Time: close to ‘cheerio’

About to unload UK unit, Essence

TIME

Inc. said it is hoping to wrap up the sale of some properties it has put on the block by early next year.

The properties include the British publishing unit, now known as Time Inc. UK, which was purchased in 2001 for $1.6 billion; several smaller, USbased magazines including Sunset, Golf and a majority stake in Essence; and Essence’s music festival.

Time is also trying to unload its Tampa, Fla.-based Customer Service Center—which employs close to 600 — and its aging computing and mailing-sorting equipment. The revenues of all the combined operations are about $448 million a year.

“The goal here is to wrap these up by year end or shortly thereafter,” CEO Rich Battista told Reuters following the company’s third-quarter earnings report Thursday.

But some investors remain skeptical of Time’s turnaround. With the stock dipping below$10 a share to a new 52week low this week, some are openly questioning a decision to brush off

Edgar Bronfman Jr. and other investors who were trying to buy the company for $18 a share earlier this year. “You express an optimistic tone,”

Leon Cooperman at Omega Advisors, which owns several million shares, said on an earnings call with Time executives. “And yet the stock is at historic lows.”

Battista pointed out that the company is projected to do $1 billion in non-magazine revenue this year, accounting for 35 percent of its overall revenue, up from only 22 percent two years ago.

“As we switch to more of these nonmagazine revenues and they become a more pronounced part of our overall portfolio, we think we are going to start getting real credit for the value those revenues deserve in the marketplace ,” countered Battista.

Time said third-quarter revenue was down 9 percent from a year earlier, to $679 million, hurt by the continued erosion of print advertising, while digital advertising in the quarter was uponly 2.3 percent.

The company posted net income of $13 million, reversing a year-ago loss of $112 million. With tight cost controls, Battista said he still expects the company to be able to meet its $400 million operating income mark for the year.

“We are not where we want to be yet, but we are pleased with the progress of our strategic transformation plan,” Battista said.

Playboy exposed

Playboy is fuming over a Web site that it says is publishing its centerfolds in an eyeball-grabbing slide show without permission.

Boing boing, a Website that advocates for free content across the internet, had been running the lusty photos under the heading “Every Playboy Playmate Center fold Ever ,” according to a copyright infringement suit filed Nov. 7 by Playboy Enterprises in federal court in California.

The suit names Happy Mutants LLC, parent company of boingboing, as a defendant.

Playboy Enterprises is demanding $150,000 per infringement — or nearly $72 million for the 447 centerfolds that run from April 1960 until January 2016.

“Happy Mutants has only learned of this lawsuit via the internet,” boingboing publisher Jason Weisberger told The Post. “As for now, we think they may have filed in error; what we have seen makes no sense.”

Designing man

Scott Dadich, the former Wired editor-in-chief who quit Condé Nast to start his own design and strategy firm, Godfrey Dadich Partners, has just poached award-winning creative designer Florian Bach lad a from Fast Company.

He’s also signed another former Condé Nast executive, Rick Levine, to be a managing partner and head up the expanding New York office. Levine had actually been Dadich’s first boss at Condé Nast, when Dadich was still the Wired creative director.

They teamed up to run the Condé Nast editorial group, but Levine was out in 2014 in a company upheaval.

Dadich teamed up with Patrick Godfrey to form the firm in January.

While he won’t disclose revenue, Dadich said the firm has already expanded to more than 60 people at its headquarters in San Francisco and offices in LA and NY, and counts the 9/11 Memorial & Museum and the Obama Foundation among its clients.

Levine is heading the four-person New York office— which is looking to add eight people.