MVL Beats by 25%
MVL is swinging up (ok - had to get a Spiderman reference in there)
* Sales were up 28%, beating expectations by 16%. They hit $109M
* EPS $0.35 vs $0.14 last year. Expectations were for $0.28
* Expenses rose only 6%
I'd like to say that margins improved, but in fact SG&A increased $15M or 60%. Making movies did some of that. A reduction in depreciation of $4M improved the overall margins
OUTLOOK
Licensing is driving much of the revenue, so the obvious question in a softening economy: can they keep making money?
I think so:
1. Movies. Iron Man releases in a few months. Meanwhile Hulk 2 is coming out, Wolverine is in production. Iron Man is the big one for MVL - the biggest revenue generator.
2. Strengthening Licensing. Last year toy sales were 30% of the business and licensing was 27%. This year toy sales were 19% and licensing surged to 55%. Licensing rose 129% from $25M to $58M. Even Pottery Barn wants in on the action.
Toy sales are already weakening - they dropped from $31M to $20M. A further drop because of a weak 2008 Christmas sales will hardly be noticed. In other words, they are diversifying away from pure toy licensing.
Meanwhile, they maintained an outlook of $1.30 EPS for the year, which is consistent but analysts have raised their expectations to $1.44. So the conservative guidance is hurting them today. I think that MVL is trying to beat forward expectations - no merchandise for Iron Man or The Hulk are included in their forecast.
* Sales were up 28%, beating expectations by 16%. They hit $109M
* EPS $0.35 vs $0.14 last year. Expectations were for $0.28
* Expenses rose only 6%
I'd like to say that margins improved, but in fact SG&A increased $15M or 60%. Making movies did some of that. A reduction in depreciation of $4M improved the overall margins
OUTLOOK
Licensing is driving much of the revenue, so the obvious question in a softening economy: can they keep making money?
I think so:
1. Movies. Iron Man releases in a few months. Meanwhile Hulk 2 is coming out, Wolverine is in production. Iron Man is the big one for MVL - the biggest revenue generator.
2. Strengthening Licensing. Last year toy sales were 30% of the business and licensing was 27%. This year toy sales were 19% and licensing surged to 55%. Licensing rose 129% from $25M to $58M. Even Pottery Barn wants in on the action.
Toy sales are already weakening - they dropped from $31M to $20M. A further drop because of a weak 2008 Christmas sales will hardly be noticed. In other words, they are diversifying away from pure toy licensing.
Meanwhile, they maintained an outlook of $1.30 EPS for the year, which is consistent but analysts have raised their expectations to $1.44. So the conservative guidance is hurting them today. I think that MVL is trying to beat forward expectations - no merchandise for Iron Man or The Hulk are included in their forecast.
posted by Andrew at
7:05 AM
1 Comments:
I was away for 2 weeks in a remote Place with no contact to the civil world ! One thing I have noticed on returning is that folks making money shorting the market. Seems the easy way in the current market condition. In US they don’t allow mutual funds to short or hold the futures? That’s boring... they go up with the market and down when they crash. So all these 401K are all screwed up . May be it’s good idea to hold short ETF’s in 401K. I heard in some countries in Europe they allow and now even in India they allow the Mutual funds to short the market.
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