Q4 2023 JAKKS Pacific Inc Earnings Call

In this article:

Participants

Stephen Berman; Chairman & Chief Executive Office; JAKKS Pacific

John Kimble; Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President; JAKKS Pacific Inc

Andrew Uerkwitz; Analyst; Jefferies

Presentation

Operator

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the JAKKS Pacific fourth quarter and full-year 2023 earnings conference call with management, who will review financial results for the quarter and year ended December 31, 2023. JAKKS issued its earnings press release earlier today. The earnings release and presentation slides for today's call are available in the company's recently remodeled website in the Investors Section.
On the call this afternoon are Stephen Berman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and John Kimble, Chief Financial Officer. Stephen will first provide an overview of the quarter, along with highlights of recent performance and current business trends, then John will provide some additional editorial around JAKKS Pacific's financial and operational results. Mr. Berman will then return with additional comments and some closing remarks prior to opening up the call for questions. (Operator Instructions)
Before we begin, the company would like to point out that any comments made about JAKKS Pacific's future performance, events or circumstances, including the estimates of sales, margins, and/or adjusted EBITDA in 2024, as well as any other forward-looking statements concerning 2024 and beyond are subject to Safe Harbor protection under Federal Securities. These statements reflect the company's best judgment based on current market trends and conditions today and is subject to certain risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements.
For details concerning these and other such risks and uncertainties, you should consult JAKKS' most recent 10-K and 10-Q filings with the SEC, as well as the company's other reports subsequently filed with the SEC from time to time.
In addition, today's comments by management will refer to non-GAAP financial measures such as adjusted EBITDA and adjusted earnings per share. Unless stated otherwise, the most directly comparable GAAP financial metric has been reconciled to the associated non-GAAP financial measure within the company's earnings press release issued today or previously. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.
That I would now like to turn the call over to Stephen Berman.

Stephen Berman

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. It's been four months since our last earnings call and update at the end of Q3, and I'm happy to say that we are very pleased with our performance since then Perhaps more importantly, we continue to make solid progress in building a better future for our stakeholders, despite the persistent uncertainty around the economy and consumer strength. Here are some high-level headlines of what's new since we last spoke.
As we expected, Halloween in the US was down versus prior year according to syndicated data. Atthough our shipping was also down, it was better than the industry and solidified our position of strength as the US market leader. It's with that voice that we continue to engage customers and licensors about opportunities for 2025, while also lining up a delivering orders for this coming season. More on costumes in the second half of today's materials.
Christmas did arrive on December 25 as scheduled, but with a return to pre-COVID last-minute shopping patterns. As a FOB-first business, we are less reliant on pushing additional product to customers post-Thanksgiving, and to that end, for this year, roughly in line with our expectations and maybe even a little better.
Q4 POS at top three US toy consumer product accounts was positive at two of the three despite having difficult revenue comparisons with the prior year. In addition, year-end retail inventories at those same accounts were down high single-digit percentages versus prior year.
As the press has noted, the Thanksgiving 2023 film release we supported underperformed from a box office perspective and similarly was a challenge at retail. We still think it's a great product line, and we are looking forward to a streaming launch in a few weeks to introduce the film to a broader audience. But realistically, it's unlikely to provide a lot of chase opportunity for us in 2024.
