specialty finance company silver spike investment corp ssic was formed to invest across the cannabis ecosystem through investments such as direct loans to and equity ownership of privately held marijuana companies with an overweight rating and a 12month price target of 1530 cantor fitzgeralds pablo zuanic said he sees 50 upside over the next 12 months on shares of ssic the only publicly listed cannabisdedicated business development companies bdcs according to the report silver spike investment corps ssic structure allows access to a larger addressable debt market opportunity relative to those focused only on real estatebacked lending “although ssic shares have remained stable in the last three months 10 range mostly immune to the cannabis sector drop in dec msos etf 40 the stock trades at a 30 discount to nav compared with sectoral reittype comps trading either in line or at a premium reit iipr nc 37” said zuanic who the companys future should be able to scale up via debt leverage and eventually equity raises the company which estimates legal sales for 2022e at 33bn and projects 72 billion in 2023 intends to focus on cash flowbased lending in addition to collateralbacked lending beyond just real estate all this implies a much larger tam total addressable market for a bdc vs a reit given the lending market in cannabis is highly fragmented at present with little competition from banks and other traditional lenders the current demandsupply imbalance for debt capital should allow ssic to capture attractive riskadjusted returns noted zuanic the ssic portfolio at present a mix of five private and public credits yields 1321 gross weighted average yield of 157 as of midnov compared with 89 for the us high yield index 83 for the direct lending yield index and 65 for the us leveraged loan yield index in middecember ssic made five loans worth a combined 50 million given three of the five current credits are from msos multistate operators with market caps above 250 million including ayr wellness inc ayr ayrwf curaleaf holdings inc cura curlf and verano holdings corp vrno vrnof accounting for 26 million of investment value “we would expect the remaining 40mn in capital to be deployed to smaller private companies in loan sizes of 45mn zuanic concluded get your daily dose of cannabis news on benzinga cannabis don’t miss out on any important developments in the industry