In the arid 2022 IPO year, there are signs of a conciliatory conclusion: the cannabis supplier Cantourage wants to be listed in the Scale growth segment of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange this year.

The FAZ learned this from capital market circles.

CEO Philip Schetter confirmed this indirectly on request.

"The homework for this step in 2022 has been done," he said.

Hauck Aufhäuser Lampe has been appointed as the advisory bank.

Klaus Max Smolka

Editor in Business.

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The young Berlin company does not choose a classic public IPO (Initial Public Offering, (IPO), but a stock exchange listing after confidential private placement of shares with selected investors. Similar - on a much larger scale - in the past, for example, the chemical group Evonik and the commercial vehicle Supplier Jost proceeded.As can be heard in the capital market circles, Cantourage last planned mid-November as a date.The company does not comment on this.

If something doesn't come up in the last few meters, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange sees this as a project in a difficult year.

The Ukraine war, the risk of recession and rapidly rising interest rates spoiled the mood.

The consulting company Kirchhoff, which has a focus on this segment, counts four IPOs in Germany for the year 2022, but two of them are special cases: namely empty special purpose companies for takeovers, SPACs (Special Purpose Acquisition Companies).

Real IPOs were only delivered by the digital real estate investment platform Engel & Völkers Digital Invest - with an extremely modest volume of 6.3 million euros - and the car manufacturer Porsche with its more than 9 billion euros bang.

The latter tears out an otherwise almost lost IPO year.

So far mainly pharmaceutical fantasy

For Cantourage, based on the private placement, the company value is “a very high double-digit million amount”, as Schetter said on request.

The start-up has so far specialized in cannabis for medical use, which has been permitted in Germany for some time.

The investment thesis is therefore based on Cantourage as a pharmaceutical supplier: "As of today, it is a pharmaceutical play," said Schetter.

On the other hand, fantasy arises from the possible legalization of general hemp consumption: "If a stimulant market opens up, we will also become active there." Schetter refers to studies according to which the latter is 20 times larger than the market for medicinal cannabis.

And here very concrete prospects open up: the traffic light coalition has just approved key points from Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD), which should enable adults to legally purchase cannabis for recreational purposes.

Now the EU Commission in Brussels is to examine whether the plans are compatible with international law.

Cannabis could be legally smoked in Germany from 2024.

When Cantourage explained preliminary considerations for an IPO to the FAZ a year ago, co-founder Florian Holzapfel was hoping for a three-digit million euro amount as a company valuation - after a financing round in June 2021 had already resulted in a high two-digit million amount.

But sales have grown less dynamically than hoped.

An amount in the high single-digit millions was expected for 2021.

Instead, it was a good 5 million euros.

Schetter referred to difficulties in the supply chain - to "the fact that some partners who supply us with cannabis were not ready so quickly".

The current year should bring a leap: "We are aiming to triple sales."