We have deployed our former COO into his new role as President of European Operations as of January, as scheduled. As part of our reenergized focus on our European expansion, we set our largest contingent efforts in Nuremburg Toy Fair earlier this month, have great meetings with customers from both Europe and around the world. Our balanced evergreen portfolio continues to resonate, and more importantly, attracts attention.
As we increase the size and strength of our European team and footprint, the momentum for growth is building. There's a lot of work to be done and a lot of opportunity to be had. But JAKK and the team are locked in on identifying various opportunities to strengthen our retail expansion that can be acted upon to have immediate benefit to our company.
To hit some of the financial highlights for the quarter and year, Q4 net sales of $127.4 million were down 3% versus prior year, bringing our full year total net sales of 711.6 million. The full year number was down 11% versus prior year, primarily attributable to the massive amount of volume we did in 2022 from a Thanksgiving 2021 film release that was on fire all of last year, although the Super Mario Brothers movie released in Q2 2023 generated a lot of business in 2023 as well as promotional support of our evergreen Nintendo line. It wasn't enough to close that gap, especially given we also benefited from a strong Sonic to film in 2022 as well. Better landed product cost and reduced ocean freight helped to contribute to an expansion of full year gross margin percentage Q4 in particular increased 480 basis points year over year. This improvement generated a 6% increase in gross margin dollars in 2023 compared to prior year, despite the sales decline, it's a remarkable achievement. This gross margin dollar level 223 million is the highest the Company has achieved since 2015 as much as we all enjoyed talking about market share gains. When they happen, we enjoy margin dollar gains even more. That strength flowed through SG&A to generate a full-year operating margin of 8.3%, an improvement of 60 basis points over prior year, despite losing top line scale, our Q4 adjusted EBITDA was slightly better than prior year, leading to a full year adjusted EBITDA of 75.7 million, slightly below 2020 to $76.4 million, but still a tremendous outcome for us at a performance level. We did not anticipate at the beginning of the year. Our action play and collectible business was down 9% in the quarter and up 27% on the year, led by Super Mario Brothers movie, Sonic prime and our core Nintendo and Sonic product ranges. Our doll role-play address segment finally started to lap the exceptional 2022 and was up 6% in the quarter, but down 25% for the full year. Our outdoor seasonal business also stabilized delivery growth of 4% in the quarter and slowing the full year declined to 18%. From a geography view, our international business, inclusive of costumes grew 1% for the full year. It was led by 75% growth in Latin America, which at 32 million full year, up from $13 million in 2021. It's now larger than our business in Canada which we also had a great year at $27 million, up 2% versus prior year. North America was down 13% with both the toy and consumer product and coffee business be down, as I've discussed before, handing it off to John, as we wrap up on 2023, I wanted to point out that when COVID struck in 2020, we made some difficult decisions and retrench the business to ensure stability given a precarious financial position at the syndicate significant of the unknowns. We made it through 2020 successfully and from there, we have steadily delivered over the subsequent years, improving our financial health annually. Over the past three years, we averaged $710 million in net sales 67 million in EBITDA and $49 million in cash flow from operation, leading us to a place where I can honestly say, our overall business, the quality of our product portfolio and the caliber of our global team have never been stronger.
I will now pass it over to John for some comments after which I'll come back and talk more about how we are thinking about 2024. John?

