NEW YORK: Mattel Inc is buying its partner NetEase Inc’s stake in a joint venture to accelerate growth of its mobile-gaming business.
The toy giant is paying US$159mil for NetEase’s 50% interest in a transaction expected to close in the next few weeks, Mattel said in a statement.
Mattel163, as the joint venture is called, was announced in 2018 and employs several hundred people. It has released four games based on Mattel’s intellectual property, including the Uno and Skip-Bo card games.
They’ve been downloaded 550 million times, and 20 million users play the games monthly.
Mattel’s digital strategy focuses on three initiatives: licensing its brands to partners like Netflix Inc and Apple Inc, publishing its own mobile games, and expanding its properties into creator-driven platforms such as Roblox and Fortnite, according to Marcus Liassides, a senior vice-president and the head of digital at Mattel.
“We’ve stated that we would release two games a year, which is our current kind of momentum and velocity, but we expect to be able to accelerate that by bringing Mattel163 under full ownership,” Liassides said in an interview.
Separately, Mattel reported fourth-quarter revenue and earnings that missed Wall Street’s estimates after December sales in the United States grew less than expected, according to a statement.
Earnings excluding some items rose to US 39 cents a share, missing the US 54-cent average of analysts’ estimates. Sales grew to US$1.77bil, compared with estimates of US$1.84bil.
In 2026, Mattel expects sales to grow 3% to 6%, and earnings-per-share, excluding some items, of US$1.18 to US$1.30, down from US$1.41 in 2025. China-based NetEase has been retrenching over the past year. — Bloomberg
