Hasbro have posted their financial results for the first quarter of 2012. There are some mixed signals but the overall performance of the company is down. To blame? Girls and bad games.
The company has four product categories. Here they are along with their 2012 Q1 performance and percentage change.
- Boys made $302.8m in net revenues and that’s +4%.
- Games made $181.9m in net revenues and that’s -9%
- Girls made $93.2m in net revenues and that’s -18%
- Preschool made $69.9m in net revenues and that’s +2%
At a glance we can see how more important Boys are than Girls to Hasbro. It’s not always entirely clear what’s a toy for a boy and what is a game. A financial comment from the company notes that entertainment partnerships with Marvel and Star Wars did well. However, Beyblade and Transformers did not perform in the Boys category.
In the Games category, Duel Masters, Battleship and Magic: The Gathering did well. Also in the Games section Transformers Bot Shots were up. Overall, Transformers held flat as the gain in Games cancelled the drop in the Boys section.
It’s little wonder that the company is pointing to a number of big movies in this Quarter which they expect to help their sales.
It’s expected that Wizards of the Coast, owned by Hasbro, are betting big with Kaijudo. This is a re-telling of Duel Masters and along with the games, ropes in Hasbro Studios to produce a cartoon which will preview in the States this June.
Also worth noting is Hasbro’s partnership with Zynga. We can speculate either some Dungeons & Dragons Facebook games or perhaps even Zynga adding to their Facebook-free new part of their empire with a standalone D&D game. What seems more certain is Habsro producing some toys based off Zynga IP.
Interesting, but I wonder what steps could be made to increase popularity/sales in their brands.
Cartoons for Magic, or Transformers?
Bringing back Attacktix?
It’s nice to have the movie partnerships, but maybe they need to start making their own media, perhaps create something like “Hasbro studios”? They already have the Hub network to distribute it.
I imagine a lot of it depends on Hasbro just happening to have made enough of the toys for movies and cartoons that turn out to be popular.
They’re a bit like a gambler engaged in spread betting. That’s why the Kaijudo bet is so interesting.