John Kimble

Thank you, Steven, and happy leap day, everybody. Happy to talk a bit more about another solid quarter and wrapping up another great year. We already talked a lot about sales. So jumping into margins and specifically into our landed product costs, we had 110 basis point improvement in this area in the quarter, driven by lower landed product costs for the product we import compared to last year and ultimately better ex-factory margins in a more favorable product that brought our full year cost of goods down to 50.9% of net sales on a full year basis, that's 200 to 400 basis points better than these results over the past five years and an unsung accomplishment within our financial results. That level of improvement is driven by a combination of initiatives, generating positive returns, designing for margin, working collaboratively with our factory base and carefully managing own inventory, which ranges from how much do we bring in when and at what cost per container, it remains a constant narrative in our organization to ensure we can maintain this level of cost of goods efficiency. It's clearly a key driver of our strong results. We gave back 60 basis points on the royalty line for the full year. Most of that difference was driven by our running into minimum royalty guarantee issues and some of our international markets guarantees are a fact of life in most royalty agreements we will always look to optimize rate versus guarantee level where we can. We're sometimes means the effective rate ends up being a bit higher than originally planned. That has been the case with a couple of agreements recently, and it's not anything we are overly concerned about going forward. We would expect this area to be relatively stable as we head into the new year, if not an area where we can scrape back some basis points. Ideally, our direct selling costs were up in the quarter and on the full year, lower volume and inventory levels mean some loss of scale as it relates to our warehousing expense, increased international sales generate higher outbound freight costs were responsible for delivering products directly to me in the area of G&A expenses. There are a couple of different dynamics taking place. We are not immune from the broad narrative that most cost areas are increasing more than not over the past couple of years, inclusive of labor, although that is motivating a persistent review of how and where we're spending, it is nonetheless challenging to keep the cost base flat, given how labor driven tends to be. But in addition, we are also taking the opportunity to make improvements in areas like technology, cybersecurity and selectively upgrading the organization for the medium term. These various initiatives, although not revolutionary, are necessary and in some cases, arguably overdue to sustain the performance levels we've achieved in recent years and ideally unlock new abilities to achieve greater efficiency in the near term. And to be clear, that commentary is independent of how we've talked about building out our European and Latin American footprint to accelerate growth in those markets. Nonetheless, with dollar cost up across SG&A. We still finished the year with an operating margin of 8.3%, the highest level we've achieved in 15 years, we were down less than $2 million in operating income on over $80 million in fewer sales for going to score. That is a good outcome as far as we're concerned from there, I will highlight that our interest expense dropped to 6.5 million from 11.2 million for the prior year, despite the rising rate environment, thanks to our debt retirement in the first half of the year, we are planning for that expense reduced further to a nominal amount in 2024.
Moving on to taxes, last year at this time, we had a significant valuation allowance release against deferred tax assets, which required a lot of analysis of our 2019 through 2022 returns. Over the past several months, we've decided to conduct a more rigorous assessment of that analysis, which we are finalizing as part of our Q4 close this year. That further review has identified an increase in net operating losses or NOLs that the Company will be able to utilize going forward. Although the change in annual cash tax exposure is somewhat limited, it does generate a $2.6 million pickup on the P & L and lowers our effective tax rate for the year to 15.2% versus the low 20s number that we usually plan to. We have adjusted that one-time pickup out of our adjusted EPS results.
Other housekeeping, the change in fair value of our preferred stock liability was an increase of $1.4 million in the quarter, we back that noncash charge out of our adjusted non-GAAP results. Those are the significant drivers of our EPS and adjusted EPS results. According to the adjusted numbers, only our Q4 result was a loss of $1.4 per diluted share compared to a loss of $1.42 per diluted share last year. On a full year basis, our earnings of $4.62 per diluted share represents an increase over the $4.29 per share we recorded in 2022. For adjusted EBITDA. We finished at $75.7 million, a bit below last year's 76.4 million. But nonetheless, a result, we're extremely happy with last time we had back-to-back years that this level of EBITDA was well over a dozen years ago in the pre frozen era.
Some quick balance sheet highlights. Our cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash totaled $72.6 million as of 1231, down from 85.5 million in the prior year, but one needs to consider that we eliminated 67.2 million in long-term debt with cash on hand during the calendar year. As of February 16th, the same cash metric totaled 47.5 million as a more current reference point has we have completed paying Q4 royalties owed and have begun investing in 2024 product similar to other players in the space. We deliberately have been working down owned inventory to better align with customer demand and proactively manage working capital.
It's also worth noting that we continue to encourage the FOB model has been most beneficial to our customers and ourselves and delivering the right price value for retailers and consumers. Our FOB sales mix exceeded 70% on a total company basis in 2023. Another great result of the team's efforts. Our finished goods inventory finished at 52.6 million, a 35% reduction from last year's 80.6 million. And now back to Stephen for some more comments about the year.

