When Ryan Cohen and Sean Dollinger started out founding companies as young entrepreneurs together, they could never have anticipated the wild ride that the markets could have in store for them.
The two budding businessmen were 50-50 partners on three Dot Coms in the fashion and technology sectors. After those ventures, the two men split. Cohen went on to found Chewy.com while Dollinger decided to take a bet on the emerging cannabis sector with Namaste Technologies, an eCommerce venture for marijuana enthusiasts, which hit a $1.2 billion valuation in 2018.
READ: PlantX Life is the digital face of the growing plant-based community
Cohen’s name is even more familiar to Wall Street today after his bet on beleaguered video game firm GameStop Inc (NASDAQ:GME) added billions to his net worth after a group of Redditors decided to stick it to the short sellers who had bet against the Texas-based firm. In case you’ve been asleep for the past week, shares of GameStop soared to nearly $380 from a 52-week low of around $2.57, making Cohen – already a celebrated executive thanks to the $3.8 billion sale of Chewy.com – much, much richer.
Now Dollinger is at it again, hoping to replicate the duo’s recipe for success with his new venture PlantX Life Inc (CSE:VEGA) (OTCPINK:PLTXF). Founded by Dollinger and led by CEO Julia Frank, the company touts itself as the “digital face of the plant-based movement,” with its hybrid eCommerce and bricks-and-mortar model offering a one-stop destination for all things vegan. Its online shop houses over 5,000 vegan products, and its recently-added meal service delivers chef-created dishes straight to the doors of western Canada. All in all, the company offers more than 10,000 plant-based products. In addition, the firm will soon be operating several fully digitized flagship brick-and-mortar stores in San Diego, California, Squamish, British Columbia, and Tel Aviv in the State of Israel.
Room to grow
First founded in December 2019, it took until April 2020 for PlantX to see any hint of revenue. However, in a sign of how strong the demand for plant-based products has become, eight months later and the company generated gross revenue of over $1 million for the month of December 2020.
Dollinger is confident that he has the experience to ensure the company’s success in the burgeoning plant-based industry. “I’ve been doing it for over 20 years and each business gets stronger,” he told Proactive.
There’s certainly a lot of room to grow as well. For a relatively newer industry, there are already a handful of companies that are trading at multi-million dollar valuations and putting up decent revenue figures. PlantX is currently trading at around C$1.47 a share, putting its valuation at a healthy $80 million, but certainly at a discount to its peers like The Very Good Food Company and Eats Beyond.
“We are much newer, we just went public in August,” Dollinger said when asked about the discount. “A lot of others have been public for quite some time.”
Another Wall Street success story?
PlantX plans to grow organically through new partnerships, global brick-and-mortar locations and additional product verticals, according to Dollinger, as well as through a pipeline of accretive M&A opportunities. It is well-capitalized with cash on the balance sheet, no debt, low capital requirements and diverse revenue streams. Dollinger and his team plan to list on Nasdaq eventually, which the CEO cites as evidence of the firm’s commitment to investor accessibility and corporate growth.
All eyes are on PlantX as one of the newer companies in the burgeoning plant-based lifestyle category, but if Dollinger’s previous history is any indication, him and his team might just have the right experience to become another Wall Street darling.
Contact Angela at angela@proactiveinvestors.com
Follow her on Twitter @AHarmantas