Playboy (PLBY) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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DATE

Monday, March 16, 2026 at 5 p.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• Chief Executive Officer — Ben Kohn
• Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer — Marc B. Crossman

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TAKEAWAYS

• Total Revenue -- $34.9 million, up from $33.5 million in 2024, reflecting licensing and Honey Birdette growth.
• Licensing Revenue -- Over $46 million, accounting for more than 38% of total revenue and delivered at 90% gross margin.
• Unrecognized Contractual Licensing Revenue -- Over $343 million, offering multi-year recurring revenue visibility.
• UTG China Transaction -- Announced sale of 50% of China licensing business for $122 million total cash; $45 million purchase price, $67 million in minimum distributions over eight years, and $10 million brand support payments.
• Senior Debt Reduction -- Reduced by nearly $58 million to approximately $160 million, with an additional nearly $52 million to be applied from UTG proceeds.
• Net Income -- $3.6 million, or $0.03 per share, compared to a $12.5 million net loss or $0.15 loss per share in 2024.
• Adjusted EBITDA -- $7.1 million, achieving four consecutive quarters of positive results; would have been $8 million excluding litigation expenses.
• Operating Expenses (Excluding Impairments) -- $32.2 million, reduced from $37.9 million in 2024 due to a 15% decline in selling and administrative expenses.
• Honey Birdette Sales Growth -- Sales up 9% year over year; full-price sales up 21%; gross product margin at 77.8%, up 140 basis points.
• Honey Birdette Retail Channel -- 17% like-for-like growth, with UK up 36% and USA up 21%.
• Honey Birdette Digital Sales -- Digital growth of 7%, US digital up 16%, and average order value up 7% across regions.
• Honey Club Loyalty Program -- Launched mid-October; membership reached approximately 80,000 members.
• Paid Voting and Playmate Search Initiatives -- Paid voting, launched in Q4, identified as having "multi-million-dollar potential" and substantial growth opportunity; Playmate Search drew tens of thousands of creators and significantly increased user-generated content.
• Two Senior Hires -- David Miller appointed President, Media and Brand; Phillip Picardi appointed Chief Brand Officer and Editor in Chief to accelerate cross-pillar execution.
• Website Rebuild With Subscription Model -- Replatforming underway, offering memberships at $79 (digital) and $149 (digital plus print); future inclusion of event access as part of membership value proposition.
• Hospitality Relaunch -- Signed non-binding letter of intent and selected an operating partner to develop a new Miami Beach Mansion membership club, with anticipated participation through licensing and membership revenue rather than direct capital investment.
• Magazine and Brand Relaunch -- New cover issue will feature a female musician with over 70 million Instagram followers, demonstrating current brand appeal, and Propagate partnership aims to develop a Playmate Search television show.

SUMMARY

Playboy (NASDAQ:PLBY) completed a multi-pillar strategic transformation, transitioning to a focused, high-margin, asset-light operating model anchored by recurring licensing revenue and subscription-based digital content. Management emphasized the balance sheet impact of the UTG China transaction, which immediately deleverages Playboy, ensures future cash flows, and preserves profit-sharing exposure in a major growth market. Operational discipline yielded year-over-year expense reduction, a return to profitability, and four consecutive quarters of positive Adjusted EBITDA, with all core business lines contributing.

• The company expects the UTG China deal to close imminently, resulting in almost $52 million allocated directly to debt paydown and a forecasted immediate accretion to earnings, as stated by both executives.
• Management views Honey Birdette as a potential future monetization opportunity aiding further deleveraging, underpinned by double-digit store and digital expansion in the U.S. and U.K.
• Ben Kohn said, "Our magazine relaunch is generating real cultural momentum," pointing to brand revitalization that feeds the digital ecosystem and licensing pipeline.
• The management team is pursuing a disciplined, selective approach to licensing, targeting higher-quality partnerships and increased minimum guarantees for sustainable contractual value.
• Paid voting and membership subscriptions are highlighted as scalable, recurring revenue levers, with new consumer data tools deployed for improved conversion.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• Adjusted EBITDA: Non-GAAP measure representing earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, excluding certain non-recurring or non-cash items, used by Playboy as a key metric for operating performance.
• Paid Voting: A consumer engagement model in which users pay to cast votes in contests, creating a direct monetization pathway for user involvement, as applied to the Playmate Search initiative.
• Mansion: Refers to the premium Playboy-branded membership club concept, leveraging the brand's hospitality legacy.
• Unrecognized Contractual Licensing Revenue: Future licensing proceeds contracted and guaranteed but not yet recognized as GAAP revenue, offering long-term revenue visibility.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Operator: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Playboy, Inc.'s fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be opened for questions. This conference is being recorded today, Monday, 03/16/2026, and the earnings press release accompanying this conference call was issued after the market closed today. On our call today are Playboy, Inc.'s Chief Executive Officer, Ben Kohn, and Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Marc B. Crossman.

