PIERRE WOODMAN wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 17, 2024 8:08 pm

At least you love Wendy !!!

PW

PornHub, Hustler, and various other unidentified companies put in bids, but the winning bid, $11,200,000, was by WGCZ Limited of Prague. That drives me batty. Why on earth would successful companies place astronomically high competitive bids to acquire a dead business, a dead business that was effectively bankrupt, a dead business that had no following? What did this dead business have that the magnates so desperately wanted?

I had never heard of WGCZ. So I looked it up: Ben Woods, “The (Almost) Invisible Men and Women behind the World’s Largest Porn Sites,” Insider, 3 March 2016. What can I say?

To learn more about WGCZ and its group of associated companies:

companies:

WebGroup Czech Republic, a.s., D&B Business Directory

MindGeek S.a.r.l. et al v. WGCZ S.R.O. et al , Justia Dockets & Filings

Malorie Deborah Pacaud, Expanzo

Robert William Seifert, Expanzo

Hydrenta HLP Int. Limited v. WGCZ, S.R.O. et al, LawSuitData

Marjorie Grocq, Expanzo

WGCZ Holding, a.s., Expanzo

“The Czech Republic, Land of Pleasure,” Prague Morning, 10 August 2019

PORNORAMA - European Union Trademark Information, TradeMakers

So, what do we make of this? WGCZ, or WebGroup Czech Republic, a.s., to give its full name, tries to stay out of the public eye. It is run by French twin brother and sister Stéphane Michaël Pacaud and Malorie Deborah Pacaud, born 17 September 1978, together with their Czech partner, Robert William Seifert, born 22 November 1972, as well as supervisory board member Marjorie Grocq, born 2 August 1980. The independent joint-stock company lists its corporate address as WGCZ, a.s., Krakovská 1366/25, CZ-110 00 Prague 1, Czech Republic. A rival source adds that the office falls within “New Town,” or Nové Město. This latter source offers a description: “part of the Information Technology Services Industry. WebGroup Czech Republic, a.s. has 10 employees at this location and generates $64.13 million in sales (USD),” and further states that it started operations in 2012 and was incorporated in 2017. Elsewhere we learn that it registered as a business in Prague on 18 August 2014. WGCZ lists its industry as “Information Technology
Professional Services Sector; Computer related services, nec; Real property lessors, nec; Commercial photography; Theatrical producers and services, nec; Prerecorded records and tapes.” Expanzo lists its other activities as:

46100 Wholesale on a fee or contract basis
46900 Non-specialised wholesale trade
47100 Retail sale in non-specialised stores
62000 Computer programming, consultancy and related activities
68200 Renting and operating of own or leased real estate
68310 Real estate agencies
73100 Advertising
82100 Office administrative and support activities
As for “Fields of Activity,” I ran the list through Google Translator:
• Production, reproduction, distribution, sale,
rental of audio and audio-visual recordings
and production of unrecorded data carriers and recordings
• Mediation of trade and services
• Wholesale and retail
• Providing software, information technology consulting,
data processing, hosting and related activities and web portals
• Advertising, marketing, media representation
• Services in the field of administrative administration
and services of organizational and economic nature
• Production, trade and services nec
• Purchase, sale, management and maintenance of real estate

The Pacaud companies that share the Krakovská 1366/25 address are:
Streamfury s.r.o.
GTFLIX TV, s.r.o.
NKL Associates s.r.o.
SP Box, s.r.o.
WGCZ Holding, a.s.
Traffic F, s.r.o.
DDF Communication, s.r.o.
MME Traffic, s.r.o.
WGCZ Limited, s.r.o.
DONAMIS, s.r.o.
SKY NETWORK, s.r.o.
WebGroup Czech Republic, a.s.
United Communication Hldg a.s.
United Communication Hldg II a.s.
United Communication Hldg III a.s.
DONAMIS MEDIA s.r.o.
GGW PARTNERS s.r.o.
GGW MEDIA s.r.o.
GGW GROUP s.r.o.
DONAMIS GROUP s.r.o.
DONAMIS II s.r.o.
SONESTA TECHNOLOGIES s.r.o.
SONESTA MEDIA s.r.o.
SONESTA LIMITED s.r.o.
MHUB1 s.r.o.
Content SPV, s.r.o.

