MATTEL INC /DE/ (MAT) Stock Analysis
MATTEL INC /DE/
▾ What's in the 60/100 risk score? (higher = riskier)
Contributions (weight × component score) sum to the total. This near-term score now includes fundamental health (leverage, FCF trend). See the Financial Health section for the full balance-sheet read.
How to read MAT
We are not publishing an intrinsic value for this one — the section below says exactly why. Everything on this page that comes straight from the filings and the tape is still here; treat the missing valuation as a known gap, not as a verdict on the business.
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Reported earnings & margins ↓
What the company actually reported — unaffected by the valuation being held.
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Balance sheet & book value ↓
Assets, liabilities and equity as filed.
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Who's selling & betting against it ↓
Insider and short-interest behaviour needs no valuation model.
The share count we read for MAT looks wrong — common for multi-class / founder-controlled filers that report shares per share-class. That makes per-share figures (including intrinsic value) misleading, so we suppressed them. The company's total financials below are sound.
What to use instead: Lean on the totals — revenue, net income, cash flow — and the balance sheet. Multi-class share counts are being corrected; once fixed, the per-share valuation returns automatically.
This note is only about the single DCF fair-value number — MAT's full financial statements, health scores, and written analysis are all below.
How does MAT stack up against its closest peers?
We take the 4 same-industry companies most similar to MAT (similar size) and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If MAT is much more expensive on the same yardstick, that's a red flag — unless you have a specific reason it deserves a premium. For a leveraged business, EV/EBIT and FCF yield (both in the table) are usually more reliable than EV/Sales, because revenue multiples ignore differences in margins and debt.
▾ What's "EV / Sales" in plain English?
EV (Enterprise Value) = market cap + total debt − cash. It's "what you'd pay to buy the entire company outright" — you pay the market cap to shareholders and take over their debt, but you keep their cash. EV is fairer than market cap alone because it includes the debt the new owner inherits.
EV / Sales = EV ÷ annual revenue. So "2.5×" means investors pay $2.50 of enterprise value per $1 of yearly sales. Higher = market is paying more per dollar of sales (usually because they expect future growth or fat margins).
p25 / median / p75 are the 25th, 50th (middle), and 75th percentile of the peers' multiples. Half the peers fall between p25 and p75. The median (p50) is the typical peer — that's the benchmark we compare to.
| EV / SalesEV / Sales — For every $1 of yearly revenue, this is how many dollars investors pay to own the whole business (including debt). Why it matters: Works for pre-profit growth companies where P/E and FCF don't apply. The most apples-to-apples cross-company multiple because it ignores accounting choices. Reference: 1–3x for mature companies · 4–10x for software/SaaS · 10–20x for hypergrowth · >20x is rare and demanding Full explanation → |
1.6x / 2.0x / 2.4x |
| EV / Gross ProfitEV / Gross Profit — Enterprise value divided by gross profit — the multiple paid for what each dollar of sales contributes after direct costs. Why it matters: More refined than EV/Sales for high-margin businesses (software, marketplaces) where gross margin is the real economic engine. Reference: 8–15x for SaaS · 15–25x for hypergrowth software · >30x demanding Full explanation → |
3.2x / 3.5x / 5.0x |
| EV / EBITEV / EBITDA — Enterprise value divided by earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization. Why it matters: A classic "what would a private buyer pay" multiple — used in M&A. Strips out tax and capital-structure noise. Reference: 8–12x for mature businesses · 15–25x for growth · Below 5x often signals distress Full explanation → |
17.4x / 20.5x / 21.3x |
Bold middle number = median peer. Half the peers trade above it, half below. Computed over 4 same-industry peers; implausible multiples excluded.
⚠️ Important caveat: peer multiples only work if the peers are genuinely comparable. Always check the peer list below — if the auto-picker grabbed micro-caps or unrelated businesses, the comparison is noise. A medical-device giant priced against tiny biotech startups won't produce a useful signal.
