Hugh Hefner’s youngest son is offering to buy back the Playboy brand for $100 million, according to a report.
Cooper Hefner, 33, told the Wall Street Journal He and a group of investors presented an offer to Playboy Group that would bring the brand back under family ownership, more than seven decades after it was founded by his late father.
“It’s a great American company and a great American brand, other than my personal connection to it,” Hefner, whose mother is former Playmate and Hugh Hefner’s second wife Kimberly Conrad, told The Journal.
Hefner lamented the fact that the company “has been managed into a state of probable non-existence.”
As part of the proposed deal, Hefner and his investment firm, Hefner Capital, would buy back the Playboy brand and run the intellectual property, while other parts of the business would continue to operate as a separate entity under a new name.
The newly formed entity would also get a 10% ownership stake in Hefner-run Playboy.
Hefner, whose investor group includes a hedge fund and one of Playboy’s former licensing partners, told The Journal that he will take on the role of CEO.
Playboy Group, whose stock was as high as $50 a share in the spring of 2021, was trading at less than $1 a share on Monday. Its market valuation was around $50 million.
In 2021, it went public through a special acquisition company. But the company is incurring losses and currently has more than $200 million in debt.
A year earlier, it ceased publication of its magazine, ending a nearly seven-decade run on newsstands that began with Marilyn Monroe’s first issue in 1953.
Hugh Hefner founded the magazine and created the brand. Playboy’s monthly circulation in the 1970s was 7 million.
But they suffered from competition in the 1980s from Penthouse and Hustler – magazines that featured highly explicit photos – and Playboy’s social influence declined significantly by the 21st century.
Declining advertising revenues as well as readily available pornography on the Internet made Playboy obsolete.
Hugh Hefner died in 2017 at the age of 91. He left behind four children, including Cooper Hefner, all of whom sold their stakes in the company.
Cooper Hefner told The Journal that the brand has been mismanaged.
“This is Playboy entering businesses he’s never operated in before,” he said. He said the products were “not resonating with consumers or customers or fans at all.”
“And the decline of the business and the relevance of the brand – which is hardly talked about today – is a direct reflection of that.”
