A big question among cannabis investors and operators is which “single institutional investor” who took down over 3 million shares of Green Thumb Industries (CSE: GTII) (OTC: GTBIF) recently. An SEC filing today disclosed that it may be Palestra Capital Management, based in NYC. The firm disclosed a 9.2 million share stake, amounting to 5.3% of GTI.
PCM is managed by Jeremy Schiffman, who was a partner at TPG-AXON prior to launching Palestra in 2011, and Andrew Immerman, who was a portfolio manager at CR Intrinsic Investors prior to joining Palestra in 2011. As of mid-November, the firm reported $4.3 billion in assets invested in just 29 companies, so the GTI stake is rather meaningful to the firm.
While it’s not clear that PCM is the buyer of the recent offering or the same company that bought 5.5 million shares at C$19.25 in late October and then added 2.5 million shares at C$27.50 in mid-December, it seems hard to imagine how it could have acquired such a large stake otherwise.
The increased institutional involvement, while still nascent, bodes well for the entire group of multi-state operators (MSOs), as we previously discussed. Other leading investors known to be involved in the sector include Putnam and Wasatch Global.
