Pornhub Finances Exposed

Very little is publicly known about the labyrinthine inner workings of MindGeek, the parent company of the world’s most famous porn site, Pornub. Recent reporting from Semafor has provided a hitherto unheard-of glimpse into the company’s finances via leaked documents intended for potential investors.

Via Semafor:

Pornhub’s parent company is surprisingly profitable despite recent financial and reputational hits, according to internal projections reviewed by Semafor that give a rare look inside the firm.

Executives anticipated making tens of millions of dollars in profits despite MasterCard and Visa refusing to process payments for certain websites including Pornhub, with operating margins of about 27% in 2021 and almost 30% in 2022, according to estimates the company showed potential investors in 2021. In comparison, Facebook parent Meta had an operating margin of 25% in 2022.

MindGeek, which owns Pornhub and other adult websites such as Brazzers, was expected to churn out profits despite not attracting high-end advertisers thanks to relatively low costs.

Last year, Mastercard and Visa suspended payment services indefinitely to Pornhub amid significant public criticism of the site and what critics of the porn industry view as its potentially deleterious effects on society.

Related: Pornhub Closes up Shop in Virginia

Via CNBC, August, 4, 2022:

Visa and Mastercard said Thursday card payments for advertising on Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek would be suspended after a lawsuit stoked controversy over whether the payments giants could be facilitating child pornography.

A federal judge in California on Friday denied Visa’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit by a woman who accuses the payment processor of knowingly facilitating the distribution of child pornography on Pornhub and other sites operated by parent company MindGeek.

Getting the banhammer from the likes of Mastercard and Visa would be devastating for most businesses, potentially fatally so. But Pornhub appears to have weathered the storm despite taking a 40% hit in revenue due to the revocation of credit card processing.

Continuing via Semafor:

Getting banned by Visa and Mastercard lowered expected earnings by as much as 40% in 2022. If the payments giants started processing again, MindGeek projected its 2022 revenue to be about $455 million — less than the $460 million the company said it generated in 2018.

The figures come from presentations and internal reports MindGeek, through an outside firm, showed potential investors when hoping to attract takeover interest, according to people familiar with the effort. Investment group Ethical Capital Partners, which formed specifically for this acquisition, eventually bought MindGeek in March of this year.

As I and others at PJ Media have reported, several states are also considering various ways to restrict access to Pornhub under the auspices of preventing minors from accessing pornography and combating child exploitation.