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Playboy Enterprises
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Playboy Enterprises, Inc. , also organized as New Playboy, Inc. , is the company founded by Hugh Marston Hefner to manage the Playboy magazine empire.
Today, Playboy Enterprises, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the development and distribution of adult entertainment. The Playboy brand is one of the most widely recognized and popular brands in the world. The company is structured with three business segments: Publishing (which manages the magazine), Entertainment (which controls electronic assets), and Licensing (which licenses the Playboy name and bunny logo to third parties).
Sales of Playboy magazine peaked in 1972 at over 7 million copies and then declined as the market shifted to "laddy" magazines such as Maxim.
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Encyclopedia
Playboy Enterprises, Inc. , also organized as New Playboy, Inc. , is the company founded by Hugh Marston Hefner to manage the Playboy magazine empire.
Today, Playboy Enterprises, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the development and distribution of adult entertainment. The Playboy brand is one of the most widely recognized and popular brands in the world. The company is structured with three business segments: Publishing (which manages the magazine), Entertainment (which controls electronic assets), and Licensing (which licenses the Playboy name and bunny logo to third parties).
Sales of Playboy magazine peaked in 1972 at over 7 million copies and then declined as the market shifted to "laddy" magazines such as Maxim. The company now derives only one-third of its revenues from Playboy magazine, with the other two-thirds from the dissemination of adult content in electronic form, such as television, the internet and DVDs. Much of this electronic revenue comes not from the soft nude imagery which made the magazine famous, but from hardcore pornography connected with the company's ownership of Spice Digital Networks, Club Jenna, and Adult.com
At one point Playboy Enterprises, Inc. maintained a mirror service on their network for open source software used by the network administrators by using spare resources at no extra cost. However, this mirror service is no longer active.
Playboy Enterprises, Inc. occupies the top office floors of 680 N. Lake Shore Drive (formerly 666 N. Lake Shore Drive) in Chicago's Streeterville neighborhood. The company employed 782 full-time employees at the end of 2006.
Brief History
Playboy Enterprises was created in 1953 as the HMH Publishing Co., Inc. for the purpose of publishing Playboy. The business quickly expanded and began to develop and distribute a wider range of adult entertainment. It went public in 1971. Christie Hefner, daughter of Hugh Hefner, has been the President since 1982, and Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer since 1988.
The Age reported in October 2008 that, for the first-time ever, Hugh Hefner is selling tickets to his celebrity-filled parties to offset his cash-flow problems due to setbacks Playboy Enterprises has suffered, including decreasing Playboy circulation, decreasing stock value, and ventures that have yet to turn a profit. Christie Hefner released a memo to employees about her efforts to streamline the company's operations, including eliminating its DVD division and laying off staff.
Divisions
Playboy also ran forty Playboy Club properties from 1960 to 1986. The company is returning to nightlife business with the Playboy Club at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. And Playboy is hunting other casino licensing deals in Macau and London. Meanwhile, the company says it will open at least three Playboy stores in each of the next three years.
The company's Playboy Foundation provides grants to non-profit groups involved in fighting censorship and researching human sexuality.
Investor Information
Playboy has two classes of stock.
are the actively traded class B shares without voting rights. As of October 2008 there were 33,320,000 shares outstanding with a market capitalization of about $84 million. The 3 month average trading volume was 166,076 shares.
are the closely held class A voting shares. As of November 2006 there were 4,864,000 shares outstanding with a market capitalization of about $55 million. The 3 month average trading volume was 2818 shares.
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