Hasbro Q3 Earnings Fall With Little Help From Entertainment

Like other toy companies, Hasbro appears to be struggling to keep its core audience of kids from defecting to video games in a quarter where it didn't enjoy a jolt of cash from movie licensing as it did last year with its tie-ins to Paramount's Transformers: Dark Of The Moon. The company says this morning that its Q3 net earnings were $164.9M, -3.6% vs the period last year, on revenues of $1.35B, -2.2%. Analysts expected revenues to come in slightly higher at $1.38B. Earnings per share, at $1.24, beat expectations for $1.20 ' and would have been better if foreign exchange rates were more favorable. In Entertainment and Licensing, revenues fell 6.9% to $43.1M while operating profits dropped 30.1% to $10.7M. The company doesn't break out results for The Hub, its cable channel joint venture with Discovery. But Hasbro says that the entertainment unit benefited from TV programming sales in the U.S. and abroad, and the operation fell due to 'lower movie-related revenues.' In its core businesses, revenues in merchandise for Boys fell 12% to $471.1M, while sales for Girls were -17% to $302.3M. Toys for pre-schoolers fell 5% to $206.0M. Games were virtually flat, at $365.7M. 'We are entering the holiday season with exciting, innovative products, including some of the hottest toys in the market and a tremendously successful Marvel line,' CFO Deborah Thomas says.