Monday morning, the publisher of iconic adult magazine Playboy (PLA) announced that it will take the company private, thanks to a "sweetened offer" from the magazine's founder Hugh Hefner. The offer of $6.15 per share represents an 18% premium from the stock's Friday close. The total offer values the company at $207 million. Back in July, Hefner's Icon Acquisition Holdings LP offered $5.50 per share.

Playboy has had other offers, including an offer of $210 million from rival Penthouse magazine. That said, Hefner is Playboy's largest shareholder with roughly 70% of the company's voting shares and 28% of the company's nonvoting stock. Hefner noted that the "agreement will give us the resources and the flexibility to return Playboy to its unique position and to further expand our business around the world."

Continue reading Hefner Is Taking Playboy Private

Hefner Is Taking Playboy Private originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 10 Jan 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The main focus of Treasury Secretary Paulson's speech to the Economic Club of Washington was what to do with Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE). He suggested three possible scenarios for the two troubled companies. First, it should be noted that Feddie and Fannie were taken over by the government under a legal process called conservatorship and that together both companies guarantee nearly half of residential mortgages outstanding.

The Secretary said that both companies have a dual role to serve the public interest and to provide a rate of return to shareholders. To satisfy both of these ends he suggested that one or two new companies could be set up that would guarantee a set return to shareholders but would function differently than they do at present. The companies could purchase and bundle mortgages with a federal guarantee but would not hold a large number of mortgages.

Continue reading Gems of wisdom from the Secretary: Paulson's parting words

Gems of wisdom from the Secretary: Paulson's parting words originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

• High insider ownership
• A history of solid profitability
• A paltry Price/Earnings and/or Price/Cash Flow multiple, combined with a reasonable Price/Book ratio
• A stagnant stock price accompanied by low volume indicating a lack of interest in the stock

Take it Private! Big Apple Bagels originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

• High Insider Ownership
• A History of Solid Profitability
• A paltry Price/Earnings and/or Price/Cash Flow multiple, and a reasonable Price/Book ratio.
  
• A stagnant stock price accompanied by low volume indicating a lack of interest in the stock

Continue reading Take it Private! Hastings Entertainment

Take it Private! Hastings Entertainment originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Prosper.com puts private lenders in touch with borrowers originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

IAC InterActive (NASDAQ:IACI)'s Ask.com has about 5% of the U.S. search engine market -- not much.

But the internet property is going to try to go against the trend. Instead of taking data from customers to target ads, Ask.com will let users "hide" their search data to promote privacy. The company is launching "AskEraser," which will destroy all personal information about a user.

According to The New York Times, unlike typical online privacy controls that can be difficult for average users to find or modify, people will be able to turn AskEraser on or off with a single click."

The privacy police will probably be very happy about the announcement. But it takes a big targeting tool away from Ask, and Ask can use all the help that it can get. It has tried and tried but has had no success in prying search share from Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) or Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO).

The move by Ask is based on the premise that most people care if search engines collect data on them to better target search results and advertising. Since very few people opt out of programs that collect data online, the answer is that almost no one gives a damn.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Ask.com tries to market user privacy with AskEraser originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 11 Dec 2007 08:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Are you an entertaining person? Are you a visual story teller? Can you capture an audiences attention and make them respond to you? If you think you have what it takes to create interest, incite and entertain, then there are options open to you. Don't just tell me you're an artist. Grab your video camera and prove it on Metacafe.

Metacafe is not just another video sharing website. Metacafe has something for you. Cold hard cash awaits the future producer of indie films. As of this writing, the top earning video on Metacafe has pulled $26,683. Note that it has taken about two and a half years to do that. Still though, that's not a bad return on less than four minutes of video. Other vid-clips on the site have generated between $3,000 and $8,000 for their creators. While not an amount that you could live on, it's still real money which could help pay the bills.

I myself have several ideas that I'd like to try in pursuit of Internet-based revenue generation. I do call myself an artist and I have the ability to make people sit up and take notice. What I don't have is a high-speed Internet connection...

I guess my gay version of Gumby will have to wait a while longer... and his pony pal Pokie will too.

