PLBY put up a great 4th quarter. Revenue was up 107% to $95.7mm beating our higher than the highest-on-the-street estimate. Adjusted EBITDA came in ahead of consensus as well at $14.0mm vs $13.1mm. Management guided up 2022 to $350mm in revenue with consensus at $337mm and EBITDA to $55mm with consensus at $50.4mm. Demand for the PLBY brands remains strong and growth initiatives are on track. Ashley Kechter was a great addition to this call carrying her experience building real branded products/goods at large successful public companies. With other execs excited about the massive growth optionality in the digital content/membership realm, it's reassuring to have her experience at the helm of what is and will for a long time be the core cash flow driving business for PLBY in global products. PLBY delivered on the quarter despite the small miscues around new initiative launches and covid disruptions like slow supply chains, forced store/casino closures, and delayed licensing negotiations. The big complaint from the retail investment community has been the slow development of the Rabbitar holder community/experience. But call commentary gives us the impression that CENTERFOLD became a clear top priority for the digital/tech team in terms of resource allocation. This makes sense, if you promised a platform to a group of big time creators, you have to make it a top priority to deliver the platform as soon as possible. Perhaps this meant the NFT project suffered temporarily, which we’re completely fine with given our view of the long term value opportunity variance (significantly favors CENTERFOLD). On the NFT front, shortly after the call wrapped Rachel Webber posted on Discord that PLBY has partnered with Nightshift, a premium web3 and NFT creative team, to help develop Rabbitar community perks, benefits, collaborations, and more. So the company appears to have simply turned to outsourcing the project development. Additionally, Honey Birdette is planning 10 new stores. The runway is long for this brand to grow and take share in the premium sexy lingerie segment that Victoria’s Secret has been vacating in exchange for more mass appeal. The only downside to this print in our view was the annoying semantics around filing rules that PLBY now falls under, meaning the company’s auditors are still cramming to finish their process, so the filing of the 10k (and more detailed fundamentals) will be delayed a couple weeks. The CFO did share that the company has $70mm in cash on the balance sheet at year end, plenty of liquidity to drive growth initiatives.
With a recognized global brand being repositioned to appeal to the new wave of millennial and GenZ consumers, and multiple businesses to drive monetization, we think PLBY has a decade of significant profitable growth ahead of it. Ultimately we build to an enterprise value of $6.9bn over a TAIL duration or a stock over $150, and a $16bn in EV by 2030.
We outlined the details in our Black Book two weeks ago.
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