Filed under: Earnings reports, Products and services, Consumer experience, Marketing and advertising, Mattel, Inc (MAT), Hasbro Inc (HAS)

Shares of popular toymaker Hasbro Inc. (NYSE: HAS) have been climbing in early trading after the company posted this morning a better-than-expected fourth-quarter profit.

For the quarter, the world’s second-largest toymaker reported that its profit jumped 24% up to $133.7 million, lifted by strong sales of its Transformers, Nerf and Furreal Friends product lines. Strong revenue gains offset weaker gross margins and lower U.S. earnings, and the company posted earnings of 84 cents per share. Analysts were expecting Hasbro show earnings of 81 cents per share in the quarter.

Amid a challenging consumer environment, Hasbro announced a respectable jump of 16% in revenue to $1.3 billion, up from $1.1 billion a year earlier. Revenue during the period were helped by a 29% surge in its international sales that outpaced those in North America. Analysts, on average, forecast sales of about $1.22 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.

Hasbro’s strong earnings figures were boosted by higher sales of both its Littlest Pet Shop animals and Transformers, Spider-Man products. Overseas sales rose to $489.2 million due to the dollar’s decline against international currencies, while North American sales saw a gain of 7.6% to $766.8 million.

The toy maker also managed to avoid bad publicity and costs effects of toys recalled for excessive lead paint that hurt many of its competitors, such as Mattel Inc. (NYSE: MAT). Despite posting stronger-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings two weeks ago, Mattel had to face negative publicity related to the recall of millions of its toys due to safety and lead paint concerns. Fortunately for Mattel, higher international sales helped the company offset $42 million in costs for toy recalls.

Despite losing some ground during the second half of last year, Hasbro said its full-year net income climbed to $330 million, or $1.97 a share, up from $230.1 million, or $1.29 a share, a year ago. Full year sales also jumped to $3.84 billion from $3.15 billion a year earlier.

So far investors are enjoying the company’s better-than-expected earnings as its shares are up 2.93% to $26.66. Though the stock was weak during the last few quarters of 2007, shares have been able to rebound since the beginning of this year and I anticipate to see further gains based on its positive quarterly numbers.

Eliza Popescu is a financial writer for the online investment advisory service Investor’s Observer.

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Filed under: Earnings reports, Products and services, Consumer experience, Marketing and advertising, Mattel, Inc (MAT), Hasbro Inc (HAS)

Shares of popular toymaker Hasbro Inc. (NYSE: HAS) have been climbing in early trading after the company posted this morning a better-than-expected fourth-quarter profit.

For the quarter, the world’s second-largest toymaker reported that its profit jumped 24% up to $133.7 million, lifted by strong sales of its Transformers, Nerf and Furreal Friends product lines. Strong revenue gains offset weaker gross margins and lower U.S. earnings, and the company posted earnings of 84 cents per share. Analysts were anticipating Hasbro show earnings of 81 cents per share in the quarter.

Amid a challenging consumer environment, Hasbro announced a respectable jump of 16% in revenue to $1.3 billion, up from $1.1 billion a year earlier. Revenue during the period were helped by a 29% surge in its international sales that outpaced those in North America. Analysts, on average, forecast sales of about $1.22 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.

Hasbro’s strong earnings figures were boosted by higher sales of both its Littlest Pet Shop animals and Transformers, Spider-Man products. Overseas sales rose to $489.2 million due to the dollar’s decline against international currencies, while North American sales saw a gain of 7.6% to $766.8 million.

The toy maker also managed to avoid bad publicity and costs effects of toys recalled for excessive lead paint that hurt many of its competitors, such as Mattel Inc. (NYSE: MAT). Despite posting stronger-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings two weeks ago, Mattel had to face negative publicity related to the recall of millions of its toys due to safety and lead paint concerns. Fortunately for Mattel, higher international sales helped the company offset $42 million in costs for toy recalls.

Despite losing some ground during the second half of last year, Hasbro stated its full-year net income climbed to $330 million, or $1.97 a share, up from $230.1 million, or $1.29 a share, a year ago. Full year sales also jumped to $3.84 billion from $3.15 billion a year earlier.

So far investors are enjoying the company’s better-than-expected earnings as its shares are up 2.93% to $26.66. Though the stock was weak during the last few quarters of 2007, shares have been able to rebound since the beginning of this year and I expect to see further gains based on its positive quarterly numbers.

Eliza Popescu is a financial writer for the on the web investment advisory service Investor’s Observer.

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Filed under: Marketing and advertising, Books

When I first read this article in the New York Times, I thought it sounded ridiculous: “In an attempt to increase book sales, HarperCollins Publishers will start offering free electronic editions of some of its books on its Web site, including a novel by Paulo Coelho and a cookbook by the Food Network star Robert Irvine.”

