Alex Gray (Jacob Slaton)
Some well-known names in the Arkansas medical marijuana industry backed a $48 million capital-raising effort aimed toward Louisiana, according to a May 23 filing with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission.
The company making the exempt offering of securities, NOLA PharmaHoldings LLC, registered with the Louisiana secretary of state’s office in March, listing a domicile address of 10518 Kentshire Court in Baton Rouge. It lists Alex Gray, the Little Rock attorney, as manager.
Gray is also chief strategy officer and president of sales for the multistate medicinal cannabis operator Good Day Farm of Little Rock.
Good Day Farm has five medical marijuana dispensaries in Louisiana, according to its website, along with six in Arkansas, five in Mississippi and 21 in Missouri.
Gray did not respond to requests for comment. But the SEC document speaks for itself.
The $65.5 million equity offering notched its first sale on May 10 and had raised $48,115,000 from 111 investors by May 23.
The solicitation covered the states of Arkansas, Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
Gray’s name isn’t the only one Whispers readers are likely to know. Terry Fitch, who is listed as a director of NOLA PharmaHoldings and a former Coca-Cola executive, has been CEO of Good Day Farm since July 2022.
Another director, Reid Dove, is an owner and board member of licensed cultivator Good Day Farm Arkansas LLC. He’s also CEO of AAA Cooper Transportation, a trucking company in Dothan, Alabama, and owns 8.5% of Good Day Farm Arkansas.
Yet another director in the filing, Todd Denton, is owner and CEO of Foxden Capital of Little Rock.
He and his wife, Amy, own Pediatrics Plus of Conway, and he is a 1.02% stakeholder in Good Day Farm Arkansas. Director Mitchell Massey is COO and a partner in Custom Craft Poultry of Fayetteville.
Peyton Bush, also listed as a director, is chief investment officer at Bollinger Enterprises LLC of New Orleans. Shipmaking magnate Donald “Boysie” Bollinger leads that company, and he is a 1.487% owner of Good Day Farm Arkansas. Bush has a 5% stake in the Arkansas cultivator.
Good Day Farm, through a Baton Rouge company called GB Sciences Louisiana LLC, stands poised to win a major cultivation license in Louisiana as the state shifts cultivation from the two colleges that have supplied wholesale marijuana to Louisiana’s dispensaries since legalization in 2015: Louisiana State University and Southern University. GB Sciences, doing business as Good Day Farm, shares a mailing address with the Arkansas Good Day Farms companies. It joined with Ilera Holistic Healthcare to partner with LSU and Southern as they ramped up their cultivation sites several years ago.
Gov. Jeff Landry signed a law on May 22, Act 150 of 2024, that will transfer the colleges’ cultivation licenses to Good Day Farm and Ilera.
Stay tuned for more on that front.
