Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Toy-maker Hasbro (ticker: HAS) filed its third-quarter financial statements this week. If anyone wants a good example of what companies are saying about the squeeze they feel over tariffs and the trade war with China — start here.

Hasbro added four paragraphs’ worth of discussion in its risk factors that had not been in prior quarterly reports. Among the company’s new concerns…

  • concentration of manufacturing of the substantial majority of the company's products by third party vendors in the People's Republic of China and the associated impact to the Company of social, economic or public health conditions and other factors affecting China…
  • the ability of the company to successfully diversify sourcing of its products to reduce reliance on sources of supply in China…
  • the application of tariffs and other trade restrictions impacting the cost of producing our products and importing them into markets around the world for sale, which could significantly increase the price of the company's products…
  • the ability of the company to successfully implement actions to lessen the impact of tariffs imposed on our products, including any changes to our supply chain, logistics capabilities, sales policies or pricing of our products;

In other words, Hasbro’s supply chain has deep, extensive ties to Chinese manufacturers, and unraveling those ties won’t be easy. Tariffs might also drive up the costs of Hasbro’s materials and products — and finding ways to alleviate that exposure won’t be easy either.

None of this is a surprise when you think about it. So how can Calcbench users find such new disclosures quickly and easily, that you can get on with pondering the business implications?

Easy, actually.

First, go to our Interactive Disclosures database and search “tariffs,” “China,” “trade war,” or similar terms in the text search box on the right-hand side of the page. Then hit the “Add Previous Period” tab above the disclosures, and presto! Calcbench pulls up those same disclosures for the prior period and a third column color-coding changes between the two filings. Text added to the latest filing appears in green, text removed appears in red.

See Figure 1, below. The column on the left is Hasbro’s third-quarter filing. The column on the right is its second-quarter filing. The column in the middle is what’s changed between the two — and note all that green-coded copy. That’s the four paragraphs we mentioned above.

You can run the same analysis for any company, and on any issue, really. It doesn’t have to be restricted to China, tariffs, or trade wars.

We just expect to see lots more about China and tariffs in the filings to come.


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