Innovative Industrial Properties (IIPR 0.08%) has entered into the latest in its long series of sale-leaseback deals. The real estate investment trust (REIT) that specializes in properties for the marijuana industry announced Wednesday it has made such an arrangement to buy a complex in New Castle, Pennsylvania, from privately held Holistic Industries.
Innovative is paying $8.9 million, excluding transaction costs, for a complex that covers 7.4 acres of property, on which sits roughly 108,000 square feet of industrial space.
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It then turned around and signed the sale-leaseback arrangement with Holistic. The amount of rent the cannabis company will pay for its former property was not specified, but Innovative did say that up to $6.4 million will be provided as reimbursement for the tenant's improvements to the complex.
Sale-leaseback transactions -- in which a property's owner sells their real estate, then leases it from the buyer -- are now common in the cannabis industry. This is because they provide much-needed capital for marijuana companies, which frequently struggle with cash flow and/or profitability issues, but lack access to bank loans.
Innovative and Holistic have gone down the sale-leaseback road together before. In its press release trumpeting the deal, Innovative said that this is their third such arrangement. The two previous ones covered properties in Maryland and Massachusetts.
Holistic grows and processes medical cannabis at the Pennsylvania facility. So far, marijuana can only be legally sold and consumed in the state for medical purposes.
On Thursday, Innovative's shares fell by 5.6%, broadly in step with the decline recorded by the wider stock market.
