I said it last week and it’s proving out; Golden Leaf Holdings (GLH.C), having learned its lesson from being too focused one one vertical over the past 18 months, is now looking to grow fast and furiously.

And, just like clockwork, today the company dropped another expansion bombshell.

GLH has signed a binding letter of agreement to acquire a “a cultivation licence and an extraction licence in Nevada from NevWa LLC, (doing business as Grassroots).”

NevWa’s cultivation and extraction license, based out of Sparks, Nevada, allows for the distribution and sale of products across the state of Nevada, including in Las Vegas and Reno. Medical marijuana is currently legal in Nevada, and the state’s recreational market is scheduled to launch in July 2017. Nevada’s medical market also enables reciprocity for patients, whereby patients from other states can legally use their medical marijuana cards in Nevada, opening the medical market to the state’s more than 40 million yearly visitors.

This is HUGE news. GLH has a strong business model with its core brands and extraction knowledge in Oregon, but Vegas is a way bigger market and it welcomes out of state ownership and consumer business.

While some have expressed concern new President Donald Trump is going to have the feds kicking in weed company doors going forward, Nevada has a long history of holding itself outside the accepted American midwest norm. Home to legal brothels, sports books, and casinos, the US government has long given the state latitude in deciding to make otherwise illegal federal situations legal, taxed, and regulated, so expanding into The Silver State is a great move in removing that risk.

The deal will cost GLH the princely sum of US $1.925 million when the deal goes definitive, which is DIRT CHEAP as an entry into a state that is one of the tourism capitals of the world. When it closes, GLH will be able to move their GoldenXTRX brand and others into the state, thereby helping build their brand several steps closer to being a nationally recognized mark.

The NevWa deal is just the latest in a series of grabs by GLH, including:

This deal, and the three previous, were put together by AC Financial Group out of Michigan, which was tough to track down because the Googles show many iterations of that name, including an AC Group of Accounting Firms, an AC Financial Group, and an AC Group ‘which specializes in finances.’

The real AC Group Financial (for our purposes) managed to put together a $15 million deal with Aurora (ACB.V) earlier for CanvasRX, so they’re kind of killing it on the cannabis deal-making side.

As is Golden Leaf, which shows no likelihood of slowing down on the deal front.The previous news release announced who would be leading the charge to raise the financing to get all these deals done.

Don Robinson, CEO of GLH, commented, “We are proud to engage with Canaccord Genuity, the leading investment bank in the cannabis marketplace, to help fund our acquisition strategy..”

THE PROS AND CONS

Canaccord will have some raising to do, and GLH’s share price is not at the level you’d hope to get a bunch of fairly high-priced deals done. There is concern about dilution among some investors, which is fair, with 100 million shares already outstanding.

That said, the revenue the deals will be bringing in makes the company an instantly bankable deal with a far larger value than the current $30m market cap. That revenue also means the need for future financing should be greatly reduced.

I’ve spoken to several large holders of GLH stock that are way under water from when they got in (I’m among them), and can reveal the mood has switched in the last few weeks from what could only be described as poisonous a quarter ago, to ‘grumpy bear waking up from a spring nap’ now.

Which is good. At least, better.

If the share price can keep rolling upwards to beyond $0.40 before any financing is done, they’ll likely shift into ‘mildly bemused.’

GLH stock has shifted from as low as $0.285 two weeks ago to $0.355 today.

I like this forward progress. Real change can only be made one step at a time, and GLH has got some mo’. I’m holding.

— Chris Parry

FULL DISCLOSURE: The author owns GLH stock, and Golden Leaf is an Equity.Guru marketing client.