Buzzfeed Could Be On The Hook For $124 Million This Week. Does It Have A Plan?

BuzzFeed needs cash. Maybe "Hot Ones," the interview talk show it owns, can help out.

: Andrew Lipovsky/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

• A few years ago BuzzFeed was supposedly worth close to $2 billion.
• Now it's worth much less, and it has been scrambling to solve a looming $124 million debt problem.
• That seems likely to come to a head this week, and may require the company to sell assets like "Hot Ones," its interview show.

What's going on with BuzzFeed, the formerly high-flying digital publisher?

This is a good day to ask. That's because today is the day that BuzzFeed could be on the hook for $123.5 million in debt and interest payments — money that it doesn't appear to have.

It is possible that BuzzFeed has a plan to deal with the debt — by selling off assets, or renegotiating a deal with its creditors, or both. And over the past month, public investors have seemed to think there's some kind of good news coming: They have pushed up BuzzFeed shares more than 72% in that time (though shares have dropped by as much as 5% today).

Last month, when BuzzFeed announced its quarterly earnings, it promised investors that "in the coming weeks, we look forward to sharing an update on our debt, balance sheet, Q4 financial outlook, and the results of the strategic review process we initiated last year with our financial advisors."

My educated hunch is that the update-to-be will happen later this week. But right now, BuzzFeed PR isn't commenting. I've also asked Vivek Ramaswamy, an investor and soon-to-be DOGE cochair advising the next Trump administration, for comment. That's because earlier this year Ramaswamy amassed a 9% stake in BuzzFeed and issued a set of demands to CEO Jonah Peretti, which Peretti seems to have ignored. Ramaswamy has not responded to my request.

Earlier this year, BuzzFeed was shopping First We Feast — its business that owns "Hot Ones," the viral hot-chicken-wing interview show (Yup! I just typed that!) — for a reported $70 million. In September, Bloomberg reported that BuzzFeed was in talks with Netflix about some kind of deal. I've asked Netflix for an update on those chats, which it has never publicly acknowledged.

But just selling First We Feast/"Hot Ones" wouldn't be enough to pay down BuzzFeed's debt, and there isn't a lot left for the company to sell. In 2023, the company shut down its money-losing BuzzFeed News operation. Its remaining assets are BuzzFeed, the publishing operation best known for pop-culture quizzes and listicles; HuffPost, a news site; and Tasty, which used to dominate internet food content in a pre-TikTok world but doesn't anymore.

It's also worth noting that BuzzFeed doesn't necessarily have to pony up all $124 million today. Today is just the first day that BuzzFeed's creditors can get that cash, if they want it.

So if BuzzFeed does have good news to share this week, it is likely that it sold one of its content businesses — or at least struck a licensing deal — used that money to pay down some of the debt, and renegotiated the terms of the remainder. I think we'll know soon, either way.