During their 4th Quarter and 2024 Full Year Financial Call, Hasbro issued a Press Release outlining their future strategy.
Our summary:
Hasbro has unveiled its new strategic plan, “Playing to Win,” which will guide the company through 2027. The plan focuses on expanding its audience from 500 million to 750 million through play-fueled engagement and partnerships. Hasbro expects mid-single-digit revenue growth, operating profit margin improvements, and $1 billion in cost savings by 2027.
CEO Chris Cocks emphasized Hasbro’s strength in games and licensing, highlighting franchises like Magic: The Gathering, Monopoly, and Dungeons & Dragons. CFO Gina Goetter reinforced the company’s goal of becoming one of the most profitable toy and game companies globally.
Playing To Win’s key strategic pillars include:
1. Profitable Franchises: Asserting the fundamentals of profitable, play-focused brands.
2. Aging Up: Increasing the play and collectible appeal for fans aged 13 and above across Hasbro’s brands.
3. Everyone Plays: Expanding reach in opportunity areas including girls and emerging markets.
4. Digital & Direct: Building video games, services, and e-commerce capabilities.
5. Partner Scaled: Driving profitable reach through outstanding retail and licensing partnerships.
Hasbro is exiting non-core businesses like eOne film and TV while investing in digital gaming, collaborations, and brand expansion into areas like themed hotels, cruise ships, and quick-service restaurants.
Additionally, Hasbro is modernizing its operations, supply chain, and AI-driven advancements to fuel innovation while maintaining its commitment to community and environmental impact.
You can read the full press release, after the jump.
Hasbro Unveils New Strategy – Playing to Win
Today Hasbro, a leading games, IP, and toy company, is unveiling a new strategic plan, ‘Playing to Win’, taking the company through 2027. At the heart of Playing to Win is Hasbro’s mission to create joy and community through the magic of play. Through play-fueled engagement and partner-scaled co-investment, Hasbro will seek to expand its reach from over 500 million kids, families, and fans today to over 750 million by 2027. Through 2027, we expect an average of mid-single digit revenue growth and 50-100 basis points of annual operating profit margin improvement. By 2026 Hasbro’s gross debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio is projected to stand at 2.5x. And by 2027 Hasbro’s operational excellence program is expected to deliver $1bn of gross cost savings, with approximately half dropping to the bottom line.
Chris Cocks, Hasbro’s CEO, said: “Play is a universal human need and a strong basis for a business that has the purpose to endure, as Hasbro has proved over the last 164 years. Playing to Win unlocks Hasbro’s strengths: a broad and deep brand portfolio rooted in play, an unmatched licensing business, and a profitable games business anchored by world-renowned franchises fans love like Magic: The Gathering, Monopoly, and Dungeons & Dragons. Our new strategy is grounded in the key insights which will drive Hasbro’s evolution into a modern play company: serving fans of all ages around the world at every price point, and meeting fans where they are playing, which is increasingly online.”
Gina Goetter, Hasbro’s CFO and COO, said: “Playing to Win focuses our teams on Hasbro’s core strengths while continuing to transform the organization and drive operational excellence. With this strategy, we expect to emerge as one of the most profitable toy and game companies globally, powered by a phenomenal set of diverse and multi-generational franchises.”
Playing to Win marks an important pivot for Hasbro: a return to growth. The strategy focuses Hasbro on what has always made the company great – Play and Partners. Play is the foundation for an incredible portfolio of brands, a library of thousands of marks spanning Hasbro’s 164-year history across ages, geographies and play patterns. Through partners, Hasbro has scaled to become the third largest entertainment licensor on the planet and the biggest in digital games, by far the fastest growing entertainment category of the last decade.
A focus on Play and Partnership has allowed Hasbro to exit non-core businesses like eOne film and TV and take out $600M of costs. Hasbro has emerged with a stronger balance sheet and a stellar line-up of partners. This focus has allowed the company to lean into high profit, high growth areas like digital games where Hasbro’s brands have proven resonance and diversified digital revenue streams allow for self-funding. And upcoming partner collaborations span blockbuster movies, themed hotels, cruise ships, quick service restaurants, category expanding toy partnerships and AAA videogames.
