So, I was just on TRU board, and it seems that the latest strategy to save the company is wait for it...wait for it... a gofundme.com campaign! It's both laugh out loud funny and sad.
Now it feels like the world is simply making fun of us and what we are going through.
https://www.gofundme.com/helpsavetoysrus
Everyone on the larian ponzi train!
I can't believe the previous posters are so illiterate - do you guys even READ the articles and postings you mention?
Case is point: 1 week before Toyfair, the California Supreme Court ruled against Isaac Larian in his attempt to obtain money from Mattel. Too much time had passed and the judge threw out the case.
The $200 million raised was through a private equity group that is interested in buying TRU Canada, not TRU US. TRU US owes Mattel money, not TRU Canada. They are not the same company as TRU is made of over 30 different legal entities.
TRU is a profitable company. The issues is that they were purchased by 3 private equity firms in a leveraged buy out. TRU was purchased for $6.5 billion by Bain, Vornado and KKR. Yet those 3 companies, together, only put up $1.5 billion of their own money. The remaining $5 billion was taken out as a loan, that TRU had to pay back (payments were over $400 million per year). While TRU was slow to shift from destroying their competition to adopting new distribution methods (internet shopping), the leverage buyout which occurred 13 years ago, has killed the company.
Last year, TRU made over $350million in profit, but posted a loss of over $30 million because it had to make it's payments on it's loan. Private Equity owned businesses usually are sold within 3-5 years. The issue with TRU is that it could not go public (the original intent when they were purchased) due to their financial position and lack of funds (over and above the $400 million of loan payments) to invest and reconfigure their overall business.
Considering we haven’t paid MGA yet for the BS lawsuit we pulled on them. We would still be in a hole if Larian pulls this off and I hope he does.
What is even more crazy is that they have raised 200 million. Maybe they can give Mattel the 135 mil they owe us. Ha!
Unless Larian and his cronies can somehow transition the toy business to balance with online shopping and games, trying to save TRU is a waste of time and money.