CHICAGO, IL – Shares of Playboy Enterprises, Inc. gained Wednesday on the heels of comments made by an analyst from Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) who said the company is positioned for a “fundamental upturn” driven by its new media ventures.Playboy shares closed at $15.25 Wednesday, up 75 cents and 5.2% on strong afternoon trading Wednesday. Overall, the company’s stock is up 23% since the first of the year.
In a note issued earlier Wednesday, analyst William Drewry of CSFB gave the company an “Outperform” rating, and a price target of $17.
“We believe Playboy could be at the front end of a fundamental upturn, driven primarily by the company’s ‘new media’ business segments,” Drewry commented in the note.
Drewry added that if Playboy continues on its current course of developing high-quality content and take advantage of new distribution channels, the company’s entertainment and licensing business could post strong double-digit profit growth over the next couple of years. In Drewry’s analysis, Playboy’s fee-based business model could allow it to post better growth than its more cyclical competitors in the current advertising environment.
Playboy’s shares dipped last week when the company reported its earnings for the third quarter of 2005, despite showing a profit of $3.2 million. The profit was largely a result of debt restructuring, and early results indicated that the market was not responding well to Playboy’s Q3 reporting.
Playboy’s strongest showings in the third quarter were in the licensing and entertainment divisions, the same areas where Drewry sees potential for strong growth, and Playboy Chairman/CEO Christie Hefner remains confident that the company will post strong growth in the coming months.
“We are on track to delivering the higher revenues and improved net income and earnings per share in 2005 that we projected, despite a significantly more challenging publishing environment than we initially anticipated,” Hefner said. “We continue to believe that our Licensing and Entertainment Groups will achieve our projected operating income growth of greater than 25% in 2005, more than offsetting an anticipated loss in Publishing.”
At press time, Playboy shares were trading at $15.13, off slightly from yesterday’s opening price of $15.15.
