Emerald Health Therapeutics (TSXV: EMH; OTCQX: EMHTF), referred to as “Emerald” for clarity, is a Canadian cannabis company offering wellness-oriented and recreational cannabis products. Emerald provided an update yesterday on their recently announced a shares for debt transaction with Emerald Health Sciences, (“Sciences”) a control person for Emerald.

Presently, Emerald carries an aggregate debt of $2,816,963. Per a previously disclosed loan agreement between both parties, Emerald will settle $794,182 owed to Sciences, as well as $2,022,781 owed to Sciences pursuant to trades payable. Emerald Health Therapeutics will also issue 9,713,666 common shares of Emerald to Sciences at $0.29 per share in order to fulfill the debt.

Currently, Sciences holds roughly 29,687,942 of Emerald’s issued shares and upon the completion of the debt settlement, Sciences will hold approximately 23.1% of the issued and outstanding shares of Emerald, on an undiluted basis.

Due to Sciences being a control person of Emerald, the settlement is considered to be a “related party transaction”, meaning the companies had a pre-existing connection prior to the transaction.

Emerald is not the only company in a cash crunch, and relying on selling common shares to stay above water. MedMen has also been making the headlines for a similar situation. The company recently sent out emails to their vendors stating they cannot pay them, and are offering shares in their company instead.

Green Market Report talked to Adam Bierman, the CEO of MedMen, about their circumstances. Bierman tells us, “We’ve been very forthright with the public, and with our investment community at large about the fact that at the end of last year we entered into a restructuring in the business, exiting the hyper-growth stage of the business, and getting into sustainability, and with that, there’s a lot of pain. And that pain starts at the employees that were on this mission with us, building this platform with us that we had to part ways with.”