Good morning, CFOs. Hasbro’s finance chief is accelerating efforts to slash costs as the toy maker contends with tepid demand and years of underinvestment in its toy business.

Demand for toys has declined over the past year as consumers, hamstrung by inflation, have pulled back on buying play things that they lavished on children during the pandemic. In 2023, sales of toys slumped 7% globally compared with a year earlier, according to Circana, a market research firm.

In the U.S., retail sales at hobby, toy and game stores slipped less, falling 2% in 2023 compared with a year earlier, to $21.2 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The owner of brands such as Nerf, Play-Doh and Dungeons & Dragons has felt the pinch and then some. Revenue at the company last year took a 15% slide to $5 billion, compared with 2022. The company missed analysts’ estimates when it reported this month, sending shares plummeting. On Monday, its stock closed at $48.67, down 12% from a year earlier.

📆 Earnings

• eBay
• J.M. Smucker
• Macy’s
• Lowe’s
• Urban Outfitters

📈 Economic Indicators

S&P CoreLogic releases its Case-Shiller Home Price Indices for December.

Tom Panther, finance chief at Atlanta-based business payments company Fleetcor Technologies, talked with CFO Journal about how generative artificial intelligence fits into the roughly $150 million it spends on capital expenditures in a given year.

WSJ: What stage are you at with implementing generative AI in the finance function?
Panther: I'd say we're in a let's-monitor-and-be-a-fast-follower mode. As I look at our finance technology plan for 2024, we're more focused on trying to get on common enterprise resource planning platforms than we necessarily are in terms of adding the capabilities associated with generative AI. That will give us a lot of efficiency and improved data and analytics, which actually prepares us well to be able to leverage those AI tools as they mature.

As it relates to Fleetcor, the application of AI will be more in customer or marketing or credit-related pockets of our company than necessarily your core bread-and-butter finance. I do think it has its place. We obviously handle hundreds of millions of transactions, moving money from point A to point B. That creates a lot of balancing and reconciliation that we have to do. Much more complicated than just reconciling fixed assets. As an example, we do daily reconciliations in certain areas of our company. I think that's where AI will be particularly impactful as we invest in automated tools that allow that to happen in a more automated way than humans trying to track that stuff.

WSJ: What does your budget for AI company-wide look like?
Panther: It's not a big number for us. And as we report publicly, our capex in any given year is about $150 million. The vast majority of that is technology. But as we went through our capex planning, it would only be a fraction of our tech projects that would have any kind of AI allocation. We're focused on things like building tech that doesn't involve AI that we're spending that give-or-take $150 million on this year.

The things that we want to spend our time and resources on are things that really the AI use case either doesn't exist today or is a bit unproven. We would rather use more proven technology where we know we've got an end product that's going to deliver the outcome that we're looking for than something that may be a bit more experimental.

WSJ: What are examples of where the AI use case doesn’t exist yet in the finance function?
Panther: Our data set is in a place today where I'm not prepared to be able to do the AI. Until I get clean data sets, clean transaction data and application systems feeding into data lakes, I'm not sure AI is going to magically tell me things that I need to know. I'm more focused on getting our data environment to where I want it to be.

—Mark Maurer

The Federal Trade Commission on Monday sued to block Kroger’s $25 billion bid for rival Albertsons, throwing into uncertainty the fate of one of the largest supermarket deals in history.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Oregon, the FTC said the deal would lead to higher food prices and lower wages for workers and asked a court to block the companies from closing their deal on antitrust grounds. The companies’ plan to address the government’s concerns by selling hundreds of stores in Washington, Colorado and other states won’t solve the problem, the FTC said.

• Expedia is reducing its global headcount by 1,500 employees, or roughly 9%, as part of its organizational and technological transformation.
• U.S. stocks drifted lower ahead of fresh readings on the economy this week, in a subdued trading session after last week’s Nvidia-fueled rally.
• Chevron warned investors Monday that Exxon Mobil and China’s Cnooc are asserting they have a right to pre-empt the company’s bid for a stake in a prolific oil project off Guyana, an emerging dispute that could derail Chevron’s megadeal for Hess.
• For the Nvidia CEO, now is a moment of enormous triumph—and more than a little peril.

📰 Other headlines

• Boeing Efforts to Improve Safety Fall Short, FAA Panel Says
• Biden Calls Leaders to White House as Shutdown Looms, Ukraine Aid Stalls
• The 9-Month-Old AI Startup Challenging Silicon Valley’s Giants
• Companies Say Push to Decarbonize Comes From Their Own Boards
• Hotel Staff Shortages Threaten to Push Travel Costs Even Higher
• Warehouse Boom Fades, and Hopes of California Region Fade With It
• Food Is Taking a Bite Out of Your Income. Consumers Get Creative.

Request an invitation | Participants and program

The era of cheap money is behind us and CFOs must now grapple with how to operate in a high interest rate environment, how fast to invest in artificial intelligence, and how to manage geopolitical tensions and thorny labor relations. With U.S. elections on the horizon, the CFO Network will discuss–through both newsmaking interviews and peer-to-peer discussions–how finance executives are reading the markets, driving the push for greater corporate efficiency and managing the pushback on ESG and DEI. Join WSJ journalists and some of the biggest names in corporate finance to discuss, debate and make headlines.

Confirmed speakers include:

• Martin Small, Senior Managing Director, Global Head of Corporate Strategy and CFO, BlackRock
• Bori Cox, CFO, Consumer and Community Banking, JPMorgan Chase
• Paul Ryan, Vice Chairman, Teneo; 54th Speaker of the House

Brinker International, the Dallas-based company that owns Chili's and other casual restaurants chains, tapped Mika Ware as its next finance chief after current CFO Joe Taylor retires. Taylor will retire effective June 27, 2024, when the company's fiscal year ends, the company said. Ware, who the company said started as a Chili's host in 1988, now serves as vice president of finance, investor relations and restaurant development. Taylor will work in a senior adviser role until August 2024. He has served as CFO since 2017 and joined the company in 1999.

Northwest Bancshares, the Columbus, Ohio-based bank holding company of Northwest Bank, appointed Douglas Schosser as its next chief financial officer, effective March 18. Schosser will replace William W. Harvey Jr., who announced his retirement last fall, the company said. He will work alongside Harvey through 2024 as part of the transition. Schosser most recently served as executive vice president and chief accounting officer of KeyCorp.

Seres Therapeutics, a Cambridge, Mass.-based microbiome-therapeutics company, appointed Marella Thorell as executive vice president and chief financial officer as current finance chief David Arkowitz retires. Seres said Thorell, who is joining on or around March 25, most recently served as chief financial officer and treasurer of Evelo Biosciences. Arkowitz, who has been chief financial officer since June 2021, will assist in the transition, Seres said.

—Ben Glickman, Denny Jacob and Colin Kellaher contributed to this newsletter.

The Wall Street Journal's CFO Journal offers corporate leaders and professionals CFO analysis, advice and commentary to make informed decisions. We cover topics ranging from corporate tax accounting, regulation, capital markets, management and strategy.

Follow us on X @WSJCFO. The WSJ CFO Journal Team is reporters Kristin Broughton, Mark Maurer and Jennifer Williams, and Bureau Chief Walden Siew.

You can reach us by replying to any newsletter, or email Walden at walden.siew@wsj.com.