Benzinga | Jul 8, 2021 11:35AM EDT

10 Highest Credit Scores For Smaller-Cap Cannabis Companies, From The Viridian Cannabis Credit Tracker

Last week we introduced the Viridian Cannabis Credit Tracker and illustrated it with the over $1B Multi-State Operators by market cap.

* This week we show the ranking of the ten highest ranking credits out of the 21 US Cultivation & Retail companies we track with market caps between $10MM and $200M.

* The Viridian Cannabis Credit Tracker is particularly valuable when looking at companies of this size as only five of these companies have analyst coverage. The graph shows the Viridian Credit Score in blue where a higher score indicates stronger credit quality.

* The green line shows the ranking of the companies on our leverage index which is the most powerful of the four sets of variables that are used to calculate the credit score. The Viridian leverage index uses a combination of balance sheet, cash flow, and market value variables. The use of market value variables makes the credit score more sensitive to developments in between financial statement releases.

* The scoring system ranks MariMed (OTC:MRMD) as the best credit of the group. This shows a tremendous improvement for this company, which appeared close to insolvency as recently as a year ago. MariMed ranks now ranks highest in liquidity and leverage.

* The lowest ranking credit, MedMen, just makes it into the top ten. It has low rankings for leverage but has reasonable near-term liquidity and also the largest size (as measured by assets and market cap).

The Viridian Capital Chart of the Week highlights key investment, valuation and M&A trends taken from the Viridian Cannabis Deal Tracker.

The Viridian Cannabis Deal Tracker is a proprietary information service that monitors capital raise and M&A activity in the legal cannabis and hemp industry. Each week the Tracker aggregates and analyzed all closed deals and segments each according to key metrics:

* Industry Sector (one of 12 sectors, from Cultivation to Brands)

* Dollar value of the transaction

* Region in which the deal occurred (country or U.S. state)

* Status of the company announcing the transaction (Public vs. Private)

* Deal structure (equity vs. debt)

* Key deal terms (Pricing and Valuation)

The Viridian Cannabis Deal Tracker provides the market intelligence that cannabis companies, investors, and acquirers utilize to make informed decisions regarding capital allocation and M&A strategy.

Since its inception in 2015, the Viridian Cannabis Deal Tracker has tracked and analyzed more than 2,500 capital raises and 1,000 M&A transactions totaling over $50 billion in aggregate value.

The preceding article is from one of our external contributors. It does not represent the opinion of Benzinga and has not been edited.

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Photo: Dylan Gillis on Unsplash