Hasbro, Inc.

Good morning, and welcome to the Hasbro second quarter 2020 earnings conference call. At this time, all parties will be in listen-only mode. The question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Ms. Debbie Hancock, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Joining me this morning are Brian Goldner, Hasbro's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Deb Thomas, Hasbro's Chief Financial Officer. Today we will begin with Brian and Deb providing commentary on the company's performance and an update on the company's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Then we will take your questions. Our earnings release and presentation slides for today's call are posted on our investor website. The press release and presentation include information regarding non-GAAP adjustments and non-GAAP financial measures. Our call today will discuss certain adjusted measures which exclude these non-GAAP adjustments. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in the press release and presentation. Please note that whenever we discuss earnings per share or EPS, we are referring to earnings per diluted share. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that during this call and the question and answer session that follows, members of Hasbro management may make forward-looking statements concerning management's expectations, goals, objectives, and similar matters. These statements include, among others, the impact of the coronavirus on our business, financial results, and liquidity, our efforts to protect the health and well-being of our workforce, customers, consumers, manufacturers, and suppliers, our efforts to ensure we have adequate liquidity, and our initiatives to support our communities, including our global workforce, children, and their families during these difficult times. There are many factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from the anticipated results or other expectations expressed in these forward-looking statements. These factors include those set forth in our annual report on Form 10-K, our most recent 10-Q, in today's press release, and in our other public disclosures. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made today to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of this call. I would now like to introduce Brian Goldner. Brian?

Thank you, Debbie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Our global teams continue to execute well, working at distance and across businesses that are rapidly evolving. They are leveraging our experience, data, insights, and capabilities to address the ways in which this global pandemic has challenged us, and we are making significant progress in this third quarter while we're headed toward a good holiday season. Our belief in the opportunity for Hasbro over the next few years has also intensified as we see this team in action during this challenging year. While there is a great deal of unpredictability, the year so far is unfolding in line with the expectations we shared with you last quarter. The second quarter is expected to be our most difficult as we experience closures in many of our third-party factories, at retail, and in entertainment production, which negatively impacted revenues. We believe the third quarter will improve from the second quarter, and we expect to make progress, but there are evolving situations that exist around the world. Finally, we're executing strong marketing campaigns and launching innovative new products to support what we believe can be a successful holiday season. As a grounding principle, we remain focused on the four key areas we shared with you in April, demand, supply, liquidity, and community. Looking at demand, consumers continue to seek out Hasbro brands and our content at high levels. Global point of sale increased in the high single digits and has continued to be strong as we entered the third quarter across an even broader array of our brands. Engagement in our content is, in several cases, at record levels. In recent months, the number of retail stores open has increased dramatically. We began the second quarter with approximately 30% or more of stores where we are doing business closed globally. Foot traffic was down in certain European countries by as much as 50% at the peak. Today, we are below 10% of retail closed globally, with the greatest impact in Latin America, where approximately 25% of stores remain closed. These percentages are changing based on the ability to reopen economies and keep them open. We expect Latin America will be a difficult region for us in 2020, given the impact of COVID-19 and the small percentage of business executed online. Globally, eCom grew rapidly as it represents where the consumer has the broadest access to the Hasbro brands they want. At nearly 30% of our toy and game revenue in the quarter, eCom's share of revenue expanded by nearly 13 percentage points. Our teams were ready to capitalize on this shift as we've been investing in building a digital-first organization for many years. During this time, We further our capabilities and exhibited great creativity and flexibility to meet the consumer where they want to shop. In addition to strong results from PurePlay and Omnichannel Ecom, Hasbro Pulse, our D2C channel, had a record quarter and implemented successful campaigns, including Fan First Friday, which brings fans something new and exciting each and every week about the brands they love. Earlier this quarter, we launched what is now our most successful HasLab project ever, the X-Men Legends Marvel Central. It hit our funding threshold in 24 hours, and after 10 days has more than 11,000 backers for a $350 collectible item. While Pulse is still a relatively small revenue number, this connection with our fans is powerful and will grow over time. Demand remains strong for our games and Play-Doh, But the production shutdowns we discussed last quarter, which began mid-March and lasted till about mid-May, impacted our ability to fully meet demand during the quarter. In-stock levels for games and Play-Doh were below our normal thresholds, and we expect to be caught up later this quarter and ready for the holiday. Production disruption also impacted