I gather that every so often, we get insight into Hasbro's performance in the market on shareholder reports, etc...but what do we know about how they're doing? Like most people, I can remember a time (in the not too distant past) when the shelves always had TF figures. Now it's pretty normal to walk into a big box store and see either very few products and lots of empty pegs and/or lots of old stock that doesn't seem to be moving. Many places still have AoE stuff kicking around. Do we have any insight into what's happening?
Hasbro's earnings report was Monday. Despite the expected decline in revenues since 2015 wasn't a movie year, the line declined on the lower side of expectations, and sales were reportedly on par with the average non-movie year. In other words, Transformers is doing fine, RiD is doing well enough, and the line is as robust as a line can be these days. What you're seeing are the results of changes in retailer attitudes and buying policies over the past 5 years or so. Retailers are far less apt to have larger on hand stocks, less apt to use toys as a pure loss leader (big reason toys remained so cheap for so long), and in many instances, less apt to get rid of inventory when tied to larger recurrant franchise. I know of one Walmart which still had Iron Man 3 and Amazing Spider-Man 2 toys on shelves instead of the newer lines, and at full price, for example. Those are issues Hasbro really can't address.