Top 10 Life Sciences Stocks To Buy For 2016

Top 10 Life Sciences Stocks To Buy For 2016: Hasbro Inc.(HAS)

Hasbro, Inc. engages in the design, manufacture, and marketing of games and toys. The company principally provides children?s and family leisure time and entertainment products and services. It offers various games, including traditional board, card, hand-held electronic, trading card, roleplaying, and DVD games, as well as electronic learning aids and puzzles. Hasbro?s toy products include boy?s action figures, vehicles and playsets, girl?s toys, electronic toys, plush products, preschool toys and infant products, electronic interactive products, creative play products, and toy related specialty products. The company also licenses certain of its trademarks, characters, and other property rights to third parties for use in connection with consumer promotions and for the sale of noncompeting toys and games, and non-toy products. It offers its products primarily under PLAYSKOOL, TRANSFORMERS, NERF, MY LITTLE PONY, LITTLEST PET SHOP, TONKA, G.I. JOE, SUPER SOAKER, MILTON BRAD LEY, PARKER BROTHERS, CRANIUM, AVALON HILL, TIGER, FURREAL FRIENDS, BABY ALIVE, STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE, and WIZARDS OF THE COAST brand names. The company markets its products to various customers, including wholesalers, distributors, chain stores, discount stores, mail order houses, catalog stores, department stores, and other retailers, as well as Internet-based e-tailers. It has a strategic licensing agreement with Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), which provides EA with the worldwide rights to create digital games for various platforms, including mobile phones, personal computers, and game consoles, as well as; and a strategic relationship with Universal Pictures to produce approximately three motion pictures based on certain of company?s brands. Hasbro sells its products through its own sales force and distributors primarily in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, the Asia Pacific, Latin America, and South America. The company was founded in 1923 and is headqu! artered in Pa w tucket, Rhode Island.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By WWW.DAILYFINANCE.COM]

  B Christopher/Alamy I'm an American boy at heart. As such, I grew up with Lincoln Logs. Forty-odd years later, I'm now an father, with an American boy of my own -- and of course, I want him to have a set of Lincoln Logs of his own. But here's where I ran into a problem. Rich Smith Lincoln Logs, circa 1974 Logging (pardon the pun) onto Amazon.com (AMZN) and scanning the reviews of the various sets of Lincoln Logs available for sale, I was struck by a small minority of reviewers complaining of a "chemical" smell the toys gave off, while others worried about chemicals used in their manufacture -- they're apparently made in China. In fact, the "most helpful critical review" featured on Amazon at the time of my search cited a "potent ... toxic smell" to the product. Now, granted, these reviews constitute just 1 or 2 percent of the more than 350 customer reviews that Amazon has collected for just one single Lincoln Logs product. But in the context of a country of manufacture that's been hit with consumer complaints over everything from melamine-laced baby formula to lead-painted Thomas the Tank Engine sets, you can see why these reviews might give a prudent parent pause. Long story short, when it came to buy my boy his first set of Lincoln Logs, I opted for a used set, manufactured by Playskool in the 1970s and bought on eBay (EBAY). But here's the good news: Pretty soon, you won't have to. Made in America, by American Workers Nearly a century after their invention by the son of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Lincoln Logs are now manufactured under license from Hasbro (HAS) by the toy company K'NEX. The family-owned business has in fact been handling Lincoln Logs production for Hasbro for about 15 years now. K'NEX announced this month that, after decades of outsourcing Lincoln Logs' manufacture to foreign countries, it's bringing production of the iconic toy back home to ! the U. S.! of A. Specifically, K'NEX says it will begin Lincoln Logs production

• [By John Udovich]

  With Christmas almost here, it's a good time to take a closer look as toy stocks like mid caps Hasbro, Inc (NASDAQ: HAS) and Mattel, Inc (NASDAQ: MAT) plus small cap JAKKS Pacific, Inc (NASDAQ: JAKK)to see whether their performance may warrant any of them as investor stocking stuffers. After all and if you have small children, you probably own some of the toys produced by these toy stocks. However, these same stocks are also facing headwinds or their share of troubles as children increasingly opt to play with video and computer games rather than the more traditional games and brands these toy stocks have focused on. Then again and near the end of November, Piper Jaffray analyst Stephanie Wissink was quoted as saying:

• [By Ben Levisohn]

  When news broke last week that Hasbro (HAS) was in talks to purchase DreamWorks Animation (DWA), analysts all but begged the toy maker to say it ain’t so.

  DreamWorks Animation/Associated Press

  MKM Partners’ Eric Handler said he had significant reservations about a potential acquisition:

  This combination makes no sense to us at all. There is no doubt that Hasbro wants to turn a number of its franchise properties into feature films, but its risk profile would substantially change entering into the volatile movie production business with a company that has not generated positive FCF in several years and has had trouble making profitable animated films. In addition, a business transformation of this magnitude could have negative implications for Hasbro in its relationship with Disney (DIS)

  BTIG’s Richard Greenfield and Brandon Ross wrote “Dear Hasbro, Why You Should Not Buy DreamWorks Animation.” They continue:

  We expect 2015 to be a very tough year for DreamWorks Animation after an already disappointing 2014. We can understand why DreamWorks is in a rush to sell; we just can't s! ee why Ha! sbro or anyone else would be in a rush to buy. If DreamWorks’ track record of creating original IP, or transforming existing IP, was notably better, a transaction with Hasbro could make more sense. Families now have access to a tremendous amount of content available anytime/anywhere; in turn, the bar to getting families to pay to see your movies in the theater or wanting to own the content at home is moving higher and higher. While film quality was always critical to success, it is becoming even more important in today's increasingly access-based media landscape. DreamWorks’ content is simply not good enough to warrant an acquisition anywhere near the current valuation. And it is certainly not worthy of a highly dilutive deal for Hasbro shareholders.

  It looks like the analysts got their wish as repo

source from Top Stocks For 2015:http://www.topstocksblog.com/top-10-life-sciences-stocks-to-buy-for-2016.html