Hasbro To Acquire Entertainment One For About $4B

In an all-cash deal, Hasbro will purchase Entertainment One for 3.27 billion pounds or roughly $4 billion in cash. The deal is said to offer new exposure to the Power Rangers and Nerf toymaker, CNBC reported.

Hasbro Chief Executive Officer Brian Goldner said, according to the report, “Hasbro will leverage eOne’s immersive entertainment capabilities to bring our portfolio of brands that have appeal to gamers, fans and families to all screens globally.” As it stands, the company has been tying up with movie studios like Walt Disney and Paramount Pictures to bolster sales of toys that are connected to large movie franchises.

Hasbro is said to pay 5.60 pounds per share and finance the arrangement with debt along with cash from equity financing. (The outlet noted that 1 British pound is worth $1.2249.) The company sees roughly $130 million in annual run rate synergies by 2022 bolstered by savings from a part of eOne’s toy business in-house along with enhancing its merchandising and licensing profitability.

According to a Wall Street Journal report on the deal, “As toy sales have weakened in recent years, toy and entertainment companies have been looking to use their assets in many ways.” As examples, the paper noted that Mattel rolled out a film studio to make films based on Barbie as well as other toys. And it notes that Hasbro made a Monopoly version for Fortnite, a popular video game.

In separate toy innovation news, Monopoly recently received an upgrade with the newest version of the board game called “Monopoly Voice Banking.” It gets rid of all that Monopoly paper cash in favor of a banker that is voice-activated in the center of the board that keeps track of player transactions.

That Monopoly banker, being neutral as well as electronic, supposedly also prevents human mistakes and keeps players from cheating. And in this version of Monopoly — released in July — the basic rules and process of the game stay the same.