Mattel at Goldman Sachs Conference: Evolving as an IP Powerhouse

Published 03/09/2025, 15:14
© Reuters.

On Wednesday, 03 September 2025, at the Goldman Sachs 32nd Annual Global Retailing Conference, Mattel Inc. (NASDAQ:MAT) laid out its strategic transformation from a traditional toy manufacturer into an intellectual property-driven entity. CEO Enon Kreiz and CFO Paul Rupp discussed the company’s strategic direction, financial performance, and future outlook, balancing optimism with caution regarding current challenges.

Key Takeaways

  • Mattel is transitioning to an IP-driven company, focusing on managing franchises and expanding into entertainment.
  • The company aims to offset tariff costs in 2025 through supply chain flexibility and pricing strategies.
  • Mattel projects savings of $200 million by 2026 from optimizing for profitable growth.
  • Hot Wheels is set for its eighth consecutive record year, and the adult collector market is a significant growth driver.
  • The company plans to release multiple movies and mobile games, enhancing its entertainment footprint.

Financial Results

  • Mattel is confident in offsetting the full cost impact of tariffs by 2025.
  • The company increased its savings target to $80 million this year, aiming for $200 million by 2026.
  • Operating margins improved by 14 points, and gross margins are close to 50%.
  • Mattel has repurchased $813 million in shares from 2023 to Q2, representing about 14% of its market cap.

Operational Updates

  • Mattel is managing product mix and supply chain flexibility to address tariff impacts.
  • The company produces in seven countries, using both owned and third-party factories.
  • Hot Wheels is on track for another record year, and American Girl is returning to profitability.
  • The company is not planning further pricing increases in 2025.

Future Outlook

  • Mattel is developing movies like "Masters of the Universe" and "Matchbox" and an animated Barbie film.
  • The company expects to release two self-published mobile games annually.
  • Innovation is anticipated for Barbie in 2026, and Fisher Price remains stable.

Q&A Highlights

  • Mattel is confident in mitigating tariff costs through supply chain and pricing strategies.
  • The company maintains strong retailer relationships, with toys driving traffic and sales.
  • Innovation is key for brands like Barbie and Hot Wheels, with new products and content on the horizon.
  • Share buybacks are prioritized, reflecting a gap between intrinsic value and share price.

Readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript for a detailed understanding of Mattel’s strategic initiatives and financial performance.

Full transcript - Goldman Sachs 32nd Annual Global Retailing Conference 2025:

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: All right. Great. Thank you, everyone, for joining us this morning. Welcome to the GS Global Retailing Conference. For those who don’t know me, my name is Steven Lashek, and I’m the Lead Entertainment Analyst here at Goldman Sachs.

And to kick off this morning, we are excited to welcome to the conference this year Enon Kreiz and Paul Rupp, the CEO and CFO of Mattel. Thank you both for being with us today.

Enon Kreiz, CEO, Mattel: Thank you for inviting Fantastic.

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Enon, I wanted to start off with the news from yesterday that you’ve been making some organizational changes in the company aimed at enhancing Mattel’s global brand management strategy and accelerating the growth in your Entertainment business.

Enon Kreiz, CEO, Mattel: Could you maybe start off

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: by talking a little bit more about these changes, the expected benefits of the new structure? Ultimately, And how you envision the strengthening execution across your portfolio?

Enon Kreiz, CEO, Mattel: Sure. This is really about our continuous evolution from a toy manufacturing company that we used to be to become an IP company, to making items, to managing franchises. And as we continue to strengthen our brand management capabilities, we are evolving our leadership organization. And the person who we appointed as a Global Head of our Brands Group, Roberto Stanici, Upland Flo now was running the vehicles category, including Hot Wheels, and in many ways, embodied the full strategy for us in terms of capturing full value from our IP and growing outside of the toy aisle. As you know, Hot Wheels, specifically in the vehicles categories as a whole, had incredible run.

Hot Wheels is on track to achieve its eighth consecutive record high year, after fifty eight years on the road, just an incredible performance. And really bringing to bear the Mattel playbook of brand purpose, cultural relevance, consumer centric innovation and franchise mindset. We are also integrating our marketing activities. This is to achieve more efficiency and more scale in a world where it’s getting harder to reach the consumer. And for Mattel, demand creation is a competitive advantage, is one of our strategic pillars, and we continue to improve and strengthen our capabilities in this very important area in terms of reaching and engaging fans, especially young age.