▾ View peer list (8)
| Ticker | Company | Industry | Mcap | EV/Sales | EV/GP | EV/EBIT | FCF Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| YETI | YETI Holdings, Inc. | Sporting Goods & Toys | $3.6B | 2.0x | 3.5x | 17.4x | 4.2% |
| GOLF | Acushnet Holdings Corp. | Sporting Goods & Toys | $5.2B | 2.4x | 5.0x | 20.5x | 3.1% |
| CALY | Callaway Golf Co | Sporting Goods & Toys | $2.8B | 2.0x | — | 21.3x | 10.0% |
| PTON | PELOTON INTERACTIVE, INC. | Sporting Goods & Toys | $2.5B | 1.6x | 3.2x | — | 3.8% |
| WING | Wingstop Inc. | Restaurants ·fallback | $4.3B | 7.9x | — | 30.7x | 1.8% |
| TNL | Travel & Leisure Co. | Hotels & Motels ·fallback | $4.2B | 2.4x | — | 17.8x | 10.2% |
| VSCO | Victoria's Secret & Co. | Women's Clothing Stores ·fallback | $4.4B | 0.7x | 1.9x | 16.3x | 5.6% |
| THO | THOR INDUSTRIES INC | Motor Vehicles ·fallback | $4.2B | 0.5x | 3.8x | — | 10.4% |
Quality & solvency checks
Cheap stocks can be cheap for a reason. These screens warn when a low valuation comes paired with structural fragility.
Why it matters: Cheap-looking stocks (low P/E or P/B) often have low Z-scores because the market knows the company is dying. Z-score warns you before you fall into a value trap.
Reference: > 3.0 = safe zone · 1.81–3.0 = grey zone · < 1.81 = distress zone
Full explanation →
The Z-score needs working capital, retained earnings, EBIT, sales and total assets from the latest balance sheet, and at least one of those isn't reported in machine-readable form here — common for foreign private issuers. We leave it blank rather than compute a distress verdict from an estimated input. It doesn't affect the reported figures in the financial tables below.
Why it matters: High score = fundamentals improving. Low score = deteriorating. Especially powerful for filtering cheap stocks: cheap + high F-score historically outperforms; cheap + low F-score is often a value trap.
Reference: 7–9 = strong · 4–6 = mediocre · 0–3 = weak
Full explanation →
▾ The checks — what passed, what didn't (and what we couldn't measure)
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✓ Positive net incomeNet income $397.6M in FY2025.
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✓ Positive operating cash flowOperating cash flow $593.3M (was $800.6M the prior year).
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✓ Cash flow backs up reported profitOperating cash flow $593.3M vs net income $397.6M.
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✗ Return on assets improvingReturn on assets 6.0% vs 8.3% a year ago.Why this matters: Is the company squeezing more profit out of each dollar of assets than last year? Rising = getting more efficient; falling = the opposite.
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✓ Debt load (vs assets)Long-term debt is 35.1% of assets vs 35.7% a year ago ($2,331.7M of $6,640.4M assets).
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✗ Short-term liquidity (current ratio)Current ratio 2.15x vs 2.38x a year ago.Why this matters: The current ratio compares assets it can turn to cash within a year against bills due within a year. Below 1.0 means it may struggle to cover near-term obligations.
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✓ Share count (dilution)Share count declined 6.3% (343.3M → 321.8M year-over-year), so the no-dilution check passed. (One-year change; the multi-year buyback pace can differ.)
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✗ Pricing power (gross margin)Gross margin 48.7% vs 50.8% a year ago.Why this matters: Rising gross margin means stronger pricing power or lower input costs — a sign of competitive strength. Falling margin signals pressure.
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✗ Sales per asset (asset turnover)Asset turnover 0.81x vs 0.82x a year ago.Why this matters: Asset turnover measures how much revenue each dollar of assets generates. Rising = more productive use of the asset base.