Playing to Win includes five strategic building blocks:
1. Profitable Franchises: Asserting the fundamentals of profitable, play-focused brands.
2. Aging Up: Increasing the play and collectible appeal for fans aged 13 and above across Hasbro’s brands.
3. Everyone Plays: Expanding reach in opportunity areas including girls and emerging markets.
4. Digital & Direct: Building video games, services, and e-commerce capabilities.
5. Partner Scaled: Driving profitable reach through outstanding retail and licensing partnerships.
Hasbro is introducing a new prioritization matrix to assess brands, markets and channels that will drive internal clarity and resource allocation. Growth Brands and channels with the highest growth and margin potential will receive higher incremental investment, including Magic and Play-Doh, emerging markets, and Hasbro’s self-published video game efforts. Opportunities with a lower growth or margin profile will see more targeted investments to grow share and optimize profitability.
Underlying these product and brand-focused strategies are a series of transformation initiatives to upgrade the company’s operations, systems, and talent. These initiatives include systems modernization, supply chain excellence, design acceleration, and AI and digital advancement. To deliver the future of play, Hasbro will build on the culture of innovation and collaboration fostered over the past 164 years while creating a positive impact on the community and the environment.
News Post: Hasbro Unveils New Strategy: Playing to Win
That all sounds good but I'm left shrugging while attempting to decipher what it all *really* means at the nitty-gritty level. I guess we will find out!
The GI Joe logo showing up on the growth/expansion brand slide along with D&D, MtG, MARVEL, etc feels like a good sign for us.
Oh man this is definitely a language I speak. Don't have time until later tonight but will try to decipher. SpottedEagleSyn is SpotOnEagleSyn - if they're using limited real estate to call out specific brands, read into that very much (and read into that what brands aren't being shown there, e.g., Star Wars).
I think "category expansion" implies GIJOE in other forms/media so that is good. Wasn't there a AAA video game in the works at some point? Is that still a thing?
Just glad Hasbro shows both GI Joe and Marvel as growth brands for them, star wars is stagnent with the never ending vaders and mandalorians.
I'm kind of curious to see what the vision is for the themed restaurants, hotels and cruise ships.
So far it looks like theyre playing to lose.
So let's look at their pillars:
1. Profitable Franchises: Asserting the fundamentals of profitable, play-focused brands.
2. Aging Up: Increasing the play and collectible appeal for fans aged 13 and above across Hasbro?s brands.
3. Everyone Plays: Expanding reach in opportunity areas including girls and emerging markets.
4. Digital & Direct: Building video games, services, and e-commerce capabilities.
5. Partner Scaled: Driving profitable reach through outstanding retail and licensing partnerships.
2. Clearly "get more from the collector audience" is the easy read here. That can only benefit Joe consumers - as I've said before, our mean age has to be way high compared to most other toy brands.
3. Depending on what they mean by "emerging markets" (income constrained areas in existing markets or market expansion where they haven't been before). This might have implications (positive) for production numbers, but it could also mean more product like we see at retail chains like Five Below (see here: https://www.fivebelow.com/products/g...ffULBtTZWJ58-S). It might also mean expanding areas that Pulse delivers to and serves (which is good news if you're in one of those markets that has to find workarounds for HasLabs).
4. In addition to games, I read "services" as "apps and partnerships" (could be totally wrong). But I got an email recently for a GI Joe themed Laser Tag thing at American Dream Mall outside of NYC, so perhaps that's the sort of experiential thing they're considering? Would understand "e-commerce" to mean improving sales and distribution through channels like Pulse.
5. Don't expect to see this mean "more product on retailer shelves" as much as I expect this to mean "hope you like Target and Wal-Mart exclusives." Also we're seeing glimpses of this already with the Mattel partnership. Would that flip around for Hasbro product (He-Man in Classified)? Likely not, but certainly Skystriker Hot Wheels/Mega Blocks has to make some folks at those companies imagine reciprocal products.
Lastly, the $1B in cost savings is an interesting commitment. If I were a Hasbro employee, I'd be updating my resume (but in fairness, I regularly update mine).
Classified's 2025 delays are 100% not part of any strategy. Chris from Full Force has confirmed a few times recently that the Classified delays expected in 2025 were/are due to a factory change.
Keep reading: Hasbro Unveils New Strategy: Playing to Win - Page 2
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