Hi! The Great Chair Lift: As the world has been scrutinizing the Louvre heist, another European criminal gang has been in the hot seat this week. Yes, Spanish police have finally arrested a group suspected of stealing over 1,100 chairs in just two months. Today we're exploring: |
- Gathering magic margins: Hasbro's "Wizards" division is producing some spellbinding results.
- Too cool for ghoul: As scary movies storm the box office, Americans apparently still love to hate horror.
- Premium premiums: Employer-provided healthcare premiums have hit a record high.
|
Have feedback for us? Just hit reply - we'd love to hear from you! |
Hasbro's Wizards just worked their magic on earnings |
Hasbro, the company behind iconic games like Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Risk, Yahtzee, and Clue, scored some serious points with investors this week, as revenue climbed 8% year-over-year to top $1.4 billion — a result powered less by plastic toys and more by pixels and cards. Hasbro's Consumer Products division, home to Monopoly, Play-Doh, Transformers and more, remained muted after a slow summer, with sales down 7%. That left the company's Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming business — best known for Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons — to pick up the pieces. And pick them up it did: revenue in that division surged 42% from a year earlier. |
Indeed, "Wizards" now accounts for over 40% of Hasbro's total sales, up from ~30% a year ago, and boasts operating margins near 44%. That's more than most luxury brands (Ferrari's, for example, was 28% last year, Hermès managed a whisker over 40%). The rest of Hasbro, the consumer bit, is closer to a 10% margin. All told, the Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming division accounted for 74% of Hasbro's operating profit. |
Magic: The Gathering, which is both a complicated strategy game and a compelling storytelling engine, is producing some particularly spellbinding results, with revenue up an eye-watering 55% year-over-year. Thanks to its growing fanbase, revenues for MTG have been supercharged by collaborations with franchises like "Lord of the Rings," "Spider-Man," and "Assassin's Creed." To cushion against new tariffs, which have been raised as high as 100% on China-made goods, Hasbro said it plans to cut its reliance on China to 30% of its revenue by 2026 — about half of Hasbro's US toy and game volumes still come from China today. Read the full story online here |
Americans love to hate horror movies, but they still can't look away |
Audiences often seem surprised when scary movies — particularly low-budget, gore-intensive, numeral-heavy titles — become blockbuster hits. And yet, moviegoers still flock to screens to see fight-or-flight-fueling films, with Universal and Blumhouse's "Black Phone 2" being the latest estimate-exceeding example in a string of huge successes for the genre, along with smash-hits like "Sinners" and "Weapons" this year. For many Americans pondering horror's remarkable box office performance: the call is coming from inside the house. |
You'd think that the overwhelming demand for Hollywood horror might reflect a newfound appetite for frightful flicks. However, a recent YouGov survey found that horror was not only the most divisive movie genre — with 22% of US adults saying they hated it, 3x as much as the next category — it was also considered by 30% of Americans to be overrated by movie critics. But when comparing the audience scores against critic scores on movie review site Rotten Tomatoes for the top 50 highest-grossing horror movies of all time, it's clear that the general population actually often views popular scary movies more favorably than most professional reviewers. |
Though most agree on broadly well-regarded films like "It" (2017) and "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991), there's a whole host of successful horror franchises that critics can't seem to stand, and audiences can't help but enjoy. For example, "Five Nights at Freddy's" (2023) scored a 33% share of positive ratings from 215 critics, but 86% across more than 2,500 users. So, why do Americans keep forking out for cinema tickets to see a genre of "overrated" movies (that are somehow also critically panned)? Read the full story online here |
|
|
Is this a new era of flying? |
Advanced air mobility is one of the fastest-growing segments within aviation. The global advanced air mobility market is forecast to be worth approximately $130 billion by 2035, growing at an estimated CAGR of 25.5% from 2025 to 2035.1 Surf Air Mobility (NYSE: SRFM) is gearing up for this new era of flying. The company is aiming to transform air mobility with its proprietary SurfOS AI-enabled software, a nationwide flight network, and a platform to help bring new electrified aircraft technologies to market. SurfOS is being purpose-built to become an intelligent operating system for the air mobility industry. And as the owner of one of the largest regional commuter airlines in the US today, Surf Air Mobility is combining scale, operational expertise, and next-generation technology to define the future of air mobility. |
|
|
Employer-provided healthcare premiums rose to an average of $27,000 this year |
Premiums for employer-provided health insurance plans reached nearly $27,000 this year, and are expected to rise even more in 2026 as the cost of healthcare in America continues to tick up. Family premiums for these plans, the costs of which are shared between the employer and the employee, grew 6% to $26,993 in 2025, according to KFF's annual survey of more than 1,800 employers, released Wednesday. That compares with 7% increases in each of the previous two years — and it's more than double the overall inflation rate. |
Remarkably, costs might rise even more in 2026 than they did this year, with a separate survey from Mercer finding that employers expect premiums to climb by as much as 9% in 2026, as providers pass on the higher costs of brand-name prescription drugs, rising hospital expenses, and the impact of tariffs. Employers told KFF that one of the drivers of rising premiums is coverage of weight-loss and diabetes drugs made by Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk. Despite being expensive and popular, employers generally increased coverage for them from 2024 to 2025, with larger companies more likely to cover them, the survey found. The news comes as President Trump continues to heap pressure on drugmakers to lower prices for Americans, with tariffs looming as the administration's remedy of choice. |
|
|
- NP, CZ: President Trump has pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, who was convicted on money laundering charges in 2024.
- Big Blue got a little smaller yesterday — a look into why IBM's stock dropped.
- The two-hour finale of "Stranger Things" is coming to a big screen near you; Netflix announced that 350 theaters across the US and Canada will show the last episode on Dec 31 and Jan 1.
- Fox is broadcasting all 104 World Cup 2026 matches across Fox and FS1 next summer — twice as many as it did for the 2022 tournament, spanning 340 hours of coverage.
- Housing boo-m: A new Rocket Mortgage survey found that Americans are more open to living in a haunted house, with almost two-thirds (65%) saying they'd consider buying one, ghosts and all.
|
|
|
The global advanced air mobility market is forecasted to be ~$130 billion by 2035.1 Discover how Surf Air Mobility (NYSE: SRFM) is looking to define a new era of flying.2 |
|
|
Off the charts: Employees in which OECD country rack up the most hours of work on average per year? [Answer below]. |
Not a subscriber? Sign up for free below. |
Advertiser's disclosures: 1 See Grand View Research analysis for further details. See the Methodology Overview for further details on the chart forecast methodology. 2 Stock markets are volatile and can fluctuate significantly in response to company, industry, political, regulatory, market, or economic developments. Investing in stock involves risks, including the loss of principal. Before investing, carefully assess whether a particular stock aligns with your investment objectives, risk tolerance, and financial situation. This is a paid advertisement for Surf Air Mobility, Inc. |
Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate... See more |
|
|
SHERWOOD MEDIA, LLC, 85 Willow Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025 | |
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment