LEGO Technic Concrete Mixer Truck | Source: The LEGO Group
The LEGO Group remains one of the few privately owned companies to report earnings, and in 2020 it experienced double-digit growth in sales and revenue.
In its annual report, LEGO says that consumer sales for its building sets grew 21% last year while total revenue grew 13% when compared to 2019. LEGO’s operating profit grew 19% as it grew its global market share with particularly strong growth in China, the Americas, Western Europe, and Asia Pacific.
“We are very pleased with these results. They show the timeless relevance of the LEGO brick and learning through play,” says Niels B. Christiansen, CEO, The LEGO Group. “This performance is also a testament to the passion, creativity and resilience of our people. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, they worked tirelessly to keep the world playing.”
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, LEGO opened 134 new stores last year, including 91 in China which remains its fastest-growing market. Top themes — in no particular order — include LEGO Classic, LEGO Technic, LEGO City, LEGO Star Wars, and LEGO Friends. Additionally, traffic to LEGO.com doubled last year as the company made a big push into digital.
“For the past two years we’ve made large-scale investments in initiatives designed to support long-term growth,” Christiansen says. “In 2020, we began to see the benefits of these, especially in e-commerce and product innovation. We will further increase investments during the coming year with a continued focus on innovating play, our brand, digitalization and developing an omnichannel retail network.”
The company notes that LEGO Super Mario quickly became one of its most successful theme launches with a mix of physical and digital play. The next evolution in the combined play pattern is LEGO VIDIYO which launched in the U.S. this month.