Gawker Media considers selling company

The media company exhausts its options.

Nick Denton. (Pool/Getty)

Gawker Media has hired an investment banker to explore its strategic options and is considering a possible sale of the company, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

The company has hired Mark Patricof of Houlihan Lokey to review its options.

"We've always said we expect to prevail on appeal, and we've always said we're exploring contingency plans of various sorts, so that's not new," Gawker told CNBC.

The announcement comes the morning after it was revealed that Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech mogul, admitted to bankrolling Hulk Hogan’s successful lawsuit against Gawker. Hogan won $140 million in March in the legal battle over a leaked sex tape the website published.

Unnamed sources told The New York Post that one party has expressed interest for buying the company with a deal between $50 and $70 million.

Nick Denton currently owns 68 percent stake int he company after bringing in an outside investor as a contingency plan for the lawsuit. He announced earlier this year that he sold a minority stake in the company for $100 million to Columbus Nova Technology Partners.

Sources told The Post that the company’s evaluation has sunk since losing the lawsuit, and was once estimated at $250 million.

Gawker's PR team sent out the following statement to ReCode after the reports surfaced.

“Everyone take a breath. We’ve had bankers engaged for quite some time given the need for contingency planning around Facebook board member Peter Thiel’s revenge campaign — that’s how the Columbus Nova investment was arranged. We recently engaged Mark Patricof to advise us and that seems to have stirred up some excitement, when the fact is that nothing is new.”