It’s harder to do these days, But we have the capabilities, resource and expertise to stand out in a crowded market, and Roberto is an expert of that. So he will also lead that part of the company. It’s been a very exciting journey for Mattel. We continue to evolve as a company. The biggest cultural shift for Mattel was to realize that people who buy our product are not just consumers, they are fans that have an emotional relationship with our brands.

And when you realize the people who engage with you are fans and that it’s a very different relationship and a very different dialogue, And this informs our strategy and how we continue to grow and expand our business. This is on top of everything within the play aisle. So there are a lot of opportunities for Mattel on the play side of the business, and I’m sure we’ll talk about that. And the exciting part is to grow beyond that in highly accretive business verticals in the entertainment space in terms of content, franchise management, consumer product, location based entertainment, parks and, of course, digital.

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: That’s a great overview. And I certainly want to get back into discussing how you’re viewing each of your key brands. But maybe first, Paul, to touch on the topic that’s dominated investor conversations this year, tariffs. The industry continues to face some meaningful tariffs 20% to 30% across most of the regions that you operate in. Maybe you could just spend a little bit of time talking about Mattel’s strategy to addressing tariffs and your confidence in your ability to mitigate some of the P and L impacts of tariffs this year into next?

Paul Rupp, CFO, Mattel: Thank you for the question, Stephen. It is certainly top of mind for us, but I am very confident that we are going to be able to offset the full cost impact of the tariffs in 2025. We have a variety of levers, and we’re experts at managing this type of headwinds. We have the operational agility to do so, and we’re doing this in three ways. Number one is we have the flexibility and have been working on fine tuning our supply chain and the sourcing, the country of origin of our plants and our products, number one.

Number two, we’re managing product mix as well. And number three, in The U. S, we are taking selective pricing. Of course, this is on top of the already strong program that we have from an OPG perspective, optimizing for profitable growth. You might recall that we have said that we have increased our target from $60,000,000 to $80,000,000 this year to get to the $200,000,000 target by 2026.

So all of those actions that we’re taking will allow us to fully offset the cost impact of the tariffs in 2025. And I feel good about the journey that we have going forward as well, leveraging those tools that we that I mentioned. We have the expertise, and we’ll continue to do so.

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: On your second quarter call, you called out some of the timing related dynamics around tariffs that played out earlier this year as one of the reasons we saw a little bit of a slowdown in revenue year to date. Could you maybe talk a little bit more about that timing dynamic? And with some of the benefit now of being further along in the year, to what extent would you expect the back half of the year to make up for some of that softness that we saw in the second Yes.

Paul Rupp, CFO, Mattel: So stepping back, the industry is healthy. The industry is strong. We are seeing strong Mattel POS in the first half. And so far in Q3, quarter to date, we see positive POS in international in The U. S.

As well. So that’s important. We are employing consistent strategies throughout the world. And as you saw in our Q2 results, we are growing very strongly in international, and we had tariff related disruptions that mostly impacted the ordering patterns of our retailers in The U. S.

Now we do not believe that we have lost any consumer sales. We will catch all of those by the end of the year, but we have seen certainly some timing shifts in the quarter. Now in the second half of the year, we certainly see a significant shift more towards Q4 versus Q3, but that’s as a result of the disruption that we have seen from an ordering pattern perspective. The consumer is there, the expertise and the partnership with the retailers to pushing the products through our value chain is there. And that’s what we’ve been doing for decades, and we’ll continue to do so in 2025 and beyond.

Enon Kreiz, CEO, Mattel: And maybe if I may add to that is where we stand out as a company is with the strength of our brands, quality of our product and very strong supply chain, which is something that we have evolved over the last few years. So this didn’t happen overnight in response to the challenges that we’re seeing right now. We’ve been continuing we have continued to evolve and strengthen our supply chain. We make product today in seven different countries in a combination of owned and operated factories as well as third party suppliers. And we have significant flexibility and agility within the system, which is exactly how we designed it.

You cannot foresee what challenges may come your way, but having a flexible and modular supply chain is a clear advantage that we are seeing playing out in our favor this time.

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: That was my question I was going to ask, which was I feel like there’s this debate amongst the investor community on to what degree some of this revenue timing dynamics is structural versus timing. It sounds like what you’re saying is Mattel has a structural advantage in terms of the brands and the logistics. Ena, maybe just to take that conversation a little bit further. You also mentioned despite the macro uncertainty, your conversations with retailers this year has remained quite constructive. Any more color you can provide as we look into the back of the school season on how those conversations have progressed and just general health of the retailer at the moment?