But the more I think about, it makes sense: readers won’t be able to print the books or download them to a Kindle or similar device. Will some pennypinchers sit there and read the entire book on the web? Of course. But this method of allowing us to browse books on the internet should generate buzz for the titles involved and increase sales. I’m skeptical about whether this would work on a broader scale but I think it’s a smart move for the authors/publishers involved.

It’s also evidence, I think, of another step toward bookstores becoming irrelevant. The “Search Inside!” feature on Amazon.com grants for easy browsing of books before buying and further developments like this will continue to erode the one advantage that traditional bookstores still have over the internet: You can browse before you buy.

HarperCollins will also begin offering as much as 20% of some books two weeks before publication — I myself an looking to the preview of the new book from Peter Robinson, one of the ideal and most underrated mystery/suspense writers going today.

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Filed under: World wide web, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, Mozilla, Freeware, Browser Tips

Are you a Firefox extension junkie? Us too. Most of the extensions we’ve installed put useful information in the status bar, which is great, but causes quite a bit of clutter. Worse, when we need to launch a child browser window (like we have to all the time to write these Download Squad posts), those child windows are also populated with all of the status bar gunk that comes from our extensions.

What to do?

Well, most people would advocate paring down on our number of installed Firefox extensions. But we’re not most people. Instead we went looking for a utility that’ll let us manage our status bar by creating multiple versions of the status bar, then mixing and matching which items would be visible in each one. Hello, StatusBars.

Now you might think that solving the problem of having too many extensions installed by adding yet another extension is unwise, and you’re probably right. But hey, this is our machine, and we’ll clutter it up as we please. Eyes on your own browser, mister.

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Filed under: World wide web, Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, Mozilla, Freeware, Browser Tips

Are you a Firefox extension junkie? Us too. Most of the extensions we’ve installed put useful information in the status bar, which is great, but causes quite a bit of clutter. Worse, when we need to launch a child browser window (like we’ve to all the time to write these Download Squad posts), those child windows are also populated with all of the status bar gunk that comes from our extensions.

What to do?

Well, most people would advocate paring down on our number of installed Firefox extensions. But we’re not most people. Instead we went looking for a utility that’ll let us manage our status bar by creating multiple versions of the status bar, then mixing and matching which items would be visible in every one. Hello, StatusBars.

Now you might think that solving the problem of having too many extensions installed by adding yet another extension is unwise, and you’re probably right. But hey, this is our machine, and we’ll clutter it up as we please. Eyes on your own browser, mister.

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Filed under: Business, Features, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, E-mail, Office, Productivity, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Commercial, Shareware, Freeware

Is your email inbox overflowing with thousands of messages, or is it virtually empty, with only the few messages that have come in since the last time you checked it? It seems like a easy personal preference, but the answer to the question of whether you are an email “filer” or “piler” states a lot more about you than you might think it does.

While nobody can see into your inbox, the fact is that if you simply leave everything there and let it get pushed down by new messages that are coming in, you’re almost certainly not giving enough thought to the things that hit your inbox. For pilers, the only clue as to whether an email has been dealt with is whether it is marked as read or unread. But all too often we read emails when we’re not currently in a position to do anything about them. Even if we’re careful about going back and marking messages as unread, they still get pushed down, out of sight, out of mind.

Right now, many of you with overflowing inboxes are probably screaming at your screen. How can we be so bold as to assume that we know if you’re on top of your email or not based on this simple criteria? And plus, just last week we were writing about the virtues of Gmail. Gmail! You know, the email client made by that world wide web search juggernaut, Google! Surely if you need to find an email, it’s only a search away. So why bother filing things at all?

Okay, we hear you, and understand your position. But there’s really no gentle way to state this, so we’re just going to come out and say it.

You’re wrong.

Okay, there, we’ve stated it. Everyone take a deep breath! Now let’s look at how we have the ability to take such a controversial position in complete and utter knowledge that we are right, with not even the remotest possibility that we could be wrong. Alright then.

Continue reading Piling vs. Filing - Emailers Anonymous

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Microsoft, Freeware

About a year ago we first discussed an intriguing but flawed program launcher called Enso. The huge knocks against it in our review were that it had a big memory footprint, and that it was a commercial application competing against a number of very good free launchers.

For some people, memory footprint will continue to be an issue. However, memory continues to drop in price, and it’s not unusual to be running 2 to 4 GB of system RAM this day. If you’re in that situation, does an application eating up 45 MB of RAM really matter that much?

If price was your main reason for not trying Enso Launcher (or for not sticking with it), it’s your lucky day. The folks at Humanized have decided to make Enso a free product.

There’s no doubt that Enso is a beautiful application launcher, and with a price tag of free it becomes quite compelling. We’d still like to see them change the syntax so that instead of verb-subject (i.e. Go Firefox) it was structured subject-verb more like Quicksliver on the Mac. That’s really a minor quibble though. If you value style as much as functionality on your PC, Enso Launcher is certainly worth a second look.

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