk, billed as the “the #1 craft brewer in Metro New York,” “joins Tilray’s growing U.S. beverage-alcohol segment, which already includes SweetWater Brewing Company, the 10th largest craft brewer in the nation with distribution across more than 40 states, the Alpine and Green Flash iconic Southern California brands, and its leading lifestyle bourbon and spirits brand, Breckenridge Distillery.”

Montauk “has enormous potential to expand its customer base and grow throughout the U.S. as a true national brand,” Tilray said in the press release.

The announcement said that Montauk Brewing, SweetWater Brewing, Green Flash and Alpine now serve as “the cornerstones of Tilray’s coast to coast craft beer segment and further strengthens the Company’s net revenue.”

In addition to the acquisition of Montauk Brewing, Tilray said that it is also appointing “veteran beer and beverage industry executive Ty H. Gilmore as President of Tilray’s U.S. beer business, a newly created position.”

“We are excited to welcome Montauk Brewing’s founders Vaughan Cutillo and Eric Moss, as well as Terry Hopper, Montauk Brewing’s General Manager, to the Tilray Brands family and I look forward to working closely with Ty Gilmore to maximize the performance of our enormously powerful craft and lifestyle beverage brand portfolio,” Simon said in the press release on Monday.

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High Times Holding Corporation has entered into an agreement to acquire the California operations of Moxie, the state’s first licensed cannabis company and a leading multistate cannabis operator. The acquisition gives High Times new cannabis cultivation and production capabilities to complement our current portfolio of cannabis holdings in California, the largest legal marijuana market in the world, where we operate branded dispensaries and offer licensed cannabis products. The deal also makes High Times the most well-known brand in the Golden State with a vertically integrated cannabis operation.

“With our current platform of stores, we believe this acquisition will be synergistic in nature for the Moxie brands and provide a good home for their branded products in California,” High Times CEO Paul Henderson said about the deal. “Additionally, it will provide High Times with a cultivation and production team that has won dozens of previous Cannabis Cups, and other awards across the country. We look forward to bringing High Times classics as well as some new favorites we’ve been working on to the masses with top quality production, both in our own stores, and to other retailers in the near future. This move opens the door to a whole new world of brands from the High Times organization.”

Moxie was the first cannabis company to be licensed in California and has since expanded its cultivation and production to legal weed states including Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Utah. Utilizing pharmaceutical grade technology and strict safety standards in their cultivation facilities, Moxie provides customers with high-quality recreational and medical cannabis products from its library of hundreds of varietals.

Deal Includes Nearly 50,000 Square Feet Of Cultivation

Under the deal, High Times will take over Moxie’s California operations, which include an 11,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and 46,000 square feet of flowering canopy cultivation. The acquisition gives the company the capacity to produce up to 3,500 pounds of dried cannabis flower and more than 25,000 pounds of fresh frozen cannabis annually for High Times and our associated branded products. The deal also includes an exclusive 99-year license to use the Moxie, MX, and HighNow brands in California. In return, the Moxie organization will be granted 1,363,654 shares of Hightimes voting common stock. 

“Moxie has been a leading brand in recreational and medical cannabis since our founding, which made it non-negotiable that any acquisition agreement was done with an organization that shares our commitment to creating the highest-quality cannabis products that are trusted by consumers and regulators,” said Jordan Lams, CEO and founder of Moxie. “We believe these values are essential, especially in our current economic climate, for maintaining a strong and prosperous industry. High Times is one of the most recognizable brands in cannabis and we have the utmost confidence in their ability to continue Moxie’s upward trajectory in California. This combination creates a vertically integrated business model that allows for more control and provides High Times with the freedom to make product-driven decisions that we know will help the industry and provide recreational and medical cannabis users with the highest quality cannabis products.”

Moxie Is A Leading Cannabis Brand

Moxie, a recognized leader in the industry with over 100 industry awards including 62 Cannabis Cups, will retain its cannabis cultivation and production operations in Pennsylvania, Utah, and Missouri. And while the continuing federal prohibition on cannabis means that each state has its own regulated market, Lams said that he is confident that the Moxie brand will be able to maintain its standards of quality across the markets the company operates in.

