Mattels CEO departing after a rough year at toy giant as Barbie sales deteriorate: Change is overdue

Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz is leaving after a rough year at the toy giant — with Barbie sales deteriorating and Wall Street analysts saying a leadership change is overdue.The 60-year-old Kreiz is taking a senior leadership role at another public company — possibly Paramount Skydance, sources told The Post on Wednesday — while Conde Nast’s Roger Lynch succeeds Kreiz at Mattel on Oct.2.Mattel’s board said in a statement that it had conducted a “comprehensive succession planning process” ahead of replacing Kreiz with Lynch, who has has been a board director at Mattel since 2018.Kreiz started out strong — cutting costs, closing factories and investing in the company intellectual properties — but Mattel’s sales growth for the past several years has been stagnant, analysts noted.Sales of its hottest brand, Barbie, have been declining since the 2023 blockbuster Warner Brothers’ movie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.“We think the leadership change is overdue,” Morningstar analyst Jaime Katz wrote in a Wednesday research note.

Mattel shares “have done a round trip under Kreiz’s tenure, roughly doubling to the mid-$20 range before falling back to around $13, where [they] currently trade,” Katz wrote.“Kreiz’s strategy to establish Mattel as an IP-driven, high performing toy company has largely fallen flat.”“There have been five years of sales that were at the same exact level, through 2025,” Katz added.

“The Barbie movie didn’t really change anything.”Prior to Mattel, Kreiz, who was born and raised in Israel, was chairman and CEO of Maker Studios, which makes short-form videos and he was CEO of Endemol Group, an independent television production company and owner of such franchises as “Big Brother.”His eight-year tenure was tarnished this year when Mattel unexpectedly lowered its earnings projections for the year in February after reaffirming the company’s positive guidance in early December, according to Seaport Resea...