Out of curiosity, I started taking a look at TLG's annual financial reports available since 1999, and thought it would be interesting to show some graphs with the evolution of the company since then. This is not meant to be an in depth analysis, but rather a very visual and quick way of examining how these little bricks that occupy so much of our time have performed over the past decade (more than 12 years actually).
I might get into more detail in further posts of whatever I find and consider interesting, we'll see. For now, here are some of the financial highlights, enjoy!: (Figures are in Millions of DKK)
Talk about a comeback! I am sure a lot of you already knew that TLG has gone through some really bad times financially, but I think that the graph makes this even more apparent. What's more important though, is that LEGO has been presenting a substantial profit increase year after year (Not accounting for inflation). We should all be really happy the company is doing so well, as it can only benefit us in the long run!
Another thing I found interesting relates to licensing fees. We all know LEGO is pretty active in acquiring popular licenses like Star Wars, LOTR and others, but that has not always been the case. If you take a look at the graph below, you will see (in the 1st one) that based in sheer dollar (actually, DKK) amount the company's licensing fees have shot up since 2004, while growth has sort of stabilized since 2009.
On the other hand, the second graph shows licensing fee expense as a percentage of each year's revenue or sales. It is with this graph we can see that, sometime between 2004 and 2005, licensing fees increased substantially relative to sales, and have remained around 6.5% since. In summary, I would say that the most significant turn towards licensed themes happened sometime before 2005.
As you can see, there are a lot of small and interesting details buried in the annual reports the company publishes. I hope I can take some more time to find some other things that can be of general interest to the site.
I will leave you with a simple question: Can you guess, without researching, which was the top selling theme in 2002 and 2003?
Post your guess in the comments!
Thanks for reading.
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