Google Maps reveals that WGCZ occupies an office space in an unassuming commercial building, with an almost-unnoticeable sign by the door, one of six. WGCZ’s four main assets are the XNXX, XVideos, DDF, and Bang Bros. websites. Hydrenta HLP Int. Limited filed a property-rights suit against WGCZ in 2015, and if you want to spend money (I don’t), you can find the legal papers here. A rival porno conglomerate, MindGeek S.a.r.l. et alia, also filed a suite against WGCZ at about the same time, and if you wish to purchase a subscription to PACERS (my subscription lapsed), you can read the court papers here. According to Ben Woods, the connections among the various WGCZ holdings are like spaghetti. XNXX is registered by VLab of Hong Kong, which also registered some of the other Pacaud companies, and XNXX is owned by NKL Associates, another of the Pacaud concerns. I do not understand WGCZ’s business model, because the WGCZ web content is free, borrowed (or “borrowed”?) from other sites. Are revenues generated from ad clicks? Is there something else going on? The four principals and the five or six other staffers have passive incomes. Surely, the office is automated. The computers do all the work. The people have it easy. So, again, to restate my vexing question: If it was making so much money, so easily, so automatically, what was the attraction in spending $11,200,000 in cash for a failed magazine? Why didn’t the ultrarich just let it fail? What concern was it of theirs? What did a failed magazine have that the ultrarich wanted or needed? Something else is going on. A couple of terms come to mind, but maybe I’m just being overly paranoid: “data harvesting,” “data mining,” and “useful idiot.” Also, think about this.


WGCZ did not begin its reign at Penthouse with a purge. It retained Kelly and her executive team and guaranteed them autonomy. Have you ever worked in showbiz or publishing? If so, you know what a guarantee of autonomy means. In case you haven’t worked in showbiz or publishing, count your blessings, sit yourselves down, and pay attention. The best thing to do when your new owner promises you autonomy: Run away. Cut all ties. Find new interests. Get a new career entirely unrelated to showbiz or publishing. A guarantee of autonomy is a guarantee that your work will be thoroughly sabotaged and that you will be set up to take all the blame. Having worked in showbiz and publishing myself, not just once, but many times, I speak from experience. A job driving a trash truck for City Hall is far more fulfilling, and far more respectable, and far more constructive — and far more remunerative, too.


On the off-chance that any of the film materials are still usable, would WGCZ wish to proceed with a restoration? A restoration would cost a fortune. There is no way a restoration would cost less than $3,000,000, and the price would in all likelihood be considerably higher than that. To put this into context, the restoration of The Other Side of the Wind cost about $6,000,000, and it was somewhat less complicated than a restoration of Caligula would need to be. There’s a heck of a lot of film in that collection, much of it in tiny little rolls of a few seconds each, or fractions of a second, much of it unlabeled or mislabeled. In a typical film restoration, only the approved takes need to be rescued and scanned. This is not a typical film restoration, since nobody knows which takes are approved. Everything needs to be scanned. Tinto shot about 96 hours of neg, and he recorded about another 30 hours of mag-stripe production audio. All of it needs to be digitized. Many of the materials in the collection are duplicates, but those would need to be scanned as well, since the originals may no longer exist. All the post-sync needs to be digitized too, in discrete channels, and there’s probably 50 hours of post-sync alone. Also, is the postsync recoverable? Fullcoat is not designed to last 40 years! If anyone other than a qualified professional with the proper equipment so much as breathed on it, well then, it’s gone forever. This would be a massive project. Where would the money come from? Where?


Postscript. Circa 17 August 2018: Kelly was fired, together with her whole top-echelon management team. The reasons: Heaven only knows. There are rumors, but as I have learned, when dealing with the porn biz — or not just the porn biz, really, but showbiz in general — or not just showbiz, really, but any biz at all — the true story is always buried, even by those who could save face and earn a guaranteed “Get out of Jail Free” card by revealing the truth. As for the bankruptcy and the ouster, it was inevitable, I guess. The terms of the mortgage were usurious; the mortgage payments drained all the profits and then some. It was only a matter of time, and I’m actually surprised that Kelly managed to hold on for a little over two years. Amazing. We have to wonder about the new owner’s interest in Penthouse? What’s in it for WGCZ?

