Hasbro (NASDAQ:HAS) Inc, the board games and toys company, is under pressure from an activist investor to spin off its Wizards of the Coast division.
Alta Fox Capital Management, which has a 2.5% stake in Hasbro, has nominated five directors for election to the Hasbro board.
The investment firm grumbled that the Hasbro stock price is below the level it was at five years ago and called for the division that caters to gamers – hobbyists who typically play board and card games at least once a week rather than once a year (using the wrong rules) at Christmas – to be sold off.
That division is Wizards of the Coast, the company behind the phenomenally successful collectable card game that while an independent company acquired TSR, the company behind Dungeons & Dragons, the fantasy role playing game that is enjoying a resurgence in popularity.
With interest in board games hitting unheard-of levels – more than 16,000 games were published in 2019/20, most of them backed on the crowd-funding site Kickstarter – Wizards of the Coast is faring better than the part of Hasbro’s business that publishes hoary old board games such as Monopoly, a game based on an anti-capitalist game called The Landlord Game, first published in 1903 and itself based on a parlour game popular in Quaker circles in the late 19th century.
The core business of Hasbro is more focused on toys, such as Transformers and Mu Little Pony.
Hasbro said in a statement it welcomes constructive input and said it engaged in regular communications with its shareholders.