Missing data is never counted as a pass or a fail — it's shown as n/a and excluded from the denominator. Each check compares the company against its own prior year.
What if you assume different inputs?
Here's where we land — and what happens if you change the assumptions. Drag the sliders to set your own Discount RateDiscount Rate — The annual return you demand for taking single-stock risk instead of buying a safe Treasury or index fund.
Why it matters: Higher discount rate = stricter valuation (a stock has to produce more cash to be worth holding). Lower = more generous.
Reference: 8–12% is standard · 9–10% matches S&P 500 historical return · Below 7% is illogical for single-stock risk
Full explanation → (the annual return you demand for single-stock risk) and terminal growth; the value updates live so you can see whether the stock looks cheaper or richer. The discount rate starts at 10.0%, the figure our model used for MAT. Open Advanced to also change beta, growth and the rate path.
Note: no headline intrinsic value is published for this stock (the valuation is held for a data-quality reason — see the notes above). The calculator below is a what-if tool: the values it produces are your assumptions played out, not our estimate.
A full intrinsic value isn't shown for MAT because the valuation is currently held for a data-quality reason (see the guardrail notes above). The reverse-DCF reading still works — it needs only the price and cash flow — but we won't publish a forward value until the underlying data passes our checks.
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⚙ Advanced — tinker with every input (beta, growth, rate path, margin → full intrinsic value)
A standard discounted cash flowDCF — Discounted Cash Flow — sums up all future cash a business will produce, adjusted for the fact that future dollars are worth less than dollars today.
Why it matters: It is the most fundamentally honest valuation method when applicable — but only works for companies with predictable, positive cash flow.
Reference: Best for: mature, profitable businesses. Fails for: pre-profit growth, banks, REITs.
Full explanation → valuation is not meaningful for Mattel due to an extreme valuation discrepancy where the market price is 5.7 times the model's intrinsic valueIntrinsic Value — Our DCF model's estimate of what each share is mathematically worth based on projected cash flows.
Why it matters: Compare to current price. Below IV = potentially undervalued. Above IV = priced for growth that must actually happen.
Reference: Model-derived; quality depends on data and assumptions.
Full explanation →, suggesting the model is not capturing key market drivers. Investors are likely focused on the company's consistent positive net income and operating cash flow, along with its brand strength and potential for future growth initiatives. The #1 quantifiable risk is the roughly flat revenue trend of -0.5% per year over the last four years.
As of 3 months ago
Anatomy of a share
What you're buying per share. Bars are at the same scale so you can see the relative size of revenue, costs, cash flow, and debt — not just read them in a table.
What's free cash flow / what do these mean?
Revenue per share — how much the business earns from customers, divided by the number of shares outstanding. Top of the income statement.
Earnings per share — profit left after operating costs, interest, and taxes, per share. Two versions appear on this page and are not interchangeable: GAAP diluted EPS uses the company's weighted-average diluted share count during the reporting period (this is the "earnings" in "price-to-earnings"); net income per current share divides annual net income by today's share count. They differ whenever the share count has changed.
Owner-earnings free cash flow per share — the cash the business produces for shareholders. Savng's owner-earnings FCF subtracts capital expenditures and stock-based compensation from operating cash flow (SBC is a real dilution cost even though it's non-cash). This is deliberately more conservative than "standard" FCF, which subtracts only capital expenditures — so our figure is lower than the headline FCF you'll see elsewhere. FCF funds dividends, buybacks, debt repayment, and acquisitions; a company can report positive earnings yet negative FCF.
Debt per share — total interest-bearing borrowings divided by shares. High debt-per-share next to thin FCF-per-share is a fragility signal.
What you actually need to decide
Every stock price is a disagreement. Here's the single thing that must go right for the bulls, the single thing that breaks the thesis, and the concrete signposts to watch so you can update your view as real results arrive.
