Hasbro is currently facing a class action lawsuit by the West Palm Beach Firefighters' Pension Fund, over allegations that the company has been misleading investors regarding the quality of its inventory.
If any of that sounds confusing, I'll try to break down the alleged chain of events here.
In the beginning, there was the 2020 Covid Pandemic. Like many businesses, Hasbro faced a serious disruption to its supply chain, which would make inventory more difficult to get, or at least less consistently able to get. At the same time, a more welcome result of the pandemic was a surge in demand for Hasbro's products, as families were stuck at home with nowhere to go. Less supply, more demand. Hasbro compensated by drastically increasing its inventory, so it would have enough products on hand to meet this demand. Essentially, Hasbro leaned from "just-in-time" more towards "just-in-case" inventory management. The idea was to have more inventory than needed today, just in case they couldn't get enough tomorrow.
What Plaintiffs allege is that Hasbro ordered far too much, far more than would be needed as the pandemic wound down and demand wound down with it, but Hasbro continued to represent to investors that this excess inventory was high quality and they anticipated being able to sell it. Allegedly these optimistic projections were knowingly false and misled investors as to the company's actual condition.
Among the allegedly knowingly false representations is the following:
It is allegedly knowingly false that Hasbro anticipated bumps in demand from big entertainment releases (film and TV, essentially) in late 2022 and throughout 2023, and they must have known that they should not have built up extra inventory in advance of any such film and TV releases.
You can read the unabridged complaint here.
We thank LordGigaIce on the Allspark Forums for bringing this case to our attention. It will be very interesting to read Hasbro's response to these allegations. Watch this space.
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