Hasbro won its battle with investors just two weeks ago. It has today announced a new strategy and sent a letter to shareholders.
Want to see it? The Joplin Globe has locked their content to certain geo’s only due to GDPR reasons but their RSS feeds are public and repeat the whole letter.
In summary, Hasbro’s new strategy is to go big on fewer projects and ensure their games are those projects.
Dear Fellow Shareholder:
Following our 2022 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, on behalf of the entire Board and management team, we want to thank you for your investment, continued support, extensive engagement and constructive feedback. We have heard your perspectives, including around shareholder returns, how we make investments in the business and our ongoing approach to Board refreshment.
While we are excited about and confident in Hasbro’s future, we also know we have important work ahead of us. With the Board’s support, our CEO, Chris Cocks, is moving forward with the refinement of Hasbro’s long-term strategy, which includes actions to drive meaningful change by focusing on fewer, bigger opportunities, profitably growing our world-class portfolio of brands and amplifying our industry-leading gaming portfolio. As Chris has emphasized, critical to this change will be putting the consumer at the center of everything we do, with a spotlight on games, multi-generational play and entertainment and creating direct relationships with our fans.
As the Board works with Chris on this plan, we will actively incorporate the feedback we have received over this past proxy season to help him shape the future of Hasbro and enhance the value we deliver to our shareholders. We will continue engaging with you to solicit feedback, and you can look forward to Chris and the management team outlining our path ahead at our Investor Day on October 4, 2022.
Thank you again for your support of the Hasbro Board of Directors at our 2022 Annual Meeting. We look forward to a continued dialogue, which will be critical to our sustained success.
Sincerely,
Your Hasbro Board of Directors
Chris Cocks was the boss at the Hasbro-owned Wizards of the Coast before his promotion so it’s not a surprise that he’s pro-games. However, Wizards of the Coast is a jewel in the Hasbro crown to it does make sense.
In fact, that’s why the investors were upset at Hasbro.
Ancora Holdings, who own 1%, suggest some of the current board aren’t doing much. They also say that Wizards of the Coast is about 75% undervalued as part of Hasbro.
The letter to shareholders doesn’t say ‘digital’, not even once. Instead, it’s more of an olive branch to investors to reassure them that the company is still listening.
We’ll find out more after the investor day in October.
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