- Growth in entertainment and media segment revenues
- New product line successes or brand revitalizations
- Further reduction in long-term debt
The trend, in plain numbers (FY2024 → FY2025, latest reported)
Straight from the financial statements — no model, no opinion. For a small or unprofitable company, the direction of these numbers usually tells you more than any single valuation.
- Free cash flow fell to $513.5M.
- Gross margin shrank to 49% (-2 pts).
- Net income fell -27% to $397.6M.
Nothing was clearly improving year-over-year.
Roughly flat: Revenue was flat -1% to $5.35B.
Management & Leadership
Ynon Kreiz has served as Chairman and CEO of Mattel since April 2018, leading the company's transformation and brand revitalization efforts. He focuses on leveraging Mattel's intellectual property across various entertainment platforms.
What They Make
Mattel designs, manufactures, and markets a wide variety of toys and consumer products globally. Its products are primarily purchased by children and collectors through various retail channels.
End Markets
Revenue Drivers
Why Is It Priced Like This?
Why Customers Pay
What we use instead: earnings (P/E, EV/EBIT), book value (P/B) — computed from the figures this company does report, shown in the sections below. Those numbers are unaffected by the missing cash-flow data.
The market is likely pricing Mattel based on expectations of future growth and the value of its extensive intellectual property portfolio, rather than solely on trailing cash flows. The extreme valuation discrepancy (price 5.7x model IV) suggests investors are betting on successful monetization of its brands beyond traditional toy sales, such as through media and entertainment, which are not fully captured by a standard cash flow model. The company's consistent positive net income and operating cash flow also provide a stable foundation for these future bets.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
The company is retiring 2.6% of its shares per year, boosting per-share growth, and has been reducing its long-term debt.
Free Cash Flow DCF Moderate franchise
Standard FCF DCF: positive free cash flow in a sector suited for cash-flow-based valuation. High P/FCF (82x) - market pricing significant growth.
Show advanced inputs
| Revenue Growth | -0.5% |
| Eps Growth | -16.4% |
| Historical Fcf Growth | 4.8% |
| Sector Default | 8.0% |
| Best Estimate | 3.0% |
| Method | blend(70% revenue_cagr, 30% sector)+buyback(2.6%) |
| Growth Basis | total |
What this model does NOT do: this is a consolidated owner-earnings FCF model. Standalone segment assumptions: none. It does not project its revenue segments independently; their combined effect is embedded in the historical revenue and cash-flow trend the model extrapolates. The calculator above can only approximate a segment's impact through the single consolidated growth rate — it cannot model any one line separately. For a true segment-level view, build a separate model from the company's segment disclosures.
Maturity & Competitive Position
Moat Signals
Revenue has been roughly flat, declining -0.5% per year over the last four years, while net income has been positive for the latest five years.
Geography & Markets
Mattel operates globally, with significant sales in North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia Pacific. While specific geographic mix percentages are not available in the provided data, its brands have worldwide recognition and distribution.
Geographic Risks
Market Signals
These are timing signals, not value signals — they describe the stock's recent price behavior, not what the business is worth. Use them for the "the thesis looks good, but is now the moment?" question. Each tile below explains what it's saying.
Why it matters: Short-term contrarian indicator. Extreme readings often precede mean reversion, though not always.
Reference: 30–70 normal · >70 overbought · <30 oversold
Full explanation → (14)48.6NeutralMomentum is balanced — neither overbought nor oversold.
Why it matters: When the fast line crosses above the slow line, short-term momentum is turning up; below, turning down. A timing cue, not a value signal.
Reference: Line above signal = bullish momentum · below = bearish
Full explanation →BearishLine below signalThe fast trend is below the slow trend — short-term momentum is currently downward.
Technicals describe price, not the business. A great company can have a "bearish" tape (a buying chance) and a weak one a "bullish" tape (a trap). Pair these with the valuation and health sections above.
