Warren Buffett Wades Into Legal Marijuana Industry
?
By P. Aiden Hunt September 16,2014
Business, Growing & Cultivation, People
The fourth-richest person in the world can see the great potential in legal marijuana — or at least one of his companies can.
Bloomberg reports that one of Warren Buffett‘s holdings is courting marijuana industry business. With the recent crunch for space to grow marijuana in Colorado, this could be another great example of Berkshire Hathaway’s chairman doing well by simply letting companies fill a market need.
Source: Cubic Designs via Bloomberg
About 1,000 fliers were sent in recent weeks from Cubic Designs, Inc. to marijuana-related businesses in Colorado, Washington and California advertising “Double Your Growing Space” and featuring a picture of their mezzanine systems. Buffett added the eighteen year old New Berlin, WI company to Berkshire’s balance sheet last year.
Cubic Designs serves its market with design, engineering, fabrication and installation solutions, according to a press release put out after Berkshire subsidiary MiTek Industries acquired it in October.
“Through Cubic, MiTek is able to expand into new end markets with highly customized, tightly engineered, prefabricated structural steel products,” said Tom Manenti, Chairman and CEO of MiTek.
The mezzanine systems maximize warehouse space by setting up multiple levels for growing plants. The flier also featured a green cross on it, a symbol that has come to represent medical marijuana.
Buffett took over Berkshire Hathaway — formerly a textile manufacturing firm — in 1964 after seeing value in its assets. Since then he has grown the company to living legend status through wise investments in companies like See’s Candy, GEICO and Coca-Cola.
Berkshire’s stock is also famously exclusive due to Buffett’s aversion to stock splits. Splits create more shares to bring the price of each share down making it more accessible. Berkshire Class A common stock closed at $207,745 per share on Tuesday.
Shannon Shalchert, Cubic Designs’ Marketing Coordinator, declined to comment on this story, but she did speak to Bloomberg on Friday.
“We sold a few mezzanines into that market and decided internally, ‘Why don’t we do some marketing?'” Shalchert said.
Buffett gained a reputation over his decades of investing for having a hands-off approach where his investments are concerned so long as they are performing well.
Cubic Designs has also considered working with real estate agents. This strategy could score big in the growing market for finding and maximizing marijuana grow space. That would give Buffett another big win and bolster the viability of the legal marijuana industry to thousands of investors.
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