certain product timing for delivery in the second half of the year. NERF saw growth in second quarter global POS as we quickly pivoted our strategy to capitalize on consumers looking for fun ways to get the family outside and active. In the U.S. and Europe, POS for the past several weeks increased double digits, but some of our second half launches had shifted about a month later due to the limited supply coming out of India. In addition, as retailers moved to a digital model and stores were closed, their retail inventory requirements declined. In the U.S., retail inventories reduced in the high teens, which represented about seven weeks of inventory. Similar shifts occurred in other markets. We believe the digital-led model will continue, with e-com today forecasted to be about 30% or more of our full-year revenues. We also believe some retailers may exhibit caution as they gauge the rate at which markets reopen and shoppers return to stores. The industry continues to undergo a shift to fulfilling consumer demand versus filling stores, and we are very well positioned. Throughout this year, our retailers and our consumers have supported the toy and game category, and our joint plans with retail partners give us confidence in our ability to deliver a good holiday season. We have all new initiatives, many more than I can cover here, including new products for brands with good momentum in gaming and nerf, as well as Disney's Frozen 2 and Lucasfilm's Star Wars, where the properties have seen great consumer demand and have strong new lines, including the retail arrival of products featuring the child from the Disney Plus series, The Mandalorian, and the much-anticipated animatronic edition arrives for the holidays. Magic the Gathering revenues were down in the quarter as forecasted, The brand is performing well overall and set up for a good second half of the year in both analog and digital play behind new card releases and the expansion of Magic the Gathering Arena to mobile and into China. Moving to supply, our supply chain is now in good position. We have returned to production in our third-party factories. China factories were caught up in early second quarter, and we anticipate catching up on demand in other locations by the latter half of this quarter. Our global operations team has worked diligently to maximize our global footprint, shifting production to other locations where feasible, and have reforecasted the year based on the changes to mix and timing. Next, liquidity. Hasbro is in a strong financial position, and we ended the quarter with just over $1 billion in cash on our balance sheet. A revolving credit line of $1.5 billion remains available and accessible. As the shutdowns have continued, we have taken costs out of the business in areas where we cannot currently operate, including making difficult decisions to furlough some employees and to simplify our commercial organization. On the content side, E1 production is gradually returning. As a result of being unable to produce to our plan, our cash spend on content for 2020 is now projected to be approximately $450 million to $550 million. We'll complete and deliver this content this year, but our slate and some revenues will also shift into 2021. Demand for E1 content is strong, and the team is doing good work executing a successful virtual con and developing over 100 film and 60 new TV projects, including Hasbro IP and new IP. We launched a new animated series on Netflix, Alien TV, and continued to develop and produce new content for Peppa Pig, PJ Mask, and the My Little Pony 2021 feature film. We have made great progress integrating our businesses, including combining our consumer products and entertainment teams, and remain on track to deliver the $130 million in synergies by year-end 2022. Importantly, we are working to unlock the long-term value of the organization as we develop new entertainment and commercial opportunities around Hasbro IP. Finally, communities. Our focus on our purpose to make the world a better place for all children and all families has never been more important. Hasbro has continued to support global philanthropic initiatives that bring belief to children and their families worldwide during this crisis by providing meals as well as learning materials to those most in need. We remain deeply committed to using our brands, our resources, and our expertise to help make a difference in our local communities and around the world. We've applied this belief to the ongoing dialogue across our company around racial injustice, listening and looking within ourselves and our organization critically and honestly. While we don't have all the answers, we have never been more committed to fostering a culture of inclusion and using our brands, our entertainment, and our influence to make a difference in the world. At Hasbro, we are in a unique position to help shape minds and hearts from the earliest age. We have the privilege of being part of childhood, fandom, and intergenerational play and entertainment globally. With that privilege comes a responsibility to foster inclusion and to help teach the next generation that everyone is equal and everyone is worthy. Making a difference in the world is our purpose and our legacy. We want every kid to feel like a hero, to see themselves on the screen and in their toys and games, to feel they belong and that they matter irrespective of the color of their skin. I believe we have strengthened Hasbro this year by rethinking how we've done things in the past and we've changed our approach going forward. We've remained invested in areas of high consumer consumption and interest in innovation, content, digital gaming, and consumer products. We've strengthened our path to the consumer, leveraging our digital-first multi-channel strategy and our global retail footprint. We've increased our agility and speed to market, adapting Hasbro plans as initiatives shifted to next year, and we are set to execute and deliver a strong 2021 across a robust lineup of entertainment and innovation. With entertainment from E1 and our partners, new gaming launches in digital and tabletop, and new play initiatives across our brands. I'd now like to turn the call over to Deb. Deb?