Hasbro shares jumped 7.5% Tuesday to hit a 6-year high on the company’s stellar fourth-quarter earnings and rosy 2026 outlook.
In its report on October-to-December financials and a conference call with Wall Street analysts, the toymaker touted recent licensing deals for Harry Potter, KPop Demon Hunters and Amazon MGM’s Voltron movie.
Revenue increased 31% from the year-earlier period, reaching $1.45 billion. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $1.51, up from $1.04 in the same span of 2024.
The top- and bottom-line numbers handily beat analysts’ consensus forecast.
After closing at $104 per share, the stock now has more than doubled since a difficult stretch at the end of 2023, when the company laid off 20% of its workforce due to a challenging economic climate.
CEO Chris Cocks has overseen a turnaround strategy the company has billed as “Playing to Win.” Dogged by rising entertainment costs, supply-chain snags and a bumpy Covid recovery, Hasbro has methodically remade itself. Reversing prior management’s embrace of Hollywood, it sold film and TV subsidiary eOne to Lionsgate in December 2023 and emphasized digital gaming and its thriving Wizards of the Coast division, whose key assets include Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering.
Cocks told analysts the company has put considerable effort into identifying and leaning into “our superpower” rather than spreading itself too thin. Hasbro, the top exec asserted, “uniquely can engage a consumer as young as 2 or 3 and extend that play relationship throughout their entire lives, from 2 to 99 and beyond. I think the partners we’re working with, they have brands that are multi-generational, that have been around for a long time, that appeal to preschoolers but also to collectors. When a partner chooses Hasbro, they choose us because we can uniquely do that.”
Reeling off examples, Cocks mentioned KPop Demon Hunters, a Sony Pictures animated production that last year became the biggest movie title in Netflix history. (The licensing deal is shared with rival Mattel, with each company handling a separate range of products, which were unveiled last month at an industry event in Germany.) The film is “really appealing to that tween and teen crowd – or 52-year-old CEOs like myself,” Cocks said.
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Harry Potter is another key title, with Hasbro separately announcing a multi-year deal for toys and games with Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday. The fantasy series, whose HBO Max adaptation is a hotly anticipated 2027 release, is marking the 25th anniversary of the first film this year. Cocks noted it is also still “a bestselling book series, with hundreds of millions of fans, people flocking to theme parks.”
Voltron, which is getting a live-action feature reboot this year from Amazon MGM Studios, “is a seminal collector brand from the 1970s and ’80s,” Cocks said. “I remember having my breakfast cereal watching Voltron as a kid.”
The consumer proposition for all of the above “works hand in glove with what Hasbro’s great at,” Cocks said.
Another boost to Hasbro’s stock came from the company’s prediction for a 3%-5% upswing in revenue in 2026, which was higher than analysts had been expecting.
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