Stephen Berman

Thank you, John. We're already two months into yet another interesting year in our industry for the fifth consecutive q. one, we find ourselves wondered about the outlook for the economy and more specifically the implications for the average consumer. A new overlay this year is a bit of a new film and TV desert resulting from the various entertainment industry work stoppages of 2023, along with streaming providers taking a more tricky view of their investment levels, although that backdrop does it make doing solid business easier for anyone this year. We do feel we are better set up for success. More than most are focused on tried-and-true evergreen play patterns. Brands and category serves us well in times like these these are the businesses that often flow to the top of the markets' priority list when there's nothing being crowded out by some of the large one-off promotional events or activities preschoolers up today are not studying an entertainment calendar or bemoaning the lack of the July fourth Temple, they're still going to birthday. Parties are lost for shopping trips out to brick and mortar retail and it's on shelf at retail that we continue to offer a strong and wide array of sub $30 price-point toys that deliver fun and innovation for the recipient and happiness and satisfaction for the gift giver. With that view, we are once again set up for a solid year. That's not to suggest that we are immune to a larger dynamic over the past two springs, we have greatly benefited from high product lines driven by blockbuster April film releases, driving sales tied to the movie as well as supporting the expanded our year-round business for those brands. Those are difficult numbers to replace and a business like our costume business is often led by the latest blockbuster films and the relatively light volume this year tends to lead to a somewhat softer overall business. But as I often reminding our internal teams, that's just how the world of business works. You must adapt and do the hard work to compensate if your underlining goal is to deliver consistent predictable results, which is our primary financial objective here at Jack. With that foundation, there are a large number of things we're excited about as we head into the new year, although admittedly many of them are anchored a bit more towards the second half. From a content perspective, we are delighted to hear the news that Disney plans to release more wanted to and theaters this holiday season. The film tells us the next chapter in the world them onto their successful 2016 film, we chased demand when their original marijuana film exceeded commercial expectation and it has been a consistent seller for us ever since we will have a new focused line of products inspired by the film on-shelf in Q4. And separately, we are also excited to be enjoying three new pieces of entertainment in the world of Sonic. The Hedgehog first up Season three on Sonic prime, which released in mid January on Netflix. Second is the national show, which was featured during the Super Bowl and its launch in late April. On the Paramount plus streaming platform. It is set after the second film, but prior to Sonic, the Hedgehog three, the third film in the Sonic, the Hedgehog franchise, which is launching in theaters in December of this year, the team has developed custom product lines for Sonic prime and the film in addition to refreshes and extensions of our successful core Sonic, the Hedgehog toys and customer assortment.
Moving to Disney Princess, we will benefit from two did the global marketing campaigns this year. Spark of Joy celebrating the Joy Disney brands and stories brain to families all over the world and create your world a three year Disney Princess brand campaign launching this fall, celebrated the magical world you would create through the Disney Princess brand and a world of products. Jack's toys will be featured throughout that campaign since last quarter. We also made great progress here in our new Simpson line with retailers around the world new episodes of Season 35 began to air earlier this month, and season 36 is projected to debut in September. The hours watched on this property are just incredible. We can't wait for fans to see our range, specifically the figures and diagram as featuring characters and locations from the show, it's been over 15 years since the assistant Tory range has been in the market and we are thrilled to make them available.
We announced and disclosed last quarter the starting of a worldwide relationship with Authentic Brands Group. Abg is a Brand powerhouse with a wide portfolio of IP, which has mass appeal to millennials, Gen Z and Gen Y. We have been collaborating on a wide range of products that will slot into our division as well as expand the scope of our offerings. We've been working on iconic assortment of their properties, names like elements, Quiksilver, Roxy, Juicy Couture, Sports Illustrated and prints, just to name a few. We have completed the initial fall 2020 for retail presentations at both mass, such as Target, Walmart and Amazon and sporting good channels such as Dick's Sporting Goods Academy Danone's shales as well as specialty international retailers. The brand's global reach was proven during the recent Nuremburg Toy Fair been met with excitement from our international customers. We are extremely excited to be rolling out our new line of skateboards and Rose gates with amazing new designs for element, Roxy, Quiksilver and Juicy Couture at specialty and mass retailers, both in-store and online in 2025 jets will be launching a complete line of outdoor products, including chairs, umbrellas, canopies beach accessories, inflatable pools, loads, sand as flashback, foldable wagons and extensive lines of dolls and accessories infused with fashion elements from Roxy, Quiksilver Forever 21, print and Sports Illustrated. As we said separately, we think the US housing market is still trying to calibrate where consumer demand is post-COVID with customers dialing their annual buys up and down as a jockey for market share. In addition, many other manufacturers in this space continue to struggle, creating additional noise in the market. We do have the rights to several do films this year, inclusive of Sony's Ghostbusters frozen Empire eliminations, entertainment, Despicable Me, NBC, Universal's wicked and Kung Fu Panda for an addition to our strong evergreen license IP portfolio from Disney Princesses to Lenovo and stitch Nintendo Sonic Pokémon Halo Minecraft, just to name several. We are also continuing to add additional rights where we have US rights as our capabilities outside the U.S. steadily build and build. Nuremberg was a great show for disguise as we continue to have a separate booth to present the product lines. There are a couple of interesting new businesses queuing up for 2025 to which we look forward to telling you about in the quarters to come as we always have a lot of different things going on.
There is one more important thought I wanted to share 2024 commences. Our 30th year in business at Jack Freeman and I founded Jack specific back in January 1995, 29 years ago. Those who have known us over the years during our various ups and downs know that has truly been remarkable journey so far. It was great being back in Nuremberg this year for the first time in a long time and catch up with many long-standing customers and relationships. I now consider friends for all the time we have shared in the decades since past five years have created their own remarkable chapter as we worked through our 20 nineteen's restructuring navigated through peak COVID in 2020 and subsequently has put up three tremendous years of results across 2021, 2022 and 2023. We are extremely proud of our performance during this time, but are only looking forward towards another year that will inevitably prove challenging, but we feel is still filled with major opportunities.
Thanks again for your support and interest. And with that, we'll take a couple of questions. Operator?

