Friendfinder CEO Marc Bell Tells FBN He Is Still "Very Interested In Acquiring Playboy"

FriendFinder Networks CEO Marc Bell tells FOX Business Network's (FBN) Liz Claman and David Asman that the company is “looking to figure out how to expand.” He also discussed Playboy, saying “we are still obviously very interested in acquiring Playboy, plus a few other assets to go with it…We are pretty excited about the future.” Excerpts from the interview are below, courtesy of Fox Business Network. On where the deal with FriendFinder and Playboy stands: “Recently, about four weeks ago, we raised $551 million in new financing, we rejiggered our balance sheet…that gave us a lot of flexibility to do acquisitions. We are still obviously very interested in acquiring Playboy, plus a few other assets to go with it. And, we are out there looking.” On how Playboy would benefit if it was acquired by FriendFinder: “If you look at FriendFinder today, 10 years ago it didn't exist. Today, we're the fifth largest owner of email addresses in the world, we have over 30,000 websites in 185 countries, we have 124 million people coming to our websites every month. Imagine what we can do with the power of our brands, our business today applied to any business we acquire...And we're looking at over the next five years how do we double that….We have a lot of eyeballs, about 25 percent of all Americans over the age of eighteen have registered for at least one of our websites.” On what it would take to make Playboy hot again: “When we look at the world today, it's an online world. It's a digital world. It's about online content, digital content, new media, taking advantage of new technologies…and that's what we're trying to do. Look for brands that we can acquire, things we can go out, apply our technologies and some of our cutting edge things to them.” On if he's still interested in Playboy and if there's still an offer on the table: “We are still interested; we are looking at lots of deals now. We are pretty excited about the future.” On what the future holds for FriendFinder: “We are looking to the future of all the great things we can do…In this economy, if you look at the recession in the past two years, we have almost doubled in size, doubled our bottom line and it's just all about basic business skills and just continuing to grow the business.” On if and when FriendFinder will go public: “Anything could happen.”