Tag - NASDAQGS:MAT

Getting toys to market isn’t child’s play, but Jakks Pacific Inc. (Nasdaq:JAKK) is one company that is winning this game.

Shares of the Malibu, Calif.-based company are closing in on the 52-week high of $31.42 seen last July, following a blowout holiday quarter. For investors, the question is whether they should add Jakks Pacific to their toy chest.

The toy industry has had its share of issues to deal with in the past year: a foundering economy, waning interest in non-tech wares, and safety concerns mostly over foreign-made items. Like most toymakers, most of Jakks Pacific’s goods are produced in Asia.

The gaggle of Wall Street analysts who follow Jakks Pacific have issued generally favorable opinions, with four of the nine polled by Thomson Financial having a “buy” or “strong buy” rating. The other five have it at “hold.” The median price target for Jakks is $31.50, and the current quarter is expected to yield $0.19 earnings per share, up 59% from a year earlier. Shares closed Friday at $28.14.

The top toy players are Mattel Inc. (NYSE:MAT), with $6 billion in 2007 revenue, and Hasbro Inc. (NYSE:HAS), at $3.8 billion in revenue. Jakks Pacific ranks third, with 2007 revenue of $857.1 million, a 12% increase from the year before. The company relies on three big customers: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT), Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) and privately held Toys “R” Us, accounting for a respective 19.3%, 14.5% and 14.1% of 2007 net sales.

Jakks be nimble, and Jakks be quick in locking up licensing deals with the hottest prospects to produce a related game, doll or toy.

Hannah Montana? Sure. NASCAR? Certainly. Toss in World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. (NYSE:WWE), SpongeBob SquarePants, old stars like Rocky, Barney and Pokemon, and the company seems to have a winning line-up. Jakks Pacific has also parlayed such names as Dirt Devil, Pizza Hut and McDonald’s into pretend-play products, while up-and-coming country star Taylor Swift, a Grammy nominee . . .

Toronto-based Kaboose, Inc. (TSX: KAB) is North America's largest independent online media company in the kids-and-family market — a sector dominated by giants such as Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS), Time Warner Inc.'s (NYSE: TWX) AOL unit and Viacom Inc.’s (NYSE: VIA) Nickelodeon. Solid planning, creative financing, strategic marketing, and sound partnerships have this small-cap standing strong in the face of stiff competition from larger competitors with well-oiled marketing machines.

Founded in 1999, right before the dot-com bust, Kaboose plowed full steam ahead, aggressively snapping up kid-oriented websites. After a round of acquisitions, the small media company conceded it would never win the battle for children's attention on the Internet, so it shifted gears and targeted their moms. Today, the company runs a string of content-related sites that focus on mothers and young families. Visitors to Kaboose's sites can do everything from staying informed of the latest trends and reading product and service reviews to planning birthday parties and family vacations to creating online photo scrapbooks.

With a Web portfolio including popular sites like BabyZone, ParentZone, Birthday in a Box, Two Peas in a Bucket and the recently acquired image-sharing service Bubbleshare, Kaboose's 120,000 pages of content attract 12 million unique visitors a month and its family of sites have more than 2 million registered users (return visitors who can be tracked and cross-promoted)—a fact that has brought advertisers knocking.

"Kaboose is one of only a handful of Canadian companies that is benefiting from the significant shift in advertising spending from traditional media to online media," Ron Shuttleworth of Jennings Capital Inc., said in a recent report.

"As the company scales and solidifies its position as a pre-eminent destination for families, we expect that Kaboose should capture more share of advertising budgets and higher rates," he wrote.

Last year, the advertising dollars poured in: Kaboose revenues swelled 200% to $11.7 million and in the third quarter of last year, the company recorded its first ever profit, $500,000 (a $1-million turnaround from the same period in 2005). All in all, sales have grown more than 1,000% since 2003. And the company has built an impressive list of business partners, including the likes of McDonald's Corp. (NYSE: MCD), Target Corporation (NYSE: TGT), Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ), DaimlerChrysler AG's (NYSE: DCX) Mercedes-Benz subsidiary, Mattel, Inc. (NYSE: MAT) and M.J. Heinz Company (NYSE: HNZ).

It’s going to take more than an unexpected bear hug to cage Russ Berrie & Company, Inc. (NYSE: RUS) -- the venerable maker of collectible plush lions and tigers and bears, oh my -- and other gift items that keep kids of all ages entertained.

Shares of Russ Berrie have risen 35% in the past three months, but can small-cap investors continue to find value if they jump in now?

The stock established the first of a string of 52-week highs on June 6, after the Oakland, N.J., company said that it had received an unsolicited $18-a-share takeover offer that valued the company at about $380 million.

But the Russ Berrie board thought otherwise, and the company said in a statement that the directors had “determined that this proposal undervalues the company.” The company noted that before receiving the bid, it already was looking into the possible sale of its struggling gift division, and had received some interest “from several prospective acquirers.” It also said that it had hired Sagent Advisors to explore its options, which it identified as selling parts of the company, selling the entire company, or making acquisitions to grow, in order to better compete with such giants as Hasbro, Inc. (NYSE: HAS) and Mattel, Inc. (NYSE: MAT).

The offer did nothing to change the view of analyst Daniel Scalzi of Matrix USA, who has a “strong sell” rating on the company, and he questioned the wisdom of rejecting that price, a tiny premium of about 1.6% of the previous day’s closing share price. He told The Record newspaper in Hackensack, N.J.: “Eighteen bucks a share? They should have taken it.” At TheStreet.com Ratings, however, the stock was upgraded from sell to hold.