• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, March 25, 2016

Playboy Enterprises is considering putting itself up for sale, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. Although no deal has been finalized, the company could be worth over $500 million, due in large part to its strong licensing business. That’s up from the $207 million valuation when Hugh Hefner took the company private in partnership with private equity investors in 2011.

Playboy Enterprises had revenues of $38 million from its media business and $55 million from its licensing business in 2015, according to the WSJ. The licensing business has wide potential, with new deals possible with consumer goods and media companies, the same sources say. The company also has a number of assets including the famous Playboy Mansion, which is currently up for sale.

The company retained investment bank Moelis & Co. to oversee a possible auction. A number of alternatives are also on the table, including splitting up the company and selling some or all of it to different buyers.

The news that Playboy could hit the auction block comes not long after the highly publicized decision to drop nude photos from the print edition (the Web site already had a no-nudes policy) and reposition the publication as a young men’s lifestyle magazine.

Last month Cooper Hefner, Hugh Hefner’s son, harshly criticized that decision in an interview with Business Insider and a separate online post, in which he also blasted the company’s current management.

The younger Hefner argued that nudity is so central to the Playboy brand that removing it renders the brand incoherent, and contended that millennials aren’t necessarily opposed to it: “I didn’t agree with the decision, because I felt as though millennials and Gen-Y didn’t view nudity as the issue. The issue was the way in which nudity and the girls were portrayed.”