(FORTUNE Magazine) – With the fear of AIDS growing by the day, this would not seem the time to be president of a company espousing free love. Yet Christie Hefner, apple-cheeked pornographer and daughter of Hugh Hefner, is buoyant about the prospects of Playboy Enterprises. After years of losses, the company is racking up its fifth consecutive profit-making quarter. Playboy's stock price doubled in the past year. In its highly profitable licensing division, the company sells more designer underwear than Calvin Klein. Its videocassettes, such as Playboy's Farmers' Daughters, are doing so well that five of last year's 12 titles made it onto Billboard magazine's list of 50 best-sellers. The staple in this otherwise perfect picture seems to be Playboy magazine itself, whose domestic circulation still shows the marks of 7-Eleven Stores' 1986 decision to drop racy magazines from its racks. That decision cost Playboy 4,500 outlets. U.S. circulation stands at 3.7 million, down from 6.8 million in 1972. Overseas the numbers look prettier: When the first Chinese edition of Playboy went on sale in Hong Kong in July, 50,000 copies sold out within hours. Profits from 12 other foreign editions are up 88% over last year. Hefner's faith in Playboy's future rests not so much on these dry facts, however, as on her reading of human nature. She says: ''People may be choosier now about their social contact, but they certainly haven't lost their interest in the sexual. AIDS makes one's fantasy life all the more important; and the ( more people drawn to fantasy, the better it is for the magazine.''