Bloomberg on Finnish game makers

A detailed article from Bloomberg describes Finnish mobile game industry successes such as Angry Birds and the boost it has given for a host of new entries. The news agency interviewed global venture capitalists, who appear very interested in the area. It is also conceivable that some of the companies could seek to spring new life into flailing local stock market in the comings years, even as similar launches world over have been mixed.

More Angry Birds IPO talk

Buzz for apparently inevitable Angry Birds creator Rovio Entertainment Initial Public Offering seems to be escalating. Monday edition of MarketWatch.com Take On Tech felt that the company is ready for that. The show said that analysts now value Rovio up to 9 billion USD. The company announced highlights from 2011 financial results on Monday.

Last year they had sales of 75 million Euros (just over 100 million USD) and an EBIT of 48 million Euros (over 65 million Dollars). Much of that came from merchandizing and licensing activities. It seems that there is a new Angry Birds consumer product on the shelves over here almost every day. The company certainly does not suffer for the typical Finnish cardinal sin of thinking too small, they aim to go into produce a movie and roll out amusement parks to name a few things. The various games have now been downloaded nearly 650 million times, with up to 200 million active users. While the company seems to be growing very rapidly, there may be no better time for an initial public IPO for the competitive advantage of the company is likely more fickle, than that of Facebook for example. Previously there has been considerable speculation on the most likely location for that.

Angry Birds maker readies for stock market listing

Rovio’s marketing director Peter Vesterbacka spoke with newspaper Tekniikka&Talous. In the article he mentioned very high goals which the Finnish computer game maker best known for Angry Birds aims to reach (some might say even delusional goals, but at this point you cannot argue with success). According to Vesterbacka Angry Birds sales shall grow tenfold every