Metacafe: The economics of watching stuff on the web originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 26 Apr 2007 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Reveo is a technology incubator which has proven that they are worth keeping an eye on. At least indirectly, Reveo competes with companies such as IBM (NYSE: IBM) and 3M (NYSE: MMM). To date Reveo holds over 300 patents in the fields of electrochemistry, optics, fuel cells, and advanced materials. This is the kind of company that invents and develops the technologies of which your future shall be built upon.

Reveo invites independent investment and has their portfolio available online. Their mission is to spin off companies based on technologies which Reveo has created and made viable. The growing list of Reveo subsidiaries includes cutting edge technology companies such as: VRex Inc., Chelix Technologies Corp., eVionyx Inc., Xellerion Inc., and PetaComm Inc. These are all companies which are busy punching wide openings into the future.

In addressing the need to provide a solid and focused business platform from which to accomplish their goals, Reveo created the Edison Technology Portfolio (ETP) Strategy. This strategy provides the frame work needed to launch Reveo's subsidiary companies with the ability to immediately exploit marketable technologies with a minimum of administrative tangle. In other words, Reveo spin off companies are able to hit the ground running.

If being up to date with leading edge technologies and the opportunities presented therein is of interest to you, then you owe it to yourself to check this company out. With a successful stable of spin off companies already in hand, it stands to reason that Reveo isn't going to disappear any time soon. I see a wealth of opportunities here... do you?

Reveo keeps the big guys on their toes originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 02 Jan 2007 17:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

As the Private Equity deal juggernaut continues at a record pace, the Justice Department continues to send out letters in their probe of PE competitive behavior. The Wall Street Journal reported today that Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MER) has joined this inauspicious list. Other letters in the same form, I am sure, will be received by other players. Any Justice Department investigation is bad news and a distraction, and I am sure there is concern throughout the PE industry.

The question at hand is whether PE firms, in pursuing the "club" deals (many firms getting together to pursue a large target, like a bunch of hunters combining to wrestle an elephant) are "colluding" to bring down prices for the assets they are pursuing, thereby undertaking anti-competitive and thus illegal behavior. The Journal speculates that the Hertz transaction is under particular scrutiny. This was not only a large club deal but one where the buyers made a lot of money VERY quickly. To the Justice Department, I am sure, the fact that big bucks were made in short order MUST mean illegal activity. The Federal Government seems to frown upon large scale success, and therefore must investigate.

I have not seen any of these love letters and can only speculate about the investigation, but the facts of life in Private Equity do not support a case for collusion.

Continue reading More scrutiny for private equity firms

More scrutiny for private equity firms originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 06 Nov 2006 16:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Insider Blogging looks at the blogs about our favorite companies, exposing the last legal way to get "inside information."

I'm what you might call a First Amendment scholar, having taken law-school-level courses on the subject and researched a number of such cases for my various, data-rich employers. And even though I'm a political liberal, I have a bias against extending "privacy" laws to online behavior, especially when said online behavior is conducted on very public services. I just don't agree that there is a "compelling interest" in protecting one's search behavior, especially if it can't be definitively traced back to the individual. In a free society, private enterprises should be able to do whatever they wish with the information you type into their tools; unless they've told you otherwise. In my opinion? Your behavior on a search engine is just as protectable as anything else you do in the public realm; what groceries you purchase, for instance, or what car you drive.

So I'm entirely not shocked that AOL put a bunch of customer search data (without, it must be noted, any identifying information about who did the searching) online 10 days ago. Now, apologies have been issued ("This was a screw-up, and we're angry and upset," says a spokesperson). I seem to be in the minority, however; the internet, it is horrified.

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch seems to be most shocked, saying that "The utter stupidity of this is staggering ," [emphasis his] and he claims that "the abilitiy to analyze all searches by a single user will often lead people to easily determine who the user is, and what they are up to ... many people often search on their own name, or those of their friends and family, to see what information is available about them on the net. Combine these ego searches with porn queries and you have a serious embarrassment. Combine them with "buy ecstasy" and you have evidence of a crime. Combine it with an address, social security number, etc., and you have an identity theft waiting to happen. The possibilities are endless."

Wow. That's a bit inflammatory, Michael, don't you think?

Continue reading Insider blogging: the great AOL search caper

Insider blogging: the great AOL search caper originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 07 Aug 2006 20:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.