I get depressed whenever I read a Playboy Enterprises (NYSE: PLA) earnings report these days (see more of today's earnings news). I mean, sex sells, right? And one has to assume that Playboy has the best brand equity when it comes to selling sex, correct? Apparently not. Playboy's situation seems to be getting worse. The magazine is no longer the cool taboo it once was, the internet is killing it, and subscriptions and newsstand sales are fading. The magazine is arguably the driving heart of the brand. Without it, things will be rough. The numbers tell the tale.
For the second quarter, revenues declined over 14% to $73.4 million. The net loss was 6 cents per share. In the year-ago period, Playboy booked a 6 cents per-share profit. According to Briefing.com, revenue estimates were missed, as were expectations for earnings. In fact, Playboy missed by 11 cents! Not sexy at all.
All of the major operating segments saw declines in their top lines. Licensing increased its operating income by 9%. Publishing, believe it or not, actually narrowed its operating loss. Neither of these two positives is worth much in the grand scheme of things.
My collegue Zac Bissonnette posted a story about Societe Generale, the French bank that suffered a $7 billion loss at the hands of a 30-year-old trader. He points out that according to French law, the bank could not fire this big time loser without a formal explanation of the problems they have with his performance. I guess they have no dollar limit. Zac confessed to wanting to be a fly on the wall and I went into my Saturday Night Live alter-ego adding the following:
You don't need to be a fly on the wall Zac. You know what will be said:
"We find that your performance over the last year has been quite extroadinary. We have never seen or heard of anyone losing $7 billion that was not a government official. This is so far outside of our expectatations that we feel we must put you on notice that should you lose another $7 billion we will be forced to ask for your resignation. However, you should not worry because, as is blatantly obvious the government would probably jump at the opportunity to retain someone of your experience. You would need no training and could start to lose money on the first day."
One of our more commented-on stories, We're too sexy ... per Victoria's Secret's CEO, received some very funny ones. The best one, that I thought showed the wildest mis-characterization of the worlds population, was "supermodels only make up 7% of the world."
Obviously a few decimal places were left out, otherwise we would have 500 million supermodels. I'm not sure anyone has an exact count, but the number is likely less than a hundred, perhaps two. However, this might explain the rash of UFO sightings -- beings from other planets surely would be eager to travel from light years away to do 'meet and greets' in a world where better than 1 in 15 people were supermodels!
I don't know how our readers are doing with their investments, but there are some that clearly need to get a grip on percentages. The following gem of a coment was sent to my colleague Zac Bissonnette's after his post: Congress grills overpaid executives:
"I personally do not feel that any CEO of publicly traded company should receive more than 300% of the lowest paid permanent employee. Private companies they should receive what ever they can."
In a post yesterday, BloggingStocks' Zac Bissonnette blogged about the announcement that Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) will be launching a national TV advertising campaign for the first time. Bissonnette makes a good case why this could be a bad sign for Starbucks, the paradigm and case study for word-of-mouth marketing.
From one Zack to another, I'd like to take the other side of the argument. I actually think this could be good for Starbucks and good for investors. I think this is a clear case of a corporation reaching a new stage of growth and using age-accepted tools to continue growing its business. Far from being negative, I think this is a good thing.
Rather than being a smear on the brand, I think customers will see this as the maturation of the brand. After lowering guidance and reporting negative traffic numbers in its stores, Starbucks has seemingly exhausted effective use of word-of-mouth marketing and now needs to turn elsewhere for growth. In essence, the "cool factor" is no longer driving huge growth for the company (keep in mind, even 20% long-term growth is still impressive).
Investors who are familiar with the conditions of the economy and stock market of the bubble days of the late 90's and 2000 are probably also familiar with the term "domain speculation." According to the AP, those days seem to be back in the domain world.
The underlying premise behind the domain speculation game is that you can find domains that are undervalued or under-appreciated and sell them to someone when they become in-demand or needed. While this theme does make sense in many cases, such as purchasing a domain name that is unclaimed for a few dollars, I think that the average investor should steer far away from the purchase of already-expensive domain names with the hopes of selling them later.
I get depressed whenever I read a Playboy Enterprises (NYSE: PLA) earnings report these days (see more of today's earnings news). I mean, sex sells, right? And one has to assume that Playboy has the best brand equity when it comes to selling sex, correct? Apparently not. Playboy's situation seems to be getting worse. The magazine is no longer the cool taboo it once was, the internet is killing it, and subscriptions and newsstand sales are fading. The magazine is arguably the driving heart of the brand. Without it, things will be rough. The numbers tell the tale. 
In a post yesterday, BloggingStocks' Zac Bissonnette 
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