LOS ANGELES – High Times magazine and the sprawling but bankrupt empire that owns it are for sale piecemeal to whoever offers the most for each part. The man tasked with selling the company bit by bit said he believes the iconic trademark may go for as much as $7 million, but websites, dispensaries, operating licenses, and other assets in the portfolio may bring only a fraction of their potential value.
Of the assets, only one domain name, 420.com, has received an offer. At $100,000, the proposal is well below the $307,000 the domain name sold for in 2022.
Everything must go by May 17, according to Greenlife Business Group, which is handling the Hightimes Holding Corporation sale under court-ordered receivership. Any assets not receiving offers acceptable to the court will be sent to public auction.
High Times and its holding company have been on a financial rollercoaster since 2017, when Adam Levin and a consortium of investors he put together — with the help of at least two loans from ExWorks — bought the magazine and its Cannabis Cup events from founder Tom King Forçade’s heirs for a reported $70 million. Levin had big plans for the holding company for which the magazine formed the centerpiece, including going public on Nasdaq and opening a chain of dispensaries bearing the High Times name.
The major stock markets in the United States would not accept Hightimes’ listing because of the plant-touching events and dispensary plans, and Levin reportedly declined to list on Canadian stock exchanges. Instead, in 2018 the company attempted a Regulation A+ offering that never got off the ground. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission revoked the offering’s registration in 2020 after Hightimes Holding Corporation failed to file required financial statements. When Hightimes continued to sell stock anyway, grossing about $20 million according to the SEC, the federal watchdog charged the company and Levin, its chairman, with fraud. Hightimes and Levin paid a combined total of more than $670,000 to settle the charges. Levin is prohibited from serving as an officer or director through 2026.
As the stock offering began to flail in 2019, Hightimes warned it might have to cease operations unless it could find a backer to underwrite $105.2 million in debt accumulated during an aggressive expansion phase during which the company acquired additional publications and festivals. Most of those deals never closed. Hightimes defaulted on the $28-million secured note held by ExWorks, which led to ExWorks entering receivership. When the ExWorks receiver tried to collect from Hightimes, the company’s house of cards collapsed and it was placed in receivership too.
The asset sale includes trademarks and other intellectual property belonging to High Times, Dope, and Culture magazines, including mailing lists and Salesforce records; Cannabis Cup and Chalice Cup intellectual property; intellectual property and product packaging for Moxie; websites; California cultivator, distributor, retailer, and manufacturing licenses; seven built-out dispensary properties, some owing past-due rent; a distribution business; and a cultivation business.
At its peak in 1978, four years after it debuted, High Times boasted a paid circulation of 500,000 copies. According to records presented to the receiver, the magazine currently has 8,419 paid print subscribers and 10,325 paid digital subscribers.
