Hasbro cutting 1,100 workers

Hasbro, the toymaker behind games such as Monopoly and the Transformers action figures, will lay off about 1,100 employees globally due to stronger-than-expected “market headwinds,” chief executive Chris Cocks told staff Monday in a memo.

The move comes on the back of five consecutive quarters of declining revenue for Hasbro, the most recent of which it reported in October.

For many toymakers, sales are slowing down after a boom during the coronavirus pandemic, when Hasbro and rivals such as Mattel and Lego reported strong sales as consumers sought old-school toys and games.

“We anticipated the first three quarters to be challenging, particularly in [the division of] Toys, where the market is coming off historic, pandemic-driven highs,” Cocks said.

But “the headwinds we saw through the first nine months of the year … are likely to persist into 2024,” he added.

The majority of employees whose roles will be affected will be notified over the next six months, he said.

Blue Origin resuming launchesJeff Bezos’ Blue Origin LLC is pushing to resume operations with its suborbital New Shepard rocket carrying research payloads as soon as Dec. 18, according to an internal email seen by Bloomberg News.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard, which anchors its space tourism business, has been sidelined since September 2022 after a midflight failure.

The halt gave Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc.’s rival venture months of uncontested space tourism operations.

Blue Origin has deployed corrective actions including design changes to address the issue, Phil Joyce, the company’s senior vice president of New Shepard, told employees in an email.

From wire reports

A representative for Blue Origin didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The timing of the New Shepard flight could change depending on numerous factors and is contingent on Blue Origin getting approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the FAA had approved the plan.