I’m trying to think this through, and with such insufficient data, I’m bound to be more wrong than right. According to Keith J. Kelly, “Penthouse May Be Bought by High Times Suitor,” New York Post, 23 May 2018, Kelly Holland’s loan from ExWorks Capital was $9,000,000 at a 23% interest. As far as I can tell, Kelly got that loan in January 2016, and the first instalment was due probably in February. I do not know the term of the loan, though it was probably the usual 30 years. When we click those numbers into the Amortization Schedule Calculator, we see a monthly payment of $172,686, a total interest of $53,166,878, and a total payment of $62,166,878. Do you begin to see why I detest paying interest and refuse to do so ever again? I am convinced that ExWorks, from the outset, knew full well that the PH loan would quickly go into default. This is not the sort of loan that a bank would dare to make, since it was not just risky, but a guaranteed fail.

According to the New York Post, by May 2018 Kelly had managed to fork over a total of $5,300,000. When we check this number against the results in the Amortization Schedule Calculator, this is about what she should have paid by August 2018, $5,345,491, of which a piddling $328 would have gone towards principal. So the reported number and the guess number are only about three months apart, which means we’re pretty much on the right track in deciphering this mystery. If her interest were not the reported 23%, but, instead, 25%, we would be even closer still. My best guess is that she had made a couple of partial payments, and lending firms, in common with their progenitors, the Black Mambas of Sub-Saharan Africa, snap their venomous fangs at anybody who makes a partial payment. When ExWorks sold its debt to Dream Media, it did not sell that debt for $9,000,000 minus $328; it sold that debt for $9,000,000 minus $6,000,000. For those of you who did not know how lending firms operate, well, now you know. Though ExWorks collected less than a tenth of its projected revenue, it still made its money back, and was happy to sell the remaining debt at a discounted rate. Dream Media made a heck of a profit on that $3,000,000 investment when WGCZ Limited of Prague put in the winning bid of $11,200,000.

The preceding two paragraphs are probably on pretty wobbly grounds, but all I can do is go by the published data. Anyone who has ever done serious research on any topic knows how much to trust published data. If you have never done serious research on any topic, I can let you in on the secret about how much to trust the published data. Answer: Not at all. Yet the published data are the only available data; so let us continue to plough through. My assumption is that, since WGCZ is one of the top porn conglomerates in our solar system, and considering that it has been gobbling up rivals left and right, it has probably nearly as much money as the Scaife family, it has probably nearly as much money as the Koch family, it has probably much less money than Paul Singer or Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin or Semion Mogilevich, but it has probably much more than Mark Zuckerberg. If my guess about its wealth is correct, then it probably paid its $11,200,000 up front, in full, and did not bother about business loans. Actually, that’s not a guess. There’s no other possibility.

Remember, in 28 months Kelly was able to put $5,300,000 towards the mortgage interest ($189,286/month). Let us assume that WGCZ has no need to worry about any mortgages. Let us assume that WGCZ can continue running PH at the current level. If these two assumptions are correct, then it can earn its investment back in five years ($11,200,000÷$189,286=59.17 months). After that, it’s all gravy. My question, which I hazard to guess is also your question, is how much gravy will be left? How much longer can PH continue? PH had hopped onto the Playboy/King bandwagon in 1965, when pictures of naked people caused outrage and hearings in Parliament and criminal proceedings and ubiquitous headlines and widespread scandal, and, hence, were immensely profitable; but this is 2019, and nobody cares about such things anymore; it’s all so passé; there’s no novelty anymore, there’s no outrage, no scandal, no Parliamentary hearings, no criminal proceedings, no headlines, no curiosity. As for web porn, which generates probably more web traffic than all other sites combined, it’s a dying game. It’s not sustainable. It made a handful of bosses extremely rich these past two and a half decades, but the business model will change, and very soon. WGCZ will likely choose not to keep up.

Kelly tried her darnedest to run an honest business, and that, perhaps, was her singular mistake.

PIERRE WOODMAN wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 23, 2024 6:37 pm

Je pense que tu devrais simplement oublier ce mec.

Spielberg wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 08, 2024 2:38 pm

Well you might be the Tarzan but the more you mention the Britshit and how he affect you then you make him look more like superman but why? He have less followers than you but you always fall into his trap on twitter.