The Chinese-language magazine, which published its last edition this month, had suffered from dwinding circulation, Editor Ringo Kwan said.
“There is intense competition in the market,” Kwan told the South China Morning Post. “Circulation is no longer what it used to be.”
Using mainly Asian models, Penthouse’s Hong Kong edition sold 50,000 copies a month in the early 1990s, but Kwan declined to give the latest circulation figures.
The 18-year-old magazine withstood the challenge of a Chinese-language edition of Playboy magazine 10 years ago, attracting readers by publishing photos of Asian models that were more suggestive and explicit.
General Media Inc., the publisher of the U.S. edition of Penthouse, is struggling to reorganize the company after it filed for bankruptcy protection in August.
The U.S. edition saw its circulation drop from nearly 1 million to 565,700 over the past five years, after it alienated advertisers by publishing what was perceived as hard-core pornography, the company said.
Last Thursday, General Media filed an amended reorganization plan that would allow parent Penthouse International Inc. to retain ownership of the magazine.
Penthouse International, which trades publicly on the over-the-counter Bulletin Board, will retain ownership of General Media in consideration for a cash infusion of between $38 and $50 million.
It received a $30 million commitment of funding from Los Angeles-based Post Advisory Group. Penthouse International also received a commitment from majority shareholder Luis Enrique Fernando Molina G. to provide it with additional funding.
The plan trumps a previous plan under which control of General Media and its divisions would have been transferred to bondholders, mainly an entity affiliated with Marc Bell, formerly of Globix Corp.
Bell, who submitted his own reorganization proposal, intended to relaunch Penthouse as a soft-core title.
With the new plan, General Media will enter into a deal that will allow founder Robert C. Guccione to remain Penthouse’s publisher and editor-in-chief.
The U.S. edition was founded in 1965.