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Andrew Uerkwitz, Jefferies.

Andrew Uerkwitz

Thank you. Thank you, guys, for taking my questions. Steve and I kind of had a question for you. I really appreciate the color on kind of talking about the movie slate and the impact that could have either specific. Could you just talk generally about the impact it has on consumers is it lower sales because they're going to the store less? Is it just a they're just not are there the property like I mean, just kind of thinking through their still birthday parties to buy for their still holiday to buy four. So I'm just trying to think the impact that it might have directly on Jack's it just kind of any color maybe it impacts the holiday and just trying to get a sense on what the real driver here is, I guess the consumer when you have a weaker movie slate versus Thank you.

Stephen Berman

Andrew, so we've had this throughout the periods as Jackson had been in the industry. What it normally does when you don't have any kind of real hot overall, terrific properties there could be some great movies, but they may not be in a sense merchandise will as well. But in our world like a frozen or Milan or things like that, are terrific. So what that does is it just the excitement of the consumer of driving them into the retail and going to buy something that's hot isn't there. And when they come in they're buying something hot. They usually always acquire additional products on an impulse basis. So by not having such a real hot theatrical or even TV initiatives this year, it's really back to the basics, which is the positive for us. That's our core concept of Jack's is evergreen basic brick by brick business and something hot comes along. We run chase it but we never bet on it too, is to ensure our year. So for example, we have and today we are just finished up an amazing meeting with one of the large retailers in the sporting world with our new authentic initiatives that we're going to be launching in 2024 that we didn't expect until next year to launch some of these things. In addition, we have a movie that we're really excited about is we've had great track records with it in the past is the new marijuana movie, which is coming out so there are some excitement as well as the Sonic excitement, but those things are happening later in the year. And there's really not any major, call it, consumer selling product movies that are happening for the first half or even in the first three quarters of the year. So you got to think of core evergreen businesses that really do well. So our basic tents, Baltics, ride-ons, Nintendo Sonic, the Simpson line, which is new Simpsons, has been around the 30 something, Scott, that how many years are over 35 years that it's the first time, there's product coming out in 15 years of The Simpsons. So even though it's not a new launch of a brand-new call it IP, it's a strong IP that's evergreen so we're reached and we are very solid, but there's just nothing great that's coming out that is going to push the industry into these high levels of excitement.

Andrew Uerkwitz

I got it. No, that's super helpful. Really helpful. And speaking to kind of in the back half of the year, aside from the Sonic and Simpsons, so your outdoor initiatives, will we see some of that as well or because it's outdoor that's more of a 25 initiative, just trying to frame some of these new license deals.

Stephen Berman

So the ABG. seasonal argues that we have other seasonal properties that are really focused on the pump control, the ball pits and tents and ride-ons. But the ABG., as I just mentioned, we had our team has flown back from a major sporting goods retailer and they have full commitments, a broad array of commitments on the skateboard roller skates and the element on safety equipment and we have been on the road since Nuremberg and the team has been on the road of marketing Retail Roadshow. So we expect to have the skateboards and seasonal business that I just mentioned in fourth quarter, Q3, launching and then spring, which launches in December, January, March. That's when we expect all the tenants, the carriages, the chairs, the Quiksilver and Roxy all to come out, which will be for summer 25. But the skateboards or roller skates are they're getting some really good grasp at retail. We expect that to happen at all this year. But on the other parts, we still have like Sonic prime Netflix, which came out January knuckles, which comes out Paramount plus at April, Sonic through the move in December. The Simpsons will want to we have a big global marketing campaign with Disney was spark of joy and create your world Sky's.
There's after a unicorn.

John Kimble

We have intend to incur the vending machine, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS tail. There's a lot of content and IP that we've launched, but there's just something that that data's a tentpole movie excluding Vionic. And that's and add more data to Got it.