I would like to remind you that the information discussed today is qualified in its entirety by the Form 8-K and Form 10-K filed today by Playboy, Inc., which may be accessed on the SEC's website and on Playboy, Inc.'s website. Please note that statements made during this call, financial projections, and other statements that are not historical in nature may constitute forward-looking statements. Such statements are made on the basis of Playboy, Inc.'s views and assumptions regarding future events and business performance at the time they are made, and we do not undertake any obligation to update them.

Forward-looking statements are subject to risks which could cause the company's actual results to differ from its historical results and forecast, including those risks set forth in the SEC filings, and you should refer to and carefully consider those for more information. This cautionary statement applies to all forward-looking statements made during this call. Do not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. In addition, throughout today's call, the company may refer to Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP financial measure, which it believes provides helpful information to investors about the performance of the business on an ongoing basis.

A reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to its most directly comparable GAAP financial measure is included in today's earnings release, which is available on the Playboy, Inc. Investor Relations website. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Chief Executive Officer Ben Kohn. Ben, the floor is yours.

Ben Kohn: Thank you, operator, and thank you to everyone for joining us today. Welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. I am pleased to share that we have made meaningful progress across all four pillars of our strategy, delivered strong financial results including our fourth consecutive quarter of positive Adjusted EBITDA, and made two senior hires who will be instrumental in driving our next phase of growth. Let me walk you through what we have accomplished and where we are headed. 2025 was a defining year for Playboy, Inc. We completed a strategic transformation that has fundamentally repositioned the company for sustainable, profitable growth.

We exited the year with four consecutive quarters of positive Adjusted EBITDA, reduced debt by $58,000,000 since 2024, as well as defined the pathway to reduce debt by a further almost $52,000,000 through our UTG China deal. We built a clear, diversified platform around four pillars: media and experiences, licensing, hospitality, and our Honey Birdette direct-to-consumer business. Every part of this business is now oriented toward high margins, recurring revenue, and brand-led growth. We are actively investing in the business across two key areas: content and media to drive audience growth, subscription revenue, and experiences, and building out our digital and hospitality footprint.

To execute on these priorities, we recently made two critical senior hires: David Miller as President, Media and Brand, and Phillip Picardi as Chief Brand Officer and Editor in Chief. Both are world-class leaders with deep experience scaling iconic media brands. Additionally, our UTG China partnership, which we expect to close as early as this week, will further accelerate our deleveraging and provide flexibility to invest in growth. There is a generational white space in the men's lifestyle category. Young men are consuming content at record volumes but remain underserved by sophisticated, trusted voices. No one can match Playboy, Inc.'s 72-year legacy of speaking credibly about relationships, intimacy, and culture.

And because women are at the center of our brand, our message connects with men through women, not in opposition to them. That positioning directly supports every pillar of our strategy. Let me walk you through our progress. Pillar one, media and experiences. Content is our brand marketing. It drives relevancy. It expands our audience and creates IP we monetize across the ecosystem. Under Phillip Picardi's leadership as our new Chief Brand Officer and Editor in Chief, we are rebuilding our editorial engine with high-quality journalism and photography across our core authority areas: relationships, dating, intimacy, and modern masculinity, with expansion into entertainment, sports, gaming, and fashion.

We are also rebuilding our website from the ground up, with a full relaunch expected later this year. The new digital platform will be the hub for a subscription-based revenue model. Free content drives top-of-funnel audience growth, while premium content and experiences sit behind the paywall, creating predictable recurring revenue. The magazine remains the top-of-funnel differentiator. Being featured in it captures creators and celebrities whose content powers our social channels and drives audience growth. The magazine relaunch is going exceptionally well. We will feature a major female music star with over 70,000,000 Instagram followers as our newest cover feature, which underscores the caliber of talent that wants to be associated with the Playboy, Inc. brand today.

