LOS ANGELES—Nearly 10 years after the late Playboy founder Hugh Hefner took his iconic company private after 40 years of offering its shares on the public stock market, Playboy Enterprises is set to become a publicly traded company once again.
The company, however, looks very different now than it did 10 years ago, or for the vast majority of its seven-decade history as one of the most influential forces in American popular culture. After suspending publication of the printed magazine earlier this year and laying off 25 editorial employees, the company has focused primarily on marketing the Playboy brand across a variety of products.
According to a Hollywood Reporter account, Playboy plans to focus on “sexual wellness,” video games, beauty and grooming, lingerie and similar products.
When Hefner took the company private in 2011, it was valued at $207 million. He founded Playboy in 1953 with just $600 (about $5,800 in today’s money) — but he scored a coup by obtaining the rights to nude photos of Marilyn Monroe, who was then Hollywood’s top sex symbol, and put her on the cover of the magazine’s first issue.
But with the rise of video and the internet, Hefner watched the value of his company plummet. After the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, Playboy shares were trading at just $2 each, according to a Reuters report.
Playboy is now merging with a Special Purpose Acquisition Company — that is, a company that exists only to acquire other companies and take them public — called Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp., and is now valued at $415 million. Current Playboy CEO Ben Kohn will continue to helm the company after it goes public again, according to the Hollywood Reporter account.
Kohn was a partner in Rizvi Traverse Management, the investment firm that backed the 2011 buyout in which Playboy went private. Hefner and his family remained shareholders in the company, and Hefner remained editor-in-chief until his death in 2017. But the following year, the family sold its remaining shares for $35 million.
Photo By Alexander Hauk / Wikimedia Commons
