It seems like the age of Playboy is effectively drawing to a close. In October, the iconic men's monthly magazine announced that it would cease printing images of nude women, and in January, the firm announced that it was selling the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles for $200 million.
According to sources, who have opted to remain anonymous, the adult entertainment firm is taking its efforts a step further, with founder Hugh Hefner allegedly hiring investment bank Moelis & Co. to gauge the assets of Playboy Enterprises Inc., in order to explore the options for a potential sale.
Playboy Enterprises became a private entity in a 2011 buyout led by Hefner and private-equity firm Rizvi Traverse Management. Despite this, the firm continued to be battered financially, as the adult entertainment market, which the company's flagship products relied on, became more and more accessible for free on the Internet.
In 2014, the company announced that due to its deteriorating financial performance, $147 million worth of its first-lien debt was refinanced. During the same year, Standard and Poor's evaluated the company as "vulnerable," citing "sporadic operating shortfalls."
Regardless of the firm's financial struggles, analysts believe that the company is still worth a significant amount of money. Considering the company's licensing business, which economists estimate to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the entire enterprise might very well fetch a price north of $500 million.
During the 63 years that Playboy Magazine has been in print, it has become an iconic symbol of America's sexual revolution, playing a significant role in shaping the United States' discourse on sex. Though more extreme adult magazines were launched after it, Playboy remained the definitive adult publication, symbolic of the men's monthly industry for decades.
Being a forerunner in the adult entertainment print market, Playboy enjoyed mass popularity over the decades, with the magazine's circulation topping out at 7.2 million monthly in 1972. With the advent of the Internet and free adult content, however, the once dominant men's monthly became a novelty of the past.
Today, Playboy's circulation stands at just 700,000 monthly, a fraction of its numbers from its glory days. Last year, Playboy announced that the company earned just $38 million from its print and digital media division, significantly less than the $55 million the company earned from its licensing efforts.
If Playboy Enterprises does go up for sale, it would definitely, definitively, mark the end of an era.
