A sale may be nearing for the Bunny

The Bunny may be close to finding a new hutch.

Playboy Enterprises (PLA), the men's magazine publisher, is in talks to sell itself to Iconix Brand Group (ICON), Bloomberg News reported Thursday.

Playboy's stock jumped 42% in regular trading today to $4.07, but dropped 3.1% after hours to $3.94. That put the market value of the common stock at $136.2 million.

• Bing: Read more about Playboy's business

Icon shares fell 3.2% to $11.76 Thursday.

Iconix, the owner of the Candies and London Fog clothing brands, has looked at Chicago-based Playboy's finances, a source told Bloomberg.

Speculation about a possible sale has been rampant since February when CEO Jerome Kern said on an analyst conference call that he'd listen to any offers for the company.

The latest discussions may not lead to a deal, the source said.

One possible reason is that any deal to sell the company may be contested by speculators who believe the assets are worth much more than the company.

Playboy's market capitalization had crashed last winter when the stock hit a closing low of $1.12 on Oct. 24, 2008, and $1.15 in March. That translated into a market capitalization of some $33 million.

With today's gain, the market cap is about $136.2 million. That may yet be less than the purported value of the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.

In August, MSN Money columnist Michael Brush suggested that Playboy's assets -- the brand, the mansion, the art collection, the photo collection -- may be worth more than $500 million.

Circulation has plunged in recent years at the namesake magazine Hugh Hefner started in December 1953 with photos of Marilyn Monroe.

Playboy's market share continues to be eroded, as Brush noted, by readily available pornography on the Internet -- porn that makes Hef's once-shocking magazine these days seem shockingly tame.

And as market share has fallen, so has financial performance.

Playboy has struggled for the better part of a decade.

Revenue never topped $350 million a year in that time and peaked at $347.8 million in 1999. The company reported annual losses in six of the last 10 years and in all four quarters of 2008.

Iconix CEO Neil Cole is looking for acquisitions to add more brands that the New York-based company can license to retailers and manufacturers. The Playboy brand alone may be worth $200 million.

"Neil Cole has done a phenomenal job of taking some of these lost brands and developing them into something," said Gilbert Harrison, CEO of Financo, a New York adviser and investment bank specializing in retail. "Certainly Playboy would fit that mold."

Playboy's management has been looking for a buyer since Scott Flanders was appointed as CEO in June, one person close to the situation said.

Flanders, former CEO of Freedom Communications, replaced Christie Hefner, who had run Playboy since 1988 and is the daughter of Hugh Hefner.

A big question is how a sale would deal with Hefner, who controls nearly  28% of the stock.