These magazine-related brand initiatives serve as the top of our funnel, driving massive awareness and engagement that we then convert downstream. We have over 25,000,000 social followers generating billions of impressions annually. The Playmate Search has been the standout, with tens of thousands of creators entering, mobilizing their followings, and producing daily user-generated content that reduces our production costs while keeping channels active. Each month, we will feature a Playmate of the Month, launch her across our social channels, and then drive our audience behind our paywall. Converting free engagement into paying subscribers is proving to be a scalable, recurring revenue mechanism. Paid voting, which we successfully launched in Q4, has multi-million-dollar potential and significant room to grow.

On the programming side, we are developing original content inspired by historic franchises like the Playboy Interview and Playboy After Dark, including a feature film with Hefter Capital and a television adaptation of the great playmoocer, structured as a licensing revenue and profit share to keep us asset-light. Beyond film and television, we are building out virtual audio and video content that will live on our owned platforms and be distributed across third-party channels, creating new monetization pathways through advertising, sponsorships, and paid subscriptions. The content strategy works hand in hand with our events and experiences business, and we continue converting lifestyle aspiration into participation revenue through curated experiences: Midsummer Night's Dream parties, poker and golf tournaments, and more.

Collectively, our media and experiences pillar is being built to generate revenue across advertising, sponsorships, paid voting, subscriptions, and events and experiences—multiple streams from a single content investment. Pillar two, licensing. Licensing is the most predictable, highest-margin part of our business. We generated over $46,000,000 in licensing revenue in fiscal year 2025, over 38% of total revenue and a 90% gross margin. 90% of that revenue was guaranteed through contractual commitments, and we have over $343,000,000 in unrecognized future revenue. The most significant development is our partnership with UTG Brands Management Group.

In February 2026, we announced the sale of 50% of our China licensing business to UTG for $122,000,000 in total cash: $45,000,000 purchase price, $67,000,000 in guaranteed minimum distributions over the next eight years, and $10,000,000 in brand support payments. This partnership delivers immediate balance sheet improvement, with almost $52,000,000 earmarked for debt reduction, and is immediately accretive to earnings while we retain 50% ownership with profit share upside. Looking ahead, we see significant white space in EMEA, Latin America, and APAC. Playboy, Inc.'s global recognition far exceeds its licensing penetration, with our digital licensing anchored by the $20,000,000 per year annual minimum guarantee by Borg Strategic Partnership.

Going forward, we are being more selective in our licensing approach, focusing on fewer, bigger, higher-quality partners who can drive meaningful scale and strengthen the brand in the marketplace. This disciplined strategy improves the quality of licensed products, supports pricing power, and enhances our long-term contractual value. Licensing gets stronger with increased brand awareness, which is exactly what our media pillar delivers, and with David Miller now overseeing both media and licensing, we have the leadership alignment to fully capitalize on that strategy. Pillar three, hospitality. Over 72 years, Playboy, Inc. has owned and licensed 45 clubs across nine countries. We are now relaunching our membership club, starting with our Miami Beach club, as a new Mansion.

We have signed a non-binding letter of intent to raise capital from third parties for the buildout and have selected a highly experienced hospitality operating partner to bring this vision to life. This structure limits capital for Playboy, Inc. while allowing us to participate through licensing, membership revenue, and brand association. We are making meaningful progress and are excited about the potential for this concept to become an exciting pillar of our business moving forward. Pillar four, Honey Birdette. The Honey Birdette story is about brand health and cash flow, and Q4 delivered strong results. Sales grew 9% year over year on a reported basis, with full-price sales up 21%.

Gross product margin expanded to 77.8%, up 140 basis points, driven by our focus on full-price selling and more disciplined discounting. Retail was a standout channel, up 17% like-for-like with every market positive. The UK led at 36% and the USA at 21% growth. Digital grew 7%, with the US up 16% and average order value lifted 7% across all regions. In mid-October, we launched the Honey Club, our loyalty program, which has already reached approximately 80,000 members. The combination of a healthier retail base and a growing digital channel positions Honey Birdette for durable, profitable growth. We believe this asset could serve as a strong monetization opportunity down the line, helping us to further delever.