Enon Kreiz, CEO, Mattel: We were talking about general macro dynamics in the market overall. This isn’t about Mattel and not about toys. These are patterns that we’ve seen across the macro economy. As it relates to our relationship with our retailers, these are very constructive. Toys as a category is very strategic to retailers.

It drives food traffic. It’s experiential. Prices are affordable. And we know that toy shoppers spend more time and have a bigger basket at retail. So retailers are very motivated to drive toy sales, and the relationship is very strong and very aligned.

This is a strong partnership that goes back decades. And we work closely with our retailers to make sure that we have the right product at the right time and the right amount on the right shelf at the right time of the year. So this is what we do. This is our expertise. This is our specialty regardless of one challenge or another.

And of course, you need to know the consumer. You need to have great product. You need to continue to innovate and find ways to reach and engage fans to bring it into the toy aisle and continue at the same time to expand in omnichannel retail in terms of online and remote shopping. So we do all of that and continue to work collaboratively with all of our retailers around the world. And as a reminder, we sell product in 500,000 stores globally, 500,000 stores.

So this is a very large operation that is highly efficient and very and high performing.

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: In terms of getting product on the shelf this year, how do you expect the retailer stocking and restocking dynamic to differ this year given what we’ve seen in tariffs play out so far relative to a normal year that you would see play out? And how is Mattel leaning into and addressing some of the changing in stocking?

Enon Kreiz, CEO, Mattel: We talked about shifting ordering patterns from domestic direct import to domestic shipping, which does push out some of the revenue recognition. But the most important point to remember is that consumer demand is healthy. POS has been positive across the industry and for Mattel for the first half of the year and so far, as Paul mentioned, also in the beginning of the third quarter. Toys as a category has seen one of its highest growth first halves in a long time. It’s been in fact, according to Surcana, in the first part of the year, it’s been the fastest growing sector within 16 different sectors they track, from video games to fashion to consumer goods, restaurants and other electronics, 16 different categories that they track.

Toys has been the fastest growing in the first part of the year. So we’re seeing positive consumer demand for the industry and positive consumer demand for Mattel in The U. S. And internationally, every single market so far. So when that is in place, this is foundational.

You know that ultimately, if there is consumer demand, retailers will aim to fulfill it. And that is the most important factor to look at this point in a period of disruption and uncertainty.

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Paul, maybe to touch on another factor that will come into play later this year, pricing. Mattel took pricing earlier this summer across part of its portfolio, as needed, in accordance to your mitigation efforts. I’m curious how you’ve seen consumers react to the price increases so far? And maybe as you look out over the course of the holiday season and into next year, how you would expect the consumers to digest some of the price increases we’re seeing out there in the marketplace?

Paul Rupp, CFO, Mattel: Yes. Certainly, pricing is one of the levers that we have used to mitigate some of the cost impact of the tariffs. And we did it very strategically in The U. S. And we that those pricing actions are behind us, and we do not intend to take any further pricing in 2025.

And as I said, this is one of the levers we will continue to leverage our supply chain flexibility. We will continue to maintain our costs, control our costs as we always do. And when it comes to the reaction that we have seen, it’s probably early to say. We’re being watchful. We’re seeing how the consumer is behaving.

But as Ynon said, we see POS continue to be strong into Q3 as well. And we’re going to be flexible with our marketing strategy, with innovation that we will bring to life in the second half, and we’re excited about what the end of the year season will bring.

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Maybe just to build off that,

Paul Rupp, CFO, Mattel: toys won’t

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: be the only category to see price increases this holiday season. Curious as you maybe take a step back and look at the retailer landscape and the consumer landscape more broadly, how you feel that the consumer will perform going into the holiday season, maybe how toys fits into that given the broader price increases that

Enon Kreiz, CEO, Mattel: we’ll see? No one has a crystal ball, but the trend into the year so far has been positive. And we know that people, families, parents, kids will always be excited with quality product, especially when it’s they’re tied to known and trusted brands. And this is what we aim to bring to the table. We continue to innovate.

We continue to develop incredible product, play systems and grow the reach and with new touch points for our brands beyond the toy aisle. So this is not just about strategy within toys. This is taking brands that are cultural, that are important, that have a large built in fan base and extend that beyond the toy aisle. And this is a key part of our strategy, to grow into in highly accretive business verticals in the entertainment space. We talked about a very exciting film slate with two movies coming out next year, Masters of the Universe in partnership with Amazon MGM and Matchbox in partnership with Skydance and now Paramount, both really, really exciting movies.

I’ve seen the initial cuts. It’s still early, but already a lot to be excited by with incredible cast and should be fun to watch. And of course, there’s a slate of movies beyond that. We recently announced that John Chu will direct the Hot Wheels movie that we are producing with Warner Bros. And J.

J. Abrams, which is very exciting. And also a Barbie movie, an animated Barbie movie that will be developed by is being developed by Chris Muladandry and Illumination at Universal. Chris Muladandry is, you can say, the most successful animated filmmaker ever. He is now making developing the Barbie animated movie.

So this is a very exciting yet another exciting development in our film state. And of course, it’s not just movies, also television, parks, mobile games, both self publishing that we are now developing and accelerating and expect between an average of two self published games, mobile games a year, continue to grow with digital platforms such as Roblox and others, and find more ways to reach and engage fans with our brands and great products and experiences. And that’s part of the key part of our strategy beyond the toy business.

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Building on that content lineup, you touched on some of the power brands and some of the drivers of the power brands. Over the next couple of years, Ynon, I think for two years post the Barbie movie, which was a fantastic success for Mattel, more broadly brought a lot of attention to the brand. What do you see as the next steps for the Barbie brand from here? And how do you see innovation in potential movie sequels? You mentioned the animated Barbie movie coming about, but maybe a live action sequel at some point down the line fitting into the strategy.

Enon Kreiz, CEO, Mattel: Yes. Barbie is such an incredible brand that never sits still. Barbie is one of the most brands the most known brands in culture in modern culture. It’s not just a toy, it’s a pop culture icon. And we could not be more excited about Barbie’s development, both in terms of product with more innovation, more breakthrough innovation, extending the lines, developing exciting packages packaging rather and continue to evolve the brand in new and exciting ways.

And of course, outside of toy aisle, in content and different experiences that are coming your way will be another way to another form of engagement and excitement for fans. What we’re also seeing is a growing adult fan base, adult collector fan base. This is a key part of our strategy. It’s what’s also driving the industry. The industry is being driven and lifted by adult collectors, and this is part of our own strategy, especially with our power brands.

We have such a large built in fan base of older people that used to be fans when they were kids and now are growing up and continue to engage with our brands. So Barbie is benefiting from that as well. Expect more innovation in 2026. We will see improving trends in 2025 and then more exciting product coming out in 2026. The movie the animated movie we talked about, we haven’t said anything live about a live action movie.

But of course, our goal is to develop film franchises. We’ve always said that this is not just about Barbie, but in general, when we make movies, our goal is to create film franchises and continue to develop that over a period of time.

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Are there any upcoming catalysts you’d point investors to more broadly across your doll portfolio, as we look into 2026 and beyond, where you could start to see this content flywheel start to materialize and maybe an acceleration in revenue growth?

Enon Kreiz, CEO, Mattel: Sure. Within the Dolls category, we have very exciting brands that are doing really well and growing. American Girl, which had three consecutive growth quarters of growth that is returning to profitability and on a great trajectory. Very excited about American Girl continued development. Monster High, which is expanding its global rollout.

This is a brand that was a huge business for Mattel about ten years ago. It came and went. We relaunched it now with support of content on the Collodion and YouTube with a movie in development right now. And so there’s more a lot more to come around amongst the high. There’s Polly Pocket, which is having also very good momentum with a lot of innovation, a bit of nostalgia, but more currency and cultural relevance.

Disney Princess is an important part of our portfolio. This is a brand that we treat as our own, very proud about that partnership. And we’re seeing also collaboration between Disney Princess and American Girls. So we find ways to excite and delight fans through cross collaboration between our brands and very exciting execution. And as I said earlier, continuing to tap into the adult collectors that have an emotional relationship with our brands that is something we’re tapping into with great product that is catering for that segment, with curated product that we sell on Mattel Creations.

This is our own direct to consumer website that is targeting adult collectors, different price points, different packaging. And all in all, just another form of engage fans in new ways outside of the traditional form of retail.

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hot Wheels continue to see impressive growth and gets on track for another record year, and this is just a brand that keeps on growing. What drives further growth from here in the Hot Wheels brand? How do you get to the next level?

Enon Kreiz, CEO, Mattel: We feel that there’s so much more runway for Hot Wheels, as we said, notwithstanding the fact that we are on track for an eighth consecutive all time high, record high for the brand. It is about product innovation, expanding not just the product line itself, but also the play system. We’re introducing this year a new track set that will in many ways will completely reinvent the play pattern of connecting and attaching the tracks that will be very easy to do with one hand and also for younger kids as successful as the current tracks have been. This is a whole new level of innovation. We are also seeing very exciting partnerships with brands like F1 and Ferrari, which is another form of growth.

We’re launching more games, mobile games, video games, which is a different form of engagement, but clearly a play panel that lends itself so perfectly for this brand. A movie that is in development, we talked about that, produced by J. J. Abrams and directed by John Chu. And continuing to tap into the adult collector, where we see incredible engagement for Hot Wheels.

And I’ll give you one interesting statistic, which is Hot Wheels, the basic car, we sell for 1 point dollars 2 This is the number one selling item in the industry, the number one selling toy in the industry. And we also sell Hot Wheels collector set in partnership with Danielle Archnem, a very known artist, for $700 on the Mattel site Mattel Creation site. So that variety of offering and price points is maybe the best way to describe the breadth of this brand. And last but not least, we are we just launched this summer a building set product, the collector a Hot Wheels collector building set, which is off to a very promising launch, very promising start. This is a new form of innovation for us.

Outside of the traditional back cast category, this is in building sets, and it’s off to a great start. And we’ll see how far it goes.

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Do you feel like there’s any learnings or best practices from the Hot Wheels brand and how that business has been run over the last five, ten years that you feel like might be applicable to the rest of the brand portfolio, perhaps across your doll portfolio, Fisher Price infant toddler preschool, the Brickline that Mattel has? Yes. I think

Enon Kreiz, CEO, Mattel: this is going back to your earlier question about our organizational structure and how we think about brand management. And in many ways, Hot Wheels does represent in the best possible way our playbook and how we take a brand that has been around for fifty eight years and started as a toy, as a die cast vehicle and continue to evolve and reimagine what it represents, what is the relationship between the brand and the brand’s fans? And the evolution of the play pattern, the play system from an item to a play an entire system of play, garage, tracks and interaction between different parts of the portfolio, all the way to content and games, from television to short form content or movies, big live action, theatrical movies, continue to evolve in how we market the brand with the tours that we organize around the world, with the Monster Truck, live at the live events that we organize around the country that continue to grow and evolve. So you continue to find more touch points, more opportunities to engage fans and reimagine what the brand represents. It really is about tapping into car culture.

This is not about selling an item off

Paul Rupp, CFO, Mattel: a shelf.

Enon Kreiz, CEO, Mattel: It’s how do you embrace car culture. And we’re always proud to say that we actually own and run the most the number one selling car in the world. We make hundreds and hundreds of millions of cars a year. And with new different sizes and different capabilities that we bring to the table, we believe that there’s still a lot of runway for the brand to continue to grow and evolve and reimagine new forms of play.

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Fisher Price, really the entire infant, toddler, preschool category more broadly has faced some challenges in recent years. Just curious to get your updated take on maybe why you think that’s been the case? And then looking ahead, opportunities to return the category for you to growth over the next couple of years, what does that strategy look like?

Enon Kreiz, CEO, Mattel: Fisher Price is the number one brand within the infant, toddler and preschool category. It’s been around four ninety years. Actually older than Mattel and is a very trusted brand that parents recognize as something that they can relate to. And of course, we invest heavily in developing products that stand up to the highest level of innovation. The Fisher Price brand has been stable over the last six years.

What declined within the category has been the preschool entertainment, which is a volatile part of the category driven by brands, and two lines of business that we’ve exited proactively, Baby Gear and Power Wheels. And these lines have been less productive for us in terms of profitability, and we have been exiting these parts of the category as a whole over the last few years. This year, 2025, would be the final year where we see going to see major impacts of this strategic exit of those two lines. But as a whole, we are very positive about the category. The future price wood, the wood line is off to a very promising start.

We expect that to continue to grow and evolve. Little People is a thriving brand that is becoming its seeing its own moment in culture, well outside of the preschool category or the infant for the preschool category with adult collectors and a growing fan base. And we are very confident about the road map for Fisher Price as a key leading brand for Mattel. And of course, the entire category, as we strengthen our capabilities with more innovation, more ingenuity and evolving the play pattern for young kids with a lot of quality that we inject into the product line.

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Before I get the margins and capital allocation, Inaan, one more question for you just on the content slate on the partner side. So the Toyota content slate this year on the movie front has been much improved versus years past coming out of COVID, coming out of the Actors and Riders’ Strike. We’ve had Minecraft, Jurassic World. So far this year, have the Wicked movie coming, sequel coming in the holiday season. How important is the return of the toy slate for Mattel?

And as you look at how the business and the slate stacked up going into this holiday season, how does that compare to last year? And to what extent do you think it will be a driver of growth?

Enon Kreiz, CEO, Mattel: Yes. The return of Toyetic movies is, of course, a positive for the industry. It brings buoyancy not just to the actual movies or the specific categories that correspond with the movies, but to the industry as a whole. So it is good to see that theatrical movies are playing an important role, but also movies on streaming platforms actually are seeing a lot of engagement. The K Pop, Daemon has done really well for Netflix, and we’re seeing cultural phenomenas happening not just around the theater theatrical releases, but also on streaming platforms.

And this is a good thing. And we expect that to continue to be a driver for the industry, a driver for Mattel. And this is where we excel, in that we are playing both in our own domain, our movies that we are turning into exciting theatrical releases, but also as a trusted partner for the major players, the major entertainment companies that release big movies that trust Mattel to create exciting products and leverage our capabilities to offer exciting product lines tied to these movies.

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Want to pivot to margins, Paul. You mentioned earlier accelerating cost savings, 60,000,000 to $80,000,000 for this year along the program of operating for profitable growth. Beyond these cost savings, what do you see as the key levers for growth in margins over the course of 2020 Yes. ’5 and 2020

Paul Rupp, CFO, Mattel: If I step back and look at our trajectory from 2017 to now, we have accomplished impressive performance. Operating margins increased by 14 points from negative to almost 14. Gross margins, up 13 points, close to 50%, around 50% now. We have optimized our SG and A 300 basis points. We have optimized our A and P 400 basis points.

And that’s in our DNA. That’s exactly what we do, and that’s what we should continue to do, particularly now enabled by the supply chain efficiencies. And that culture of we control our costs, we control what’s controllable, and we’ll continue to do that. The proof is in the past, and we’ll continue to do that. We see ample opportunity to continue to optimize our margins.

That’s why I feel confident about reiterating our guidance today. I talked about the many factors that give us

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: the

Paul Rupp, CFO, Mattel: confidence that we will be landing in the right place from a top line perspective and also from a profitability perspective. So very confident about the future based on the past as well.

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Last question on capital allocation, perhaps for the both of you, just in terms of thinking about reinvesting in the business and managing capital returns. You have the share repurchase program that’s currently out there. Where do you see opportunities, I guess, first, to reinvest back into the business? And second, as you think about deploying some of the excess capital that you have, your balance sheet is in a fantastic spot. Where do you see opportunities to do so?

Paul Rupp, CFO, Mattel: Well, we’re great cash generators. We have also seen a significant turnaround in that regard, and we are we have a strong balance sheet as well. Priorities from a capital allocation perspective are very clear, and we will continue to invest in our business, first and foremost. You see that manifesting itself in both the CapEx that is needed to continue to expand and grow, for example, the Vehicles segment, but also invest, although it’s not CapEx, it’s P and L as well, in digital gaming and in other parts of our growth strategies. And importantly, share buybacks.

You have seen that from 2023 up to now up to Q2, we have repurchased $813,000,000 And if you and we continue to be active as we speak. That’s about 14% of the market cap. And with the strength of our balance sheet, with the cash flow generation, we will continue to make the right choices for value creation for our shareholders.

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: And I

Enon Kreiz, CEO, Mattel: would just add that we are today in a place where we have arguably the strongest balance sheet we’ve ever had. In terms of the whether it’s leverage ratio, cash generation and overall continued focus on managing a strong resilient balance sheet that gives us flexibility. And this is something we intend to continue to maintain. It’s an important feature to have a strong balance sheet. Buying back shares is the best use of cash today that we see in front of us, given what we see as a big gap between the intrinsic value of the company, not just the history, but the potential of where we’re going from here to the relative to the share price.

So this is our best form of investment at this point. But as a company, we are focused on maintaining and show a strong balance sheet that will continue to give us flexibility to execute our strategy and a key part of what we do.

Steven Lashek, Lead Entertainment Analyst, Goldman Sachs: It’s a great place to end. Yinan and Paul, thank you very much for joining us today. Thank Thank

Enon Kreiz, CEO, Mattel: Thank you.

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