Ascend Wellness Holdings resolved its dispute this week with MedMen over its purchase of the company’s vertically integrated New York medical cannabis license, Marijuana Business Daily reports. Under the terms of the agreement, Ascend will purchase 99.9% of MedMen’s New York operation for $88 million. That is an additional $25 million on top of the original $63 million agreed to in December.
The deal includes MedMen’s grow facility in Utica and dispensaries in Manhattan, Long Island, Syracuse, and Buffalo, the report says.
“We are thrilled to put this dispute behind us and look forward to the imminent closing of this transaction,” Ascend founder and CEO Abner Kurtin said in a press release.
At closing, Ascend will pay $74 million and an additional $14 million, including $10 million in payouts and another $4 million related to the settlement, when the first adult-use sales are completed in a MedMen New York dispensary, the report says.
“While we always seek accretive deals, this transaction is particularly attractive given a recent comparable acquisition valued at $247 million,” Kurtin said in the release.
The settlement resolves a dispute between the two multi-state-operators where MedMen claimed at one point that Ascend “exerted undue influence on New York State government officials in order to obtain regulatory approval” for the license acquisition, MedMen said in its lawsuit. Specifically, the company had argued that Ascend’s donation to the office of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) had spurred the acquisition’s approval, but MedMen eventually dropped its lawsuit.
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