Cannacurio #75: How much does a store cost?

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Last year there was a post about which MSOs bought or built their businesses. For this week’s analysis, we wanted to examine the prices paid for retailers and pharmacies. To do this, we examined the 600+ M&A deals we compiled in our Cannabiz Business Intelligence offering and removed any deals that were part of a deal that also sold other license types. That left 170 stores in 16 states. We included both closed and announced deals, but ignored canceled deals.

• Pennsylvania leads the nation with the highest price paid for stores as part of store-only deals
• 2021 was the year with the most transactions as 46% of the 170 transactions changed hands
• 2021 was also the year with the highest price at $13.46 million
• California led the country with 22 of those transactions, followed by Pennsylvania with 21

We found deals ranging in price from $36.77M all the way up to $216,000. Here are the 12 most paid prizes, along with date and status:

Not surprisingly, all of these deals took place between 2019 and 2021 when capital was available. Here are the store listings by year and the average price paid that year:

California, Pennsylvania and Colorado topped the rankings, with Maryland and Ohio not too far behind.

And here are the average prices paid in these sixteen states. Not surprisingly, there is a wide price range due to different market dynamics and different timing of these acquisitions.

This article examines 170 selected transactions involving only retailers/pharmacies. This was done to allow us to see the price point for this type of business without having to resort to production and cultivation asset prices. The year 2021 was the peak in terms of number of stores sold and price. In 2022 and 2023, the numbers have decreased. It looks like they might be able to match 2022 in terms of deals. The price in 2023 is up $1.2 million, but that’s likely influenced by the states where the deals were made.

Ed Keating is co-founder of Cannabiz Media and oversees the company’s data research and government relations. Throughout his career he has worked with and advised information companies on compliance issues. Ed has led product, marketing and sales while overseeing complex, multi-country product lines in securities, corporate, UCC, safety, environmental and human resources.

At Cannabiz Media, Ed enjoys the challenge of working with regulators around the world as he and his team gather corporate, financial and licensing information to track the people, products and companies in the cannabis economy.

Ed graduated from Hamilton College and received his MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School.

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Cannacurio is a weekly column from Cannabiz Media featuring insights from the most comprehensive licensing data platform. Check out Cannacurio posts and podcasts for the latest updates and information.