Earnings: Playboy Posts Another Loss; Revs Down 15 Percent
This story was written by David Kaplan.
Another in a string of quarterly losses for Playboy (NYSE: PLA) Enterprises While the company pointed to $6.3 million in restructuring charges and provisions for reserves as the chief cause for its $5.2 million Q3 net loss ($0.15 per share), even without those expenses, Playboy's net income was still down to $1.1 million ($0.04 per share) compared last year's $2.6 million ($0.08 per share). Meanwhile, revenues fell 15 percent to $70.4 million, down from Q307's $82.8 million. The diminished revenues were attributed to the sale of its TV studio assets and the outsourcing of its e-commerce operations. Segment income was $3.6 million during the quarter versus $4.2 million in the prior year. Chairman and CEO Christie Hefner said in a statement that Playboy "can do better" and stressed again that focusing o its licensing business, as well as promoting "integrated media platforms" will allow the company to weather the economic downturn and produce profitable growth next year. Here's the not very pretty picture from Playboy's Q3 report:
-- Publishing Group slims loss: The segment posted a $1.3 million loss in Q3, though that was an improvement from the $1.4 million loss the year before. Revenues fell by $1.3 million to $21.8 million. The company said that it expects a 17 percent drop in ad revs in Q4. More after the jump.
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-- Entertainment Group segment profit dropped 61 percent to $2.8 million from $7.2 million last year. The unit's revenues were down 23 percent to $38.2 million compared to $49.6 million in Q307.
-- Within the Entertainment Group, domestic Playboy TV revenues were 17 percent lower in Q3 to $14.6 million versus last year's $17.6 million. Although Playboy claimed that the U.S. TV revenues were essentially up, thanks to its SVOD push the segment was negatively affected by the sale of its TV studio assets. Also, with consumers moving away from from pay- per-view and choosing VOD instead led to lower movie network revenues. Lastly, Playboy pointed to a decrease in DVD sales, a business that the company plans to exit.
By David Kaplan