Hasbro held their 2021 First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call a few hours ago and presented the results to their investors.
Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner stated the following:
“Transformers revenue growth was led by gains in the U.S. and Asia Pacific, and global point of sale was up nearly 40%. Innovation and storytelling are central to driving Transformers and the eOne team is expanding the reach and relevance of the brand through world-class entertainment across platforms and demographics. We delivered our latest War For Cybertron content in partnership with Netflix on December 30 supported by new products that drove the first quarter’s performance. War for Cybertron Chapter 3 will be airing this summer and, in partnership with Paramount, the next feature in the theatrical Transformers franchise is slated for 2022.”
“Transformers continued to be the top brand performer on Hasbro Pulse in the first quarter delivering the much anticipated HasLab Unicron. The brand kept the momentum to start Q2. In partnership with Robosen, during Hasbro Pulse Fan Fest earlier this month, we unveiled a $700 Auto-Converting Optimus Prime Robot, which sold out in pre-sale in less than 10 hours.”
“With our partners at Paramount, the G.I. Joe Snake Eyes movie release is now set for July 23 and the brand team continues to drive engagement and demand with fans through product and events including our Pulse initiatives.”
During the Q&A Session, the toy giant elaborated on its entertainment plans.
“We continue to look at how we put our Hasbro IPs in the market. There’s a very strong demand for world-class IPs and Hasbro has an array of it. [As I mentioned] we are working on a number of brands and we’re starting to see the traction around brands like My Little Pony which we talked about is on Netflix in September, Transformers: a new TV series going on air in other platforms and our film, coming next year in partnership with Paramount, and then Power Rangers: you’ll hear more about it, but we’ve been developing and we expect shortly to be able to talk about, a brand new content for [Power Rangers] that will go after a multitude of audiences which will be on a streaming platform.”
“A couple of new films, G.I. Joe and My Little Pony. We are lining up our inventories for those major initiatives.”
You can check out the presentation slideshow, after the jump.
News Post: HISSTANK Coverage of Hasbro 2021 First Quarter Financial Results
Pretty stable financially, surprising given how much of their business is tied up in the entertainment sector.
The tenth slide is the most interesting to see - growth in "Franchise Brands" and "Emerging Brands" (where they house GI Joe) helped the stability offset by massive losses in entertainment.
The growth in the Emerging Brands sector may be all or part Joe. But even if every penny of the 11% growth is Joe, thats a growth of $11M for a company that generated $1.1B in that time frame. That is to say crudely, at best GI Joe contributes about 1% of their income. Yiiiiiikes.
We're also comparing to a fiscal quarter (Q1 2020) where Classified did not exist at all in terms of sales - this may also be the case for the next financials since Classified launched in mid-late June 2020 (right?).
In short, the unlikely best case scenario is that GI Joe (Classified and retro combines) drove about 1% of Hasbro's overall income in this quarter. Definitely more nuanced than that, but the slides here help pretty clearly explain a few unfortunate things:
1) why we're being ignored as a sector (we are very very small comparatively speaking)
2) why there is such disparity in availability b/w Transformers and GI Joe (the very fact that one is a "FRANCHISE BRAND" and the other an "EMERGING BRAND" is a big tell on how corporate views them)
3) why the company seems reluctant to ramp up support for the line (when you're 1% of a portfolio, a 50% jump in sales now makes you 1.5% of a portfolio, so big whoop).
Good for Hasbro's stability, sobering for the reality of what it means to be a GI Joe fan right now.
Buckling up for another year of difficult availability until the line can show it is able to grow and then stay there.
Full Thread: HISSTANK Coverage of Hasbro 2021 First Quarter Financial Results
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