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Magic and WotC in Hasbro Earnings Call
by Bill Stark | posted at 2010-02-11 01:09:00
tagged: WOTC, MTG, Magic, Wizards, Wizards of the Coast, Magic the Gathering, Hasbro, Fourth Quarter, Earnings
Hasbro executives gave their annual fourth quarter earnings statement in a phone call with investors February 8. The company had a fantastic 2009, and while the focus of the conversation was on Hasbro brands like G.I. Joe and Transformers, both Magic and Wizards of the Coast came up. Here are the quotes that relate to us:
Brian Goldner, President and CEO
"For the full year we grew key brands including Transformers, G.I. Joe, Nerf, Littlest Pet Shop, Play-Doh, Tonka, and Magic: The Gathering."
"We also delivered a strong result with Magic: The Gathering trading card games."
And this conversation between Felicia Hendrix of Barclays Capital and Deb Thomas, Hasbro's Senior Vice President and Head of Corporate Finance.
Hendrix: Can you walk me through the amortization, Wizards of the Coast earned off; I’m assuming there was some amortization from the JV in the fourth quarter. Can you walk us through what was in the $25 million?
Thomas: What we have in the amortization for the quarter is just our amortization our normal product line. There isn’t actually any amortization from the TV programming in there and we do have the tail end of Wizards of the Coast which is coming off of our P&L in 2009. In addition to that, we had just some small adjustments to product lives of some of the assets we have on the books. Beyond that it’s just our normal amortization.
Hendrix: How should we think about that for 2010?
Thomas: As we’ve said before, the Wizards of the Coast amortization will be coming down and we wouldn’t see any significant difference from what we had published in our 10-K as what we expected our amortization expense to be.
Hendrix: Just my timing of Wizards was off a little bit.
Thomas: I think maybe just a bit.
The full transcript is available from Seeking Alpha. You can read it in full here.
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Bill Stark is the founder and editor-in-chief of TheStarkingtonPost.com. He began playing Magic in 1995 after being introduced to the game by his brother. Since then he has competed at all levels of play including the JSS, Grand Prix, Nationals, and Pro Tour. In addition to his career as a pro, Bill began writing about the game early on for TheDojo.com, the first website dedicated to Magic. Since then he has written and edited for nearly every major Magic website on the web. In 2007 he began work as an official coverage reporter for Wizards of the Coast, flying to Grand Prixs, Nationals, and World Championships to record the events happening at each. He was also hired for six months as an R&D intern at Wizards where he worked on the redesign for DailyMTG.com as well as helping to develop multiple Magic sets. After leaving Wizards, he started TheStarkingtonPost.com to utilize his many contacts in the industry to provide a better information solution for fans of TCGs, gaming, and Magic: The Gathering.