AMC Entertainment

AMC’s third quarter started with a bang. The launch of Barbie, together with Oppenheimer, Sound of Freedom and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (Part One) made July the company’s “highest revenue month” in its entire 103-year history, said chief executive Adam Aron during its 2Q earnings call.

That’s an impressive feat for AMC, which spent the last few years fighting competition from streaming services such as Netflix, in addition to recovering billions of lost revenue from the Covid pandemic. It’s also great to see the company’s core business doing so well, given its propensity for doing weird meme-stock stuff like buying a literal gold mine.

Speaking of revenue recovery, tickets to Barbie (and other movies) at AMC and several other cinemas will cost just $4 on 27 August, which is also National Cinema Day. Check it out here (this is not an affiliate marketing link).

Cinemark

Like their peers at AMC, executives at Cinemark are pink with glee. The combined impact of Barbie and this summer’s other blockbusters made July the company’s “biggest single month of admissions revenue” in its history, according to chief exec Sean Gamble.

“These connections help build larger brands, bigger franchises and more significant cultural moments,” he said during the company’s 2Q earnings call.

Barbie would probably call herself an icon rather than a mere ‘cultural moment’, but that’s beside the point: Cinemark launched an online movie merchandise shop in May, and Gamble told analysts during the call that he saw “incremental opportunity” for more merch initiatives in future.

CineMark’s now-sold out Barbie popcorn tin retails for $9.99, compared to the $65 price tag for AMC’s Barbie doll and pink corvette popcorn container combo. The delta between the two has sparked some outrage online.

Crocs

The famously ugly footwear brand announced a restocking of its Barbie-themed sandals this week, after its chief executive officer Andrew Rees noted in a 2Q earnings call that the initial collection had sold out — ahead of the movie’s launch in July.

Following record high revenues in the second quarter, in part due to its popularity with Millennial and Gen-Z demographics, Crocs tapped the loan market earlier this month to shave 25bps from the coupon of its $1.18bn TLB.

Gap

If there’s one company that could benefit from some Barbie magic, it would certainly be Gap.

Back in March, Moody’s downgraded the company’s CFR to Ba3 from Ba2, with analysts projecting that “credit metrics will remain weak as topline growth and margin expansion will be limited in the next 12 months due to continuing inflationary and competitive pressures.”

The company has turned to Barbie as it seeks to rejuvenate consumer spending. In April, it announced a partnership with Barbie’s manufacturer Mattel (more on that below) to launch a clothing and pet apparel collection. Many of those items have since sold out.

Gap also revealed in July that Mattel’s chief operating officer Richard Dickson will be its new CEO, effective 22 August (second quarter earnings come out on 24 August). Dickson was instrumental in reviving the Barbie brand ahead of the movie launch.

Mattel

In an interview last year, Dickson said that 2015 was a “very low point” in the history of the Barbie brand. Sales had sunk to their lowest in 25 years; Dickson acknowledged that Barbie’s body shape was “one of the most controversial parts of the brand.”

Under his stewardship, Mattel has boosted Barbie’s popularity by launching more inclusive dolls, in addition to tapping the brand’s valuable intellectual property. During a July earnings call, Mattel revealed it had “over 165 consumer product partnerships” tied to the Barbie movie.

“Following the incredibly successful Barbie movie release, we look forward to continue capitalizing on the many exciting opportunities to capture the full value of our iconic brands outside the toy aisle,” said Mattel’s chief executive officer Ynon Kreiz on the 2Q earnings call.

Maybe one day they can securitize the IP, if their credit docs have enough leeway. It’s all the rage these days.

On a serious note, the IP is incredibly valuable and has seemingly inexhaustible potential. Cases in point:

• Mattel is working with Epic Resort Destinations, an IP-driven resorts and entertainment company, to open a theme park in Arizona next year. This will include a full-scale Barbie Beach House.
• Back in 2017, the company released a line of diverse Ken dolls as it steered the Barbie brand back towards relevance. This moved launched a thousand memes on social media (representative examples here and here).

Warner Music Group

A Ken is nothing without his Barbie, and a movie is nothing without its soundtrack — Barbie’s was released by Atlantic Records, which sits under the umbrella of Warner Music Group.

Prior to the movie’s release, Warner’s chief financial officer Eric Levin noted in a May earnings call that the Barbie soundtrack would boost revenue from in both the digital and physical realms in the company’s fiscal third and fourth quarters.

“We absolutely expect this to improve our results in recorded music streaming in the second half of the year, and this would likely create uplift in both streaming and physical,” Levin said.

By the time WMG reported fiscal 3Q earnings on 8 August, the Barbie soundtrack had already broken several records.

“Like the movie itself, the album has been a massive global cultural event,” said Warner’s chief executive officer Robert Kyncl on the earnings call. He noted that it had reached number one in seven countries and was the first soundtrack ever to land three top-five singles in the UK.