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Playboy – your dad’s second favorite nudie mag right behind Penthouse – is going public for the first time in 10 years.
The magazine is long gone having ceased publication in February 2020 after removing then bringing back naked women.
Print is dead but the lifestyle brand is apparently still going strong.
Strong enough to rejoin the New York Stock Exchange.
Playboy is merging with Mountain Crest Acquisition, a special purpose acquisition company, in a $415 million deal and will eventually trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol “PLBY.”
“Playboy today is a highly profitable commerce business with a total addressable market projected in the trillions of dollars,” said CEO Ben Kohn in a statement.
Playboy calls itself “one of the largest and most recognizable lifestyle brands in the world,” and now sells a variety of items including sexual wellness products, clothes, and home goods. Because when you think of a home, you think of Playboy and the most disgusting mansion on Earth.
According to CNN, Playboy is the latest company to use a SPAC as a way to go public along with Virgin Galactic, DraftKings and electric trucking company Nikola.
Plenty of private companies would rather merge with a blank-check firm than go through the time-consuming and expensive process of raising money through a more traditional initial public offering. That’s especially the case during the coronavirus pandemic.
Kohn will continue to head the company after the merger. Hugh Hefner’s son Cooper, who once ran the dying brand, is long gone. He joined the Air Force back in 2019.
The real money in the Playboy brand might have been Hugh Hefner’s collection of private sex tapes. All you need to do to find them is rent a boat and some diving gear.
[via CNN]
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