Yahoo Finance Playboy becomes consumer-products purveyor with 'climax delay' wipes
Playboy is now selling wipes at major retailers like CVS Health that may give you as much pleasure as securing the final canister of Clorox Disinfecting Wipes smack in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Playboy Climax Delay Wipe launched this past fall as part of Playboy’s push into personal care products, which also includes a CBD line. The wipes are coated with benzocaine, an agent Playboy explains as “a mild topical anesthetic increasingly used to combat penile overstimulation and delay ejaculation.”
“We are very optimistic about the sexual wellness products,” Playboy CEO Ben Kohn told Yahoo Finance Live.
And such is the story Kohn is now selling — Playboy as a consumer products play not the Playboy magazine seller of old — as it embarks on a new journey as a public company.
The company — founded by American icon Hugh Hefner in 1953 —announced in October a merger with SPAC Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp. The company’s corporate name will change to PLBY Group and trade under the ticker PLBY once the combination is completed soon.
Playboy will continue to be led by Kohn, a Wall Street veteran with stints at Cowen & Company and private equity shop Rizvi Traverse.
Under private ownership since 2011, Playboy has pivoted into consumer products, streetwear and consumer accessories businesses and stopped printing its flagship magazine earlier this year.
The company arrives to market during a hot time for SPACs, but also with the good fortune of having operating momentum.
Playboy’s third quarter sales rose 86% year-over-year to $35 million. For the full year, Playboy says it will exceed its revenue and adjusted operating profit guidance of $137 million and $28 million, respectively. The company says it has $400 million worth of order backlog.
“We saw record sales in October on our platform. Sales are up over 40% year-over-year and on Playboy.com which we re-launched as a shopping site, the last 12 days of November we did more revenue than we did in all of the third quarter. So we are very optimistic going into 2021 and for the balance of the year,” Kohn added.
Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.
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