The company of Playboy magazine is exploring option for selling itself either in bits and pieces or as a whole
Playboy Enterprises Inc. is carrying out an analysis for its sale. This comes after Playboy magazine publisher did away with nude photos and revamped the product for the modern digital age.
Playboy Company is being advised by Investment bank Moelis & Co. In 2011, the founder of the Playboy Enterprises, Hugh Hefner took private Moelis & Co. and Rizvi Traverse Management – a private equity firm. Hefner own around a third stake in the company.
No detailed financial disclosures are presented by Playboy. The Wall Street Journal revealed that during the previous year, its revenue from the magazine and digital publishing was around 38 million dollars.
It made another 55 million dollars by licensing its brand to other entities. It is also speculated that the licensing business could actually be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Playboy could be worth more than five hundred million dollars. A potential buyer would be more interested in the brand that could be used for selling consumer items as well as establishing other media outlets. In 2011, Playboy was valued at a little above 200 million dollars.
There are other assets that are also owned by the company. These assets include the famous Playboy mansion spanning over 5 acres, and a Los Angeles home. When Playboy tried to sell the mansion, most of the buyers seemed to be interested in the whole company.
That was when Moelis was commissioned to carry out an analysis of an entire sale. Moelis is most likely to auction Playboy. There are two possibilities: Playboy may opt for selling in bits and pieces or it may hold the sale and continue its operations.
Playboy is an icon in America. It has shaped the country’s discourse on sex for the past 6 decades. However, Playboy Magazine has been striving to maintain its leading cultural status despite diminishing sales of its magazine and digital editions.
Its circulation during its peak in the mid-seventies was more than 5 million copies. Its circulation has currently been reduced to around eight hundred thousand copies.
A playboy enterprise has also seen cost cuttings and downsizings in the past few years. Playboy has stopped publishing nude photos on its website since August 2014.