“One of Moxie’s most important goals since our founding has been to create cannabis products that are trusted equally by consumers and regulators, which is why we carefully monitor every stage of the cultivation, production, and distribution process,” Lams said. “High Times shares this belief in the importance of taking care of the cannabis plant and we’re very confident that all Moxie products will continue to be of the highest quality and maintain the trust of local governments and consumers. Our goal now is to continue to bring the Moxie product to markets across the country and maintain these company-wide best practices, while also continuing to be aware of the unique qualities and preferences in each state.”

High Times was founded in 1974 as an underground magazine with our fingers on the pulse of marijuana culture worldwide. In recent years, the company has expanded into all things cannabis with new ventures in print, video, and multimedia, and has set the bar for industry events around the globe with our series of Cannabis Cup competitions. Over the past three years, High Times has also entered the legal cannabis industry with eight dispensaries owned and operated in California, plus licensing agreements for retailers in Michigan and Florida. High Times branded cannabis products are available is six markets.

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Denver-based MJBiz, well known for its online B2B news and business content, has been acquired by Emerald X. Emerald is a subsidiary of Emerald Holding, a media and event company based in New York, and acquired MJBiz for a total of $120 million.

The acquisition includes MJBizCon, MJBizDaily, Hemp Industry Daily, MJBiz Magazine as well as The Emerald Conference, which MJBiz acquired back in 2020. According to Hervé Sedky, Emerald’s president and CEO, this acquisition will greatly benefit his company. “We have long admired MJBiz’s sterling reputation for being the most trusted event and content producer serving the business side of the cannabis and hemp industries and their respective participants. MJBiz’s leading event and content portfolio coupled with their 365-day engagement platform, which connects the entire cannabis supply chain, will diversify our collective product offerings, enhance our growth profile and enable us to deliver even greater value to our customers over the long term.”

MJBiz’s CEO Chris Walsh also shared that this move represents the cannabis industry’s growth. “This really highlights the rapidly growing interest in cannabis from all corners of the business world, the market’s vast potential and the success of not only MJBiz, but also of the entire industry,” Walsh said. “We’re seeing these types of deals across cannabis as pioneering companies such as ours level up to more effectively tap and foster the industry’s next wave of growth.”

MJBizCon’s most recent event was held in October 19-22, 2021, and attracted approximately 27,000 attendees and 1,200 exhibitors at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Nevada. The event boasts that it’s one of the largest and long-lasting cannabis business events, and will be celebrating its 11th year of operation in 2022 with the expectation that attendance will reach up to 30,000. Tentatively, the event date is set November 15-18, 2022. The Emerald Conference is slated to occur between February 27-March 1, 2022.

Emerald works on over 142 events and 16 media projects that cover a wide variety of markets, including design, equipment, retail, safety and security, and technology. The Outdoor Retailer Snow Show, International Pizza Expo, Modern Day Marine, Retail Innovation Conference & Expo, Las Vegas Antique Jewelry & Watch Show, to name just a few events, are all hosted by Emerald.

According to MJBizDaily, the current team of about 40 people will continue working under its new company ownership, while Emerald employs over 600 people. CEO Chris Walsh, Senior Vice President of Events and Sales Jess Tyler and Senior Vice President of Content and Audience Development Pam Moore have been confirmed to continue working as part of MJBiz’s day-to-day activity.

Co-founders Cassandra Farmington and Anne Holland will also continue to consult. MJBiz Co-founder Cassandra Farmington is confident that MJBiz being absorbed into another will only strengthen both companies. “Our organization has experienced massive growth since its inception, initially as a how-to resource to help dispensary owners run their businesses better, into our position today as the leading commercial resource for the cannabis sector,” Farmington said. “Integrating with a larger organization provides the additional resources and channels to unlock the next phase of MJBiz’s growth and is the right next step in our evolution as a business. We chose Emerald because they clearly value the unique aspects of our brand and are committed to serving the industry’s expansion.”

Aside from the $120 million acquisition amount, but MJBiz notes that the earnout is based on future financial performance calculated as “an amount equal to the average MJBiz EBITDA over the past two years minus $13 million—multiplied by 9.3.” Emerald’s Chief Financial Officer projects that this earnout could amount to somewhere between $30 million to $50 million in early 2023.

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