In summary, 2025 was the year we completed Playboy, Inc.'s transformation into a focused, high-margin, asset-light platform. The cultural moment is ours. Our licensing foundation is robust, Honey Birdette is profitable and accelerating, and we have the strategy and brand equity to execute. I would now like to turn the call over to Marc to walk through some key financial details.

Marc B. Crossman: Thank you, Ben. Revenue increased to $34,900,000 as compared to $33,500,000 in 2024. The increase reflects the continued strength in the company's global licensing business, further supported by strong Honey Birdette performance. Operating expenses, excluding impairments, decreased to $32,200,000 as compared to $37,900,000 in 2024. The decrease was due primarily to a 15% reduction in selling and administrative expenses as a result of the company's continuing effort to improve operational efficiency, including converting its adult business from an operating model into a licensing model. It is important to note that selling and administrative expenses in 2025 were burdened with approximately $1,200,000 of transaction expenses related to the UTG transaction, as well as $2,100,000 of additional brand marketing expense.

Net income increased to $3,600,000, or $0.03 per share, a significant improvement as compared to a net loss of $12,500,000, or a net loss of $0.15 per share, in 2024. The improvement reflects higher gross margins, the company's continued focus on cost management, as well as ongoing deleveraging efforts and a benefit from income taxes. Adjusted EBITDA increased to $7,100,000, representing our fourth consecutive quarter of positive Adjusted EBITDA, compared to an Adjusted EBITDA loss of $100,000 in 2024. Excluding litigation expenses, Adjusted EBITDA would have been $8,000,000 in the fourth quarter. On the balance sheet, we reduced senior debt by nearly $58,000,000 to approximately $160,000,000 from 2024.

With the UTG transaction, almost $52,000,000 of proceeds will go towards further debt reduction, and we expect the transaction to be immediately accretive, including the anticipated reduction in interest expense. This completes my prepared comments. Let me turn the call back to Ben for closing remarks.

Ben Kohn: Thank you, Marc. We have built a focused, financially disciplined platform that is generating positive Adjusted EBITDA, aggressively paying down debt, and executing across all four pillars of our business. The UTG China partnership, which we expect to close as early as this week, validates the enormous on-top value of the Playboy, Inc. brand globally. It delivers $122,000,000 in contracted cash payments, with nearly $52,000,000 earmarked for debt reduction, and is immediately accretive to earnings. Beyond the financial impact, it gives us a world-class operating partner in the largest consumer market in the world and the flexibility to continue investing in growth. We are investing in this business with conviction.

We made two transformational senior hires in David Miller and Phillip Picardi. We are rebuilding our website and digital platform from the ground up. We are developing original audio and video content. And we have built a subscription and membership revenue model that we believe can scale significantly. Our magazine relaunch is generating real cultural momentum. Our newest cover star, a major female musician with over 70,000,000 Instagram followers, is a testament to the caliber of talent that wants to be part of the Playboy, Inc. brand. On the hospitality side, we have selected an operating partner for our Miami Beach membership club and are making meaningful progress toward bringing that vision to life.

On licensing, we are being more disciplined and selective, focusing on bigger, higher-quality partners who can drive scale while strengthening the brand. We are entering 2026 with momentum, conviction, and a clear line of sight into the value we can create for shareholders. Every pillar of this business is executing, and I firmly believe we have the team, the strategy, and the brand equity to deliver sustainable, long-term value to my fellow shareholders. With that, operator, let us open the line for questions.

Operator: Thank you, sir. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touch-tone phone. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the star followed by the two. If you are using speaker equipment, you will need to lift the handset before making your selection. I will now pause as we assemble the Q. Our first question comes from the line of James Heaney with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

James Heaney: Yeah, great. Thanks for the question. Could you just talk about the rebuild of your website? Curious what are some of the objectives that you hope to achieve from that relaunch and how big of a focus will monetization be as part of the strategy?

Ben Kohn: Hey, James. It is Ben Kohn. Thanks for the question. Our website today is dated. Our single number one goal on the website is brand. The second goal is monetization, which will be a short follow-up from that. And so what that website is going to be is a digital hub for all of our content and the subscription or membership offering that we have begun to roll out with the last issue of the magazine: $79 on a digital basis, $149 on a digital plus print. We will look to expand that membership offering moving forward, meaning we will continue to add utility or more opportunities with that membership, including the opportunity to participate in Playboy, Inc. events.

