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NEW YORK – Strength in its boys’ brands like Transformers and Nerf, along with its core game brands including Scrabble and Monopoly, should boost Hasbro’s results in 2010, the company said Monday.
The owner of the G.I. Joe, Tonka and Playskool brands also said it expects sales and earnings per share to grow this year, although it didn’t offer specifics.
Combined with strong fourth-quarter earnings, the positive news sent Hasbro shares up 12 percent, and they briefly touched a 52-week high. Hasbro has seen earnings-per-share grow for nine years straight and revenue for five.
The quarter’s big sellers for boys – Transformers, G.I. Joe, Nerf, Play-Doh and Tonka – helped sales climb 12 percent to $1.38 billion, from $1.23 billion a year earlier, and topping Wall Street’s estimate of $1.34 billion.
“Overall in 2009, the global economic environment did not improve significantly, but it also did not deteriorate further,” CEO Brian Goldner said.
The fourth quarter is key for toymakers because it contains the holiday period and can produce up to half of their annual sales.
Transformers – boosted by the movie “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” in June – produced $592 million in revenue in 2009, a 23 percent increase over 2007, when the original “Transformers” movie debuted.
Fourth-quarter profit rose 77 percent to $165.6 million, or $1.09 a share, from $93.6 million, or 62 cents a share, last year. That surpassed the 81 cents a share analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected.
For the year, Hasbro’s earnings grew 22 percent to $374.9 million.
