4Kids Entertainment vor Ausbruch Richtung 20 !?

Nachstehend gebe ich die Einschätzung einer Money-Managerin, Isabelle Warren, wieder, die im Magazin Barron`s am 5. Februar unter der Headline "A Money Manager`s Picks in the Small-cap Value" über KDE referierte.

Q: How about another name?
A: Another name is 4Kids Entertainment. It has a ton of cash on its balance sheet. It’s a little different for us to invest in. This is Pokemon, essentially: The company has made its fortune from a pact with Nintendo that provides licensing revenues. The key here is the amount of cash they have. As of September, they had $163 million in cash. They have 12,1 million shares outstanding. There is no debt to speak of. When we started buying the stock it was around nine bucks. It was crazy. Then we met the fellow that runs the company and it turns out I had met him before. There is a plenty of upside here if he gets his latest concept right. If not, we are buying it for less than enterprise value. Anytime I can buy something free, I’ll do.

Q: So what’s his latest venture?
A: He has taken the Pokemon concept and leveraged it into a number of different areas. He’s got Websites, leisure concepts. He’s got syndication rights through a subsidiary to do Pokemon cartoons, among other things.

Q: Isn’t Pokemon becoming passé?
A: That was my response, „What’s the big deal? The life cycle is ending,“ I asked him. What I liked about him is that he recognized this and spoke of managing the life cycle down.

Q: What else do they have going on?
A: They have a cartoon called Cubix-Robots for Everyone! They have another Nintendo game called Perfect Dark, with a female spy. They have something called Monster Jam, with characters and theme trucks. The idea is that Kahn recognizes this is a portfolio game. If he has five or six of these, maybe only one or two work. But then he’s still got a nice solid base under his company he can leverage. He’s also got the rights to Marvel Comics in Europe. And Cabbage Patch dolls are still out there, apparently, but they are only a vestige of what they used to be. He would like to relaunch them in 2002 with an interesting hook, though he wouldn’t say what it is. The company sees itself much more as a content provider – a toll taker, was Kahn’s term – than a product provider.

Q: The Cabbage Patch experience ended badly, didn’t it?
A. The company, Coleco, ended up run by a lawyer and the business was ruined in a couple of years.

Q: That was a while ago. What’s Kahn been doing in the meantime?
A: He took this company over in 1991 when it was known as Leisure Concepts. It took him four years to build product with no outside capital. He built it from nothing, and the Pokemon deal with Nintendo was the first part of a multifaceted strategy. On top of the $163 million in cash, he has a rolling float from all the royalties owed to him. That amounts to about $100 million.

Q: Is that considered an accounts receivable?
A: It is, but it’s for stuff that’s been sold through. You can argue the point with me and question how collectible it is, but ist is a receivable against which there is no payable. So I give it a little higher esteem and add it into the equation. That’s another $7-$8. People have taken notice. The stock has been moving. It’s gone from $9 to $15.

Q: Is there still upside to this?
A. It is basically selling at cash value. It has enterprise value, net of cash, of $12 million. So you are paying nothing for it. I would still be a buyer here. In 1999, it did $1,91 a share. Its trailing 12-month is $3,39 a share in earnings.