Sawt Falasteen - Lego posts record profit despite geopolitical turmoil: CEO to AFP

Last year, the group reported a 21 percent increase in net profit, reaching 16.7 billion kroner ($2.6 billion), the highest net profit the company's ever recorded. Its revenue jumped 12 percent to 83.5 billion kroner.

"I wouldn't say that the volatility and everything happening doesn't impact us, but I think we have momentum behind taking markets in a way that we can grow even so," Lego CEO Niels Christiansen told AFP in an interview.

Consumer sales rose 16 percent across all markets, including in China, where the group has returned to growth after investing for years.

"If you take the toy industry over the last three years, it has grown a little bit and has declined a little bit. So, it's basically been flat over time. And even though it's been flat, we have grown double digits every year," Christiansen said.

Christiansen said the company expected a "high single-digit" growth this year.

Lego's recipe for success, as a privately-held family company, is to combine innovation with optimisation of its production across its six factories around the world.

"We produce close to markets and consumers," he said, adding this allowed the company to start production late "so we know what really is in high demand".

Lego, whose name is a contraction of the Danish for "play well"("leg godt"), is also banking on partnerships -- such as with Pokemon or FIFA -- and technological innovation to win over consumers.

C.AbuSway--SF-PST