Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks Talks Grown-Up Toys, Tariffs
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hasbro's turnaround is gaining momentum, powered by a surge in Magic the Gathering. Revenue from the popular card game more than doubled in the fourth quarter, boosted by its tie-ins to other products such as Avatar, The Last Airbender, and Final Fantasy as well. Strength in Hasbro's Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming division, which holds Magic and D&D, helped lift overall sales 14%, underscoring what the CFO, Gina Getter, called a year of strong operational execution. Joining us now for more insights is Hasbro's CEO, Chris Cox. And Chris, you're essentially the designer of this business as it is structured right now. What do you make of the quarter? Give us your overview because it looks like Wizards is just absolutely crushing it.
Well, we're really pleased with the quarterly results. And I think it's beyond just Wizards. Our licensing business is up. Our toy business returned to growth, growing 7% in the quarter. And then, of course, Wizards had just a remarkable quarter and a remarkable year. sequentially just growing more and more as we went through the year and we're seeing that momentum continue into this year. I think the year was really punctuated as you kind of said in the lead-up by Magic the Gathering. You know that business is over 1.7 billion dollars now. It grew nearly 60 percent last year and that's on top of a kegger over the last 10 years of 16 percent per year. So I think it's a testament to a great team. I think it's a testament to a great game and a fantastic fandom.
There has been some signs, not you necessarily, but Mattel earnings, retail sales, that there was weakness in December. I know when it comes to divisions like toys you have, which I'm sure one Matt Miller's already bought for his daughter's tie-ups with things like K-pop Demon Hunters. What did December look like specifically for that segment? Was there some weakness that we've seen elsewhere? Yeah.
Well, I think for us, what we saw was sequential improvement as we went through the holiday. We had a great Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There was a little bit of a dip in like the first and second week in December, but then the end of the month ended with a real bang. You know, for Hasbro, our toy division grew share, I think 18 of the last 20 weeks of the year. And I think that was on the strength of really good entertainment, really quality toys. We had a great year for Beyblade, Transformers, Marvel, our Peppa Pig business returned to growth in the back half, and then our board game business did pretty well. What I think maybe you're seeing across divergent results across different toy companies is really, you know, it's tough to say there's one toy market.
I think it's a tale of two cities. i think the companies that are focused on gamified entertainment driven multi-purchase multi-generational play something we call gem square or a lot of people use shorthand for kidults they're really thriving their multiples are strong 20 plus their growth rates are in the mid single digits to high single digits and they're you know growing with the growing marketplace
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–6:47
2
What strategies is Hasbro implementing to reduce tariff exposure?
6:47–7:14
3
How has Magic: The Gathering contributed to Hasbro's revenue growth?
7:14–9:24
4
What insights did Chris Cocks share about Hasbro's quarterly performance?
9:24–11:24
Speakers
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