Kovitz Core Equity Strategy Decided to Sell Hasbro (HAS) in Q2

Kovitz Investment Group Partners, LLC, an investment management company, released its “Kovitz Core Equity Strategy” second-quarter 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. In the second quarter, the strategy returned 7.9% compared to the S&P 500’s 10.9% return. Equity markets saw notable volatility after the President’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement on April 2nd. The S&P 500 dropped 11% initially but later rallied 25% in the quarter after the tariffs were postponed by 90 days on April 9th. Additionally, you can review the fund’s top 5 holdings to see its best picks for 2025.

In its second-quarter 2025 investor letter, Kovitz Core Equity Strategy highlighted stocks such as Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS). Headquartered in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS) is a play and entertainment company. The one-month return of Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS) was 0.38%, and its shares gained 21.98% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On August 5, 2025, Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS) stock closed at $76.97 per share, with a market capitalization of $10.794 billion.

Kovitz Core Equity Strategy stated the following regarding Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS) in its second quarter 2025 investor letter:

“We have maintained a position in Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS) for about five years with various increases and near-exits along the way. Even including Hasbro’s 4%+ dividend (5.3% on today’s price), this was not a successful investment in absolute or relative terms. On the positive side, Magic the Gathering – the largest toy and game brand in the US not named Lego – continues to perform well and the management team made impressive progress on a multi-year turnaround plan in the Consumer Products (traditional toys) division that looked likely to improve operating profit margins from negative in 2023 to nearly 10% this year. However, after a decade-plus of growth throughout the steepest part of the smartphone and tablet adoption curve, toy industry sales have been persistently weak following COVID, which has limited Hasbro’s overall growth potential. Additionally – and unfortunately – Hasbro also manufactures more than half of their products in China. Since toys are a category that has typically shown a lot of price elasticity, limiting Hasbro’s ability to respond to tariffs with price increases, tariffs would significantly impair the profitability and the turnaround plan for the Consumer Products division. We chose to redeploy the capital invested in Hasbro into other names in the portfolio that should also benefit from a normalization of trade relations while having less downside risk should tensions continue.”

In another article, we covered Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ:HAS) and shared the list of stocks Jim Cramer recently discussed. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 2025 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.