Share

Toymaker Hasbro’s sales fall 4 percent due to strong dollar

Brian Goldner, President and CEO of Hasbro Inc., speaks at the Reuters Consumer and Retail Summit in New York June 28, 2011. In an interview with CNBC Monday morning, Goldner acknowledged that Play-Doh is proving to be one of Hasbro’s biggest growth stories, noting that “the last two years have been the biggest years in Play-Doh’s 60-year history”.

Advertisement

Thanks to licenses with studios rolling out films based mostly on blockbuster franchises such as Jurassic Park, Star Wars and X-Men, Hasbro is on monitor for report sales this yr and the subsequent.

Shares of Hasbro rose 6.6% in recent trading, boosting the toy maker’s market capitalization to $9.7 billion-roughly $1.5 billion higher than Mattel, a company that had 40% more sales past year.

The narrowing gap between the top two players reflects in their stock prices: Mattel has lost a third of its value in the past year, while Hasbro has surged 57 percent.

Shares climbed more than 6 percent in midday trading Monday.

The popularity of the dinosaur action movie, plus Walt Disney’s (NYSE:DIS) Marvel and “Star Wars“, as well as Nerf products, drove up the boys category by 1%.

Not only was there strong demand for “Jurassic World” themed toys, but merchandise tied to the not yet released “Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens” were hot sellers.

Stephanie Wissink of Piper Jaffray said the latest Disney deal promises $400 million in sales for Hasbro next year. While sales dropped 3.8 percent to $797.7 million, that still topped analysts’ average projection of $774.4 million. Excluding the impact of foreign exchange, revenue rose 5 per cent.

Advertisement

Net income for the quarter came in at $41.8 million, resulting in earnings of 33 cents per share, a figure that beat the 29-cent per-share Wall Street consensus.

Hasbro Jurassic World dinsoaur