Star Wars and Frozen boosts Lego sales in 2015
Lego has secured its place as the world’s best-selling toy firm after the latest Star Wars film and Disney’s Frozen helped send sales leaping 25% higher in 2015.
The Danish company cheered its tenth year in a row of surging revenues, with sales of €4.8bn last year, helping pre-tax profits rise by 28% to €1.62bn.
Last year’s release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens spurred on demand for the popular plastic bricks, with sales of the Millennium Falcon the second best-seller, beaten only by Elsa’s Sparkling Ice Castle as Disney’s Frozen remains a firm favourite.
Its traditional lines also sold well, in particular Lego City, Lego Friends and Duplo.
The group’s annual results helped privately-owned Lego extend its lead over Barbie doll-maker Mattel, which it overtook in 2014 to become the biggest toy firm in the world.
Lego said 72 billion Lego pieces were sold last year, while it produced 725 million mini-figures.
It cheered a year of “exceptional growth”, with the jump in profits and sales coming on the back of a very strong performance in 2014, helped by the successful Lego movie, released by Warner Brothers.
The group said the UK was among a raft of markets that enjoyed double-digit sales growth last year, as well as the US, France, Italy and China.
But Russia saw a fall in sales due to the “difficult currency conditions” in the country, according to Lego.
Lego Executive Vice-President and CFO John Goodwin said: “We have achieved significant growth in sales every year for a decade now and it is highly satisfactory that we can deliver yet another year of double-digit sales growth.”
The group added that it now employs more than 17,000 people worldwide, with the average number of full-time staff in 2015 up 11% at 13,974.
It sells Lego products in more than 140 countries and has retail stores in 125 countries.
