Loss Widens at 4Kids

NEW YORK, August 12:
Despite a 38-percent increase in revenue to $16.5 million, driven by the sale
of Chaotic trading cards, 4Kids
Entertainment has reported a wider loss for the second quarter of $5.5 million,
up from the year-ago period’s loss of $2.2 million.

“Our second quarter
results reflect increasing Chaotic
trading card sales, which we expect will ramp up considerably in the second
half of the year,” said Alfred R. Kahn, the chairman and CEO of 4Kids Entertainment. “We believe that we are
on track to meet our previously announced target of $20-$30 million in Chaotic trading-card sales for 2008. We have made several
scheduled improvements to the Chaotic website… We’ve also implemented revisions enabling www.chaoticgame.com to operate on less technologically capable
computers. We expect that these initiatives will result in faster growth for
the Chaotic online community.”

The quarter’s results,
Kahn notes, were impacted by higher costs related to improving the Chaotic website and trading-card operations, as well as
lower licensing revenue from Yu-Gi-Oh!, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and Cabbage Patch Kids.
He added: “In order to diversify our licensing business, we have signed
agreements to represent two new properties, a popular Russian animated series
which we are calling GOGORiKi
and a successful specialty store brand called Kooky Klickers. We expect these new properties, along with Dinosaur
King, to begin to contribute to
licensing revenues starting in the second half of 2008.”

—By Mansha Daswani