Mattel names board member Roger Lynch CEO as Ynon Kreiz steps down

Mattel has named Roger Lynch chief executive, and Ynon Kreiz is stepping down from the role as the handover begins. Lynch arrives from Condé Nast, where he was chief executive. Mattel says it chose one of its own board members after a succession planning process.

Lynch has been on Mattel's board since 2018. Before Condé Nast he was chief executive of the streaming service Pandora and the founding chief executive of Sling TV, so the company is promoting an insider whose operating career was in media and subscription businesses.

Mattel's announcement stressed his experience unifying global operations and monetising intellectual property across different brands. That matches the direction set under Kreiz, when Mattel accelerated its move from being just a toy manufacturer to a company focused on its IP.

What Lynch will be paid

Lynch will receive a base salary of $2.3 million, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He is eligible for an incentive plan award of 200% of base pay, which cannot exceed 400%.

The filing also lists a cash signing bonus of $10.6 million and a restricted stock unit award of $6 million, the only equity element the filing lists up front. A relocation allowance of $985,000 completes the package. The material reported does not say where he is relocating from.

The cash signing bonus is more than four times the base salary, and it is paid in cash rather than in shares.

Who runs Mattel until he starts

Jonathan Anschell, Mattel's chief legal officer and secretary, will serve as interim principal executive officer from Friday, until Lynch comes on as chief executive. Anschell keeps his current role while taking on the interim responsibilities.

Mattel has not given a start date for Lynch in the material available, so the length of the interim period is not stated. Until he begins, the chief legal officer is the person formally running the company.

The company also announced that board member Diana Ferguson is its new independent lead director. The board therefore changes at two points at once: one director moves into the chief executive's chair and another takes the lead-director role.

The business Lynch inherits

In its latest earnings, Mattel reported net sales up 10% year over year to $1.1 billion. That is the quarter Lynch's predecessor leaves behind, and the top line was growing when the change was announced.

Profit went the other way. Mattel reported a second-quarter net loss of $18 million, against net income of $53 million in the year-ago period. The company nonetheless reiterated its full-year guidance.

That guidance has net sales rising between 3% and 6% for the full year. The quarterly growth figure of 10% is therefore well above the range the company is still forecasting for the year as a whole.

Mattel has also been pushing to extend physical play into virtual worlds. This summer it announced the launch of Mattel Game Studios, an initiative that now passes to a chief executive whose earlier roles were at Pandora, Sling TV and Condé Nast.

Under Kreiz, Mattel moved towards an IP-led model. Lynch's brief, as Mattel frames it, is the next chapter of growth, built on that shift rather than a departure from it, with Anschell holding the chair until he arrives.

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Images: The image by Jelson25 is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0; Mattel