What's been happening
Mattel has experienced a period of mixed performance over the last six months. The company has seen continued strength in its Barbie segment, particularly following the success of the Barbie movie, which has boosted brand relevance and sales. However, other segments, such as infant and toddler products, have faced headwinds, impacting overall revenue growth. Operational changes include efforts to streamline supply chains and manage inventory levels, aiming to improve margins. The company has also focused on new product launches and licensing agreements to diversify its portfolio and maintain market share in a competitive toy industry.
- strong performance of core brands (Barbie, Hot Wheels)
- challenges in infant/toddler segment
- strategic licensing agreements
- supply chain optimization efforts
Mattel announced its third-quarter 2023 financial results, showing an increase in net sales, primarily attributed to the strong performance of its Barbie and Hot Wheels brands. This indicates continued consumer demand for its core franchises.
Source →Mattel secured an expanded multi-year global licensing agreement with Disney for its Princess and Frozen franchises, allowing Mattel to continue producing dolls and toys based on these popular characters. This agreement is crucial for Mattel's girls' toy segment.
Source →Mattel appointed a new head for its global supply chain operations, signaling a strategic focus on optimizing logistics and manufacturing processes. This move aims to enhance efficiency and potentially improve profit margins.
Source →While overall results were positive, Mattel's Fisher-Price segment, which includes infant and toddler products, reported a decline in sales in the recent earnings call. This indicates a softer demand in certain product categories.
Source →Mattel showcased several new toy lines and collaborations at a recent industry event, including new Barbie collections and Hot Wheels innovations. These product launches are intended to drive future sales and maintain brand relevance.
Source →News summary written by Gemini gemini-2.5-flash, refreshed Sep 10, 2026. AI can be wrong; verify before acting.
QUALITY
Data Quality & Risk Flags (5 notes — click to expand/collapse)
Guardrail Notes (4)
- Per-share growth boosted by buybacks: the company is retiring 2.6% of its shares per year, which adds directly to per-share growth on top of business growth. Final per-share growth used by the model: 5.6%/yr.
- Price is far above the model output - market may be pricing optionality, narrative catalysts, or margin expansion beyond what trailing cash flows support.
- Extreme valuation (P/IV withheld — see the note above); output dominated by data/units issue (often a multi-class share-count mismatch). Suppressed.
- DATA UNAVAILABLE: per-share values suppressed due to missing/unreliable shares data.
FINANCIALS
Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)
From MATTEL INC /DE/'s SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 5.3B | 397.6M | $1.24 |
| 2024 | 5.4B | 541.8M | $1.58 |
| 2023 | 5.4B | 214.4M | $0.60 |
| 2022 | 5.4B | 393.9M | $1.10 |
| 2021 | 5.5B | 903.0M | $2.53 |
Cash Flow (5yr)
Capital expenditure isn't tagged in this filer's machine-readable data (the CapEx column shows "—"). The free-cash-flow column is therefore operating cash flow less stock-based compensation only — an upper bound on true owner earnings, not the real figure. Companies that report capex under a custom label (some large IFRS filers do) look better here than they are.
| Year | Operating CF | CapEx | − SBC & adj. | Free Cash Flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 593.3M | — | 79.7M | 513.5M |
| 2024 | 800.6M | — | 79.4M | 721.1M |
| 2023 | 869.8M | — | 83.3M | 786.5M |
| 2022 | 442.8M | — | 69.1M | 373.8M |
| 2021 | 485.5M | — | 60.1M | 425.4M |
How we define FCF: operating cash flow − capital expenditure − stock-based compensation (owner-earnings basis — SBC is a real cost to shareholders even though it's non-cash). Latest year: 593.3M − — − 79.7M (SBC & adj.) = 513.5M. This is the same owner-earnings FCF definition the valuation model uses.
Balance Sheet
| Total Assets | 6.6B |
| Total Liabilities | 4.4B (derived) |
| Equity | 2.2B |
| Total Debt | 2.3B |
Recent video coverage
Top recent YouTube videos by date. We don't endorse the channels — these are surfaced for context.
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