Playboy CEO on telling the story from a female perspective
Yahoo Finance’s Julie Hyman, Brian Sozzi, and Myles Udland speak with Playboy CEO Ben Kohn about the company’s Q3 earnings report and future outlook.
Video Transcript
BRIAN SOZZI: Playboy is hot off a sexy third quarter, sales that could arouse investors as it heads off into public-company land. Let's bring in Playboy CEO Ben Kohn for more on this one. Ben, good to good to see you again here. So your third quarter sales, up 86%-- has that momentum continued into the holiday quarter?
BEN KOHN: Good to see you, Brian. The momentum has continued. We saw record sales in October. On our Yandy platform, sales were up over 40% year over year. And on Playboy.com, which we've relaunched as a shopping site, in the last 12 days of November-- we did more revenue in the last 12 days in November than we did in all of the third quarter. So we're very optimistic going into 2021 and for the balance of the year.
JULIE HYMAN: Hey, it's Julie here. You know, I'm sure you're going to get tired of talking about this, the sort of rebranded Playboy, right? That you stopped publication of the print magazine earlier this year. It's more of a focus on consumer products now. But talk to me about the breakdown of consumer products and what you are seeing as the most popular at this point in time and maybe how that has changed over time? Where are the growth areas going to be going forward?
BEN KOHN: Sure. Look, we have product all over the world. We sell product in 180 countries. Consumers spend in excess of $3 billion buying our products today, and it's across four primary categories. Sexual wellness is about $55 million of revenue.
Style and apparel-- so it's Playboy-branded apparel, whether that's PacSun, Missguided, our own, or in China, we are the largest men's fashion brand. That's about $74 million, $75 million of revenue today. Our gaming business, in partnership with Microgaming and Scientific Games was up 19% in the third quarter, and it would have been a lot better had some of our properties not been shut down because of COVID, and then beauty and grooming.
But you know, overall, on a global basis, it's our Playboy-branded apparel. But we're very optimistic about our sexual wellness products. We just launched our own benzocaine wipes. We have those in 10,000 stores and big-box retailers, condoms as well, and we just launched room CBD line of products last month.
MYLES UDLAND: Mike, when you think-- or excuse me, Ben, sorry-- when you think about the future of this brand and sort of where it's going with younger generations, as-- you know, we see a lot of younger kids are not having sex as much, right? Sexuality is not really something that surveys say Gen Z is thinking of as a part of their identity. What does that mean for you guys, as you look at, you know, where you take the Playboy brand?
BEN KOHN: Look, we have such a diversified revenue base today. And when we think about it, it's really about enhancing pleasure in your life. And so we've renamed the parent company yesterday to The PLBY Group, really focused on our larger strategy about delivering pleasure and leisure in people's lives.
And so it's just not about sex. It's about all the other products that we have today across our four verticals. And so we're very optimistic, based on what we've seen from the demo perspective with our consumer. Our average age has dropped over 10 years in the last year, and we've increased our female audience by over 70% since the rebranding of the company.
JULIE HYMAN: That is really interesting, and I have a follow-up on that. I think we were just, actually, showing one of your products that looked like a Pride flag logo for Playboy. Because--
BEN KOHN: Yep.
JULIE HYMAN: --I think at least my generation thinks of it as a sort of retro brand, sometimes in a cool way, perhaps sometimes not in a cool way. So how did you go about changing the image of Playboy, where, you know, for those of us who remember the original Playboy, sort of you picture in the bunny, and it's a very stereotypically male-gaze kind of image of women?
BEN KOHN: Yeah. When I took over as CEO, I brought in largely a female team. And over 50% of the employees today at Playboy are women. And if you look at our content team, it's almost exclusively women. And so what we're trying to do is tell the story from a female point of view.
We have an expression internally that behind-- who's behind the camera is just as important as who's in front of it. I'm very proud that over the last two years, almost everyone we have used behind the camera has also been a woman. And this brand, today, about 40% of our global sales are generated by women.
BRIAN SOZZI: Ben, small nuance here--
BEN KOHN: It's really about claiming your own sexuality.
BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, sure. You know, Ben, before we let you go, small nuance here, you did change the company's name-- what-- from Playboy to PLBY, and you did tease some potential M&A. Anything imminent? And where are you looking for opportunity?
BEN KOHN: You know, Brian, obviously, we're restricted as to what we can say. What I can say is that since we announced our merger with MCAC, which is the SPAC, our deal pipeline has grown substantially. We have a bunch of stuff in the pipeline, and I would hope that over the next two to three months, we'll be announcing if not one deal, multiple deals. The change to--
BRIAN SOZZI: All right, well--
BEN KOHN: --PLBY Group was the vision we set out three years ago, which was to really build the leading pleasure and leisure company on a global basis, really on the back of Playboy. Playboy's infrastructure, selling products in over 180 countries and given the distribution points we have in those countries, really allows us to buy other businesses and other brands and leverage the existing Playboy infrastructure to realize synergies, as well as enhance margins.
BRIAN SOZZI: All right, we'll leave it there. Playboy CEO Ben Kohn, good to see you. Good luck this-- for the rest this holiday season, and we'll talk to you soon.
BEN KOHN: Happy holidays. Thank you.
