Cannabis compliance company MJ Freeway has rebranded as Akerna after merging with MTech Acquisition Corp. and will begin trading on the NASDAQ today. It will trade under the KERN and KERNW symbols and is the first such company to list on the exchange.
“As legalization of cannabis expands across the world, we believe it is imperative that businesses, patients, consumers, and governments have the tracking and compliance technology they need to make informed decisions and comply with applicable regulations. We believe Akerna is well suited to meet these needs with the ability to scale rapidly across the world and offer a robust and innovative platform for growing industry demands.” – CEO Jessica Billingsly, in a press release
Following the merger, former MJ Freeway equity holders will own approximately 62.7 percent of Akerna’s outstanding shares of common stock, former MTech stockholders will own 27.7 percent of Akerna’s outstanding common stock, and the investors in MTech’s previously-announced private placement that closed concurrently with the business combination own approximately 9.6% of Akerna’s outstanding shares of common stock.
Scott Sozio, CEO of MTech, said compliance solutions “will underpin the industry’s rapid growth, and serve as a backbone for sustained success.”
“We are very pleased to close this transaction and look forward to capitalizing on the substantial operating and financial benefits we believe the combination will create,” he said in a statement. “From here, we believe we are well positioned to pursue our acquisition strategy to drive transformation for future growth in the regulatory technology sector.”
To date, MJ Freeway, which launched nine years ago, has tracked over $15 billion in cannabis sales. In 2017, the company’s seed-to-sale software suffered two outages which forced companies to keep sales records manually. The company has also encountered issues and delays while implementing its tracking software in Washington state.
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