We are excited by it. We have hired a great digital agency to help us with it. And with David and Phillip on board, I would think that there will be a much improved consumer experience really focused on conversion, and we now have the data tools to help us with that.

James Heaney: That is great. And maybe just another question. I think you spoke on the last call and obviously it came up again today about taking the Playboy, Inc. brand back to its roots this year. Can you just talk about some of the ways in which you are repositioning the brand and so far how that is resonating with the target audience of sort of 18- to 40-year-old males? Thank you.

Ben Kohn: The brand is resonating well. Not getting into any of the specifics yet because we are testing a ton of content out there, but we are seeing meaningful engagement in the content that we are producing, and we are using the data to inform our content strategy moving forward. As we talked about in previous calls, we did hire a brand agency. We spent about six months last year working with that brand agency, really looking at what consumers thought about the brand—internal voices as well. And what that led us to is really taking Playboy, Inc. back to its roots, really being that modern guide for everything worth wanting.

And we are doing that through the voice of women, as we mentioned in the prepared remarks. It starts with the Playmate—the Playmate, obviously, is one of the best brand ambassadors you can have. We did that last year with the contest—tens of thousands of women registered, they brought us hundreds of thousands of users. That is our top of the funnel. We have now signed a deal with Propagate to turn that into a television show. But think about Playboy, Inc. really returning to its roots of what made the company famous in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

James Heaney: Great. Thank you so much.

Ben Kohn: Thank you. Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Alex Saffirame with Lucid Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Alex Saffirame: I wanted to ask about the Honey Birdette business. It looks like a really strong fourth quarter, both on the top line and in terms of gross margin. Can you talk about what is driving that? I know in the past, you said that you have had much more success with full-price selling and pulling back on the discounting. Have you continued to see strong full-price sell-through? And then just year to date, any comments on how the Valentine’s Day season went for the brand?

Marc B. Crossman: Sure, Alex. Good to speak to you. We will start with the first part of that question. From a full-price standpoint, our business is firing on all cylinders. What we are seeing is we have put a 10% price increase in place—this was right around when the tariffs went into effect—and what we have seen is there has been zero pushback from the customer, and that is what has helped lift our margin. So it is coming from two places: one is the price increase, and the second is pulling away from the sale periods. In terms of Valentine’s Day, I cannot give you the exact numbers, but it was our best Valentine’s Day that we have ever had.

We were less promotional, and we were able to move full-price goods at a very good pace. It was up year over year.

Ben Kohn: Alex, I will just add to that too. As we look into 2026, we have talked previously about raising some equity to grow the business. But given where we are as a company as well, we are putting some money into the growth there. We think there is a huge opportunity to expand the store footprint in the United States where we see massive AOV, and we are seeing growth on the digital side as well. So we will continue to expand the business as long as we own it. We think its management team has done a great job with the product, and it is definitely resonating with the consumer.

Alex Saffirame: That is really helpful, thank you. And then I know you guys have done some, you know, some kind of small-scale testing of, you know, ways to kind of, you know, excite the Honey Birdette business from what you are doing with Playboy, Inc.—promotions for merchandise, things like that. Has that kind of moved the needle? Is there any kind of takeaway from that in ways that you could really help to cross-market the brands?

Ben Kohn: That is a great question. We are launching a Playboy, Inc. capsule collection by Honey Birdette. And there might or might not be a paid voting contest tied to that as well, as we think through the marketing angle of that coming up here shortly.

Alex Saffirame: Okay. That is really interesting. Thank you guys very much.

Ben Kohn: Thank you, Alex.

Operator: Thank you. And this concludes our question-and-answer session. I will now hand the call back to Chief Executive Officer Ben Kohn for his closing remarks.

Ben Kohn: Thank you, operator, and thank you to everyone for joining us today. 2025 was a year of transformation, and the results speak for themselves. As we move into 2026, we are executing with discipline and urgency across all four pillars. We appreciate your continued support and look forward to updating you on our progress in the months to come. If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to our IR firm, MZ Group, and we would be happy to answer them. Thank you.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.

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