NEW YORK, NY – Mark Boyar, president of Boyar Asset Management Inc. and owner of approximately 1.6-percent of Playboy Enterprise Inc. stock, said Wednesday that Playboy’s management should consider selling the company as one possible method of increasing its value for shareholders.“I think the company could be sold to a lot of different people and it would command a price that’s significantly higher than the market price,” said Boyar. “That’s something that the company should seriously consider and we’re going to try to be more assertive in that opinion.”
“We believe that this is one of the great consumer franchises that is not correctly evaluated in the marketplace,” added Boyar. “Having said that, there a lot of real things we think the company can do to enhance shareholder value, and we think they should.”
Boyar’s company owns 454,100 of Playboy’s outstanding shares, which makes him a significant voice, but far from able to force the sale of the company. Playboy could not be sold without consent and cooperation of members of the Hefner family, as they still own controlling interest in the company. Hugh Hefner, the company’s founder, owns almost 70-percent of Class A voting shares in Playboy. Christie Hefner, Hugh’s daughter and Playboy CEO, owns an additional 1.5-percent.
Christie Hefner doesn’t appear eager to sell, saying that “we’ve got the right opportunities to grow the company organically.”
Ms. Hefner did say she planned to meet with Boyar and that “if there’s an offer made the board would look at it.”
Hefner has pointed to the licensing division of the company as reason for optimism since it had $28.3 million in sales last year, which comes with a high profit margin, as the revenue is almost entirely from royalties, with little investment cost.
“The publishing environment is extremely challenging,” Ms. Hefner said at a recent presentation to Class A shareholders held in Chicago. “The magazines that will thrive in the future are those that understand that magazines need to be considered as brands and ideas that live beyond their pages.”
Playboy’s stock price has hovered below the $20.00 mark for some time now, having reached a peak of over $30.00 in the 1990’s. Shares fell in value by 15-percent in one day this month, after a report on May 4th that the company had forecast a second-quarter loss, and shown lower than projected earnings for the first quarter of 2006.
Playboy stock closed at $10.50 on Tuesday, and was trading at $10.01 at the time of this article’s writing.
