Hasbro is falling while Amazon, Walmart boast booming online toy sales
Famed toymaker Hasbro (HAS) has fallen on hard times, even as online toy sales continue to grow.
Hasbro this week announced plans to lay off 1,100 workers, or about 20% of its workforce, just a couple weeks before Christmas. However, this move is part of a long-standing trend at Hasbro, which has slashed its workforce before amid a difficult toy market.
In January 2023, the company — known for iconic brands like Transformers and Monopoly — announced it would cut 15% of its workforce globally throughout the year, ultimately laying off 800 employees. At the end of 2022, Hasbro had 6,490 employees, per SEC filings. In a Monday email to employees, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks said that it's been a tough, persistently challenging year.
Toy sales boomed during the pandemic but stagnated in 2022, according to NDP Group, while sales have been declining in 2023. However, shoppers are increasingly gravitating towards buying online.
In November, online toy sales came in at over $3 billion, per Adobe Analytics, which tracks e-commerce transactions. The category was a major driver during Cyber Week: On Cyber Monday, toy sales were up 140% compared to an average day in October.
Throughout Black Friday and Cyber Monday, toys accounted for nearly 20% of global e-commerce sales, per Statista.
Retailers like Amazon (AMZN), Walmart (WMT), and Target (TGT) are reaping the benefits. In 2022, Amazon clocked over $133 billion in global online toy sales, while Walmart and Target reeled in $52 billion and $20 billion, respectively, according to CB Insights.
While all three retailers have seen growth, Walmart is top in that metric, with a 12% year-over-year jump in 2022.
Though Hasbro products can be found via online retailers, it doesn’t sell directly to consumers, limiting it from benefits of digital sales.
In some ways, 2023 has been a positive year for Hasbro. The company's trading card game Magic: The Gathering became a billion-dollar-sale brand on the back of rapid growth. Meanwhile, its video game publisher Wizards of the Coast licensed Dungeons & Dragons for blockbuster game Baldur's Gate 3, which sold millions of copies and has reportedly boosted Hasbro's digital revenue by 40%.
But the boost wasn’t enough.
"We entered 2023 expecting a year of change including significant updates to our leadership team, structure, and scope of operations," Cocks wrote in a memo obtained by Yahoo Finance. "We anticipated the first three quarters to be challenging, particularly in Toys, where the market is coming off historic, pandemic-driven highs. While we have made some important progress across our organization, the headwinds we saw through the first nine months of the year have continued into Holiday and are likely to persist into 2024."
In connection with this week's layoffs, Hasbro expects to see $40 million in additional severance costs, but ultimately anticipates that it will save the company about $100 million, according to SEC filings.
Hasbro shares are down about 22% year to date.
Allie Garfinkle is a Senior Tech Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @agarfinks and on LinkedIn.
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