Riding a wave of optimism for marijuana stocks, WM Holding -- the parent company of popular dispensary directory Weedmaps -- recently revealed that it plans to go public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
In this segment from Motley Fool Live recorded on Feb. 5, 2021, longtime Motley Fool contributor Eric Volkman and healthcare and cannabis bureau chief Corinne Cardina discuss whether an investment in this new weed stock might be a good idea.
Corinne Cardina: I think we have time for at least one more. Weedmaps. This is interesting. Weedmaps is basically like Yelp for dispensaries.
Eric Volkman: It's a directory.
Cardina: Yeah. It's a directory of dispensaries. In December, we found out that Weedmaps is actually going to go public via a merger with Silver Spike Acquisition Corp. (SSPK +0.00%). The deal values Weedmaps at $1.5 billion. What do you think about Weedmaps going public?
Volkman: A $1.5 billion directory? That sounds like an awful lot.
Cardina: Sounds a little bit like Pets.com really.
Volkman: [laughs] You've cursed them by mentioning Pets.com, that infamous company from the dot-com era.
Weedmaps, well, their timing is good. If you're going to IPO a marijuana company, this is a good time to do it because we're in a period of optimism right now. Again, justifiably like we mentioned before, there's a lot of momentum behind the legalized marijuana industry.
Can they justify a valuation like that? I don't know. As far as I am aware, they're going to concentrate on that core competency, essentially being a directory of place where you can find all sorts of information about dispensaries. That's useful.
But I think we need to wait for a prospectus on that to figure more about their business, especially how they plan on developing it. Because if they're just going to be a one-trick pony in terms of just being an information source, I don't see throwing $1.5 billion in their bank account for that. So that's a wait and see for me.
It's certainly interesting. I think it's nice for the broader sector because it's going to be a different type of stock and a different type of company, but we need more details before we make a good judgment on that.
