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Media

High Times magazine sold for $42M

By
Keith J. Kelly
Published June 2, 2017
Updated Aug. 10, 2018, 10:41 a.m. ET

High Times, the 44-year-old magazine that has long advocated for the legalization of pot, has been sold to a group of investors led by Los Angeles-based Oreva Capital for $42 million.

Adam Levin, managing director of Oreva, said that he is the acting CEO after heading a group that gained control of 60 percent of the stock of the old company, Trans-High Company (THC), now renamed High Times Holdings Company (HTHC).

“Cannabis is the fastest growing industry the country,” he said. “And High Times is the No. 1 brand.”
He noted 28 states have OK’d medical marijuana use, and eight have approved recreational use.

Most of the legacy shareholders are staying on board as minority shareholders, controlling 40 percent of the stock. While the new owners talk investment and growth, they are not all buttoned-down corporate types.

The new group of 20 investors is Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley, the youngest son of reggae legend Bob Marley.

“When I was in high school I used to grow some herb,” Marley said. “I learned to differentiate the male from the female plant by reading High Times magazine.”

Ean Seeb, a founding partner at Denver Relief Consulting, is also part of the new investment team
Levin said it was not exactly an auction, but he was not the only potential suitor. The company has revenues estimated to be around $20 million and profits of around $2 million, several sources said.

One source who looked at the magazine and passed said it was still seen as a magazine aimed at “naughty high school students and stoners.”

Levin sees it in a different light. He cites Arcview Market Research, which said that the legal marijuana industry last year grew 30 percent to $6.7 billion. More than half the company’s revenue comes from the High Times Cannabis Cups, a combination of music festivals and trade shows that are going to be staged in 11 cities this year, up from seven last year with more to come.

“It’s a burgeoning economy for consumers in the cannabis world — and it’s still early on,” Levin said.

The magazine was founded as a lark by Tom Forcade in 1974, an activist journalist and self-proclaimed pot smuggler. In 1978, he committed suicide in his Greenwich Village apartment. Staffers at the time reportedly took his ashes to the roof of the World Trade Center, where they sprinkled them into joints which they then smoked.

Civil rights attorney Michael Kennedy, who fought many of the publications’ early legal battles, served as chairman and was one of the trustees who took over following Forcade’s death. But it was often a rocky transition with Forcade’s family members in the early years battling inside and outside of court.

“They’re all settled now,” said Levin. Kennedy passed in January 2016, and his stock shares passed to his widow, Eleanora Kennedy, who remains one of the minority shareholders.

In January, the magazine moved its headquarters from New York to Los Angeles. Chief revenue officer Matt Stang, who supervised the move and is staying on board under the new owners, has called California “the cannabis capital of the country.” Longtime publisher Mary McEvoy stayed behind, but was downgraded to a consulting role.

Chief Operating Officer Larry Linietsky left at the end of 2016 and was not replaced.

Levin said most of the staff he inherited, including Editor-in-Chief Mike Gianakos, are expected to remain while he pushes more Cannabis Cups and licensing deals.

“We just want to create kickass content and advocate for our readers,” Levin said.