What happened
Shares of toy giant Mattel (MAT 3.90%) are on the mat this afternoon, down 6.5% as of 1:15 p.m. EDT.
You can probably thank Goldman Sachs for that.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
This morning, with the stock market already reeling under an assault by a logic-defying oil price plunge, Goldman poured salt into Mattel investors' wounds by lowering its price target on the toy maker's stock.
Retail store closures and stay-at-home orders promise to pressure toy sales on both the supply and demand fronts, warned Goldman in a note covered by TheFly.com today. Adding to the company's difficulties, planned film releases for Minions, Fast 9, and Wonder Woman 1984 (and others) are all being delayed, which means Mattel won't be able to make or sell licensed toys based on any of these film franchises as soon as it might like to.
All of this adds up, in Goldman's view, to Mattel deserving a lower price target -- now $10 a share, rather than the $14 the analyst had previously estimated.
Now what
Granted, $10 a share is still nearly 19% above where Mattel stock trades today. Regardless, it isn't cheap enough to elicit a buy rating from Goldman Sachs, which is still rating the shares only neutral.
Indeed, even that rating might seem a bit generous to value investors.
Unprofitable for three years running and free-cash-flow negative for two of those years, it's difficult to call Mattel stock any kind of a bargain so long as its P/E ratio looks negative. Moreover, the company is heading into a recession, and facing all the headwinds Goldman just described, with a balance sheet loaded with $2.6 billion in net debt.
Call me a skeptic, but I wonder if even Goldman's reduction in price target to $10 a share cuts Mattel deeply enough.