Andrew Uerkwitz

That's super helpful. I appreciate that color and good job getting some of those new initiatives out sooner and later. I think that was a big goal for us. Yes. No, I think that's great. And then kind of just how should I how should we frame the international opportunity? I know there's the overall global weakness but I mean, I would think with some of the international initiatives you guys might actually be up year over year on an international jet geography basis. Is that one is right is that the right way to think about it? Or how should we kind of frame the international opportunity?

Stephen Berman

Yes. So we've been out there and I'm going after again shortly next couple of weeks. The big initiative is we opened up our new distribution center in PHN, Italy and our new offices in France and a new vision center in Belgium, which is going to help getting to all the ancillary territories that are hard to get to. But remember, we're primarily an FOB basis business. That being said, if we if you saw how much. Our Latin America growth has increased. We were up for vendor there at Wal-Mart, Mexico, I think Whirlpool one above us. So the big initiatives, our expansion and the way that you articulated, we've seen growth internationally. We do expect some tremendous growth in certain areas and some of moderate, but it's too early for us to say right now as we stand where that growth will be. But we do see strong momentum, and we're coming from a lower base as well, which is easier for us to achieve growth. There's a lot of new initiatives that we have that work worldwide you have from the ABGM., our releases that we had to Simpson is worldwide, but wanted to see a lot of things that we didn't know November, December that we know today that should help us. And then our basic evergreen business and new licenses with the Sky should help us with the direct to retail approach. So we're looking forward to seeing it, but we'll know more once we get all these up, caught toy fairs and meetings completed.

Andrew Uerkwitz

Got it. That's helpful. And then I guess one question for John on the cost side. Because you're FOB, should we worry at all about the rising cost of shipping at all? Or how should we think about it kind of the pushes and pulls there as we get through the year.

John Kimble

And I think we're always going to be like mindful of things that could go a bit sideways. But to your point, given our heavy focus on FOB, it's not really a top five concern for us. I would say at the moment the issues as it relates to Europe are more problematic in the more shipping gets disrupted to Europe. If you think about it just means more time, the ships are on the water, taking a longer time to get some place. And therefore, like draining capacity out of the system, even if we are focused mostly on is the Asia to LA route. So we're continuing to keep an eye on it and monitor it. Obviously, we worked down our inventory a lot. A lot of people did towards the end of the year, which means I'm bringing in more product this year is something we're going to have to do at least in order to be able to deliver some of the sales that we want. But I don't think it's a place that is probably a top concern at the moment.

Andrew Uerkwitz

Okay. And then I guess last question then, is that it looked like 23 was kind of a big discounting year for a lot of the lot of your competitors. How are you thinking about in discounts in 2024? It feels like inventories are finally normalized, but even last fall, there were normalized, we still saw some discounting. Just curious what you're thinking about discounts and where the right price points are going to be this year. I know you guys tend to be on that sweet spot of below 30, but just curious how you how you see 24 playing out on a price point basis.

Stephen Berman

I'm sorry. So the on the call it the inventory level. I think everyone seems that majority of people in our industry have gotten cleaned up with inventory. But speaking specifically on Jack, we are pretty clean on inventory. We always have a little bit of obsolete throughout the years. And as John just mentioned, we've got pretty low on inventory. So we want to refresh it with all good product, which is a great place to stand. But that being said, the majority, as you mentioned, our sweet spot is under 30 and even during the holidays, I think it's over 85% of our products are under $50. And so that really is a sweet spot for the difference of the consumer being slightly getting weaker or very much unknown. We've had for the last six years, a complete structure of doing three parts development, which is mass specialty and then value. So we are really ancillary and all the different distribution channels that we're heading into. And so we hit the consumers where they stand financially.
In addition to that, the Evergreen areas of our business are just very steady, Eddie. And what we do so we're not concerned with the inventory and that part. But I do believe when you when you close that inventory, you do hit margins somewhat. So I think that that is still part of everyone's business. But for us, it's a minimal part of our business.

Andrew Uerkwitz

Got it. Very helpful, gentlemen, and appreciate you taking my questions.

Stephen Berman

Thanks, Andrew.

Operator

Thank you. I'd now like to hand the conference back over to Stephen Berman for closing remarks.

Stephen Berman

Great to have the first call of the year now and excited. I've talked about this year going into first quarter and above the we're excited for JAKKS. We're excited for this year. We're excited for '25 and looking forward to giving an update after first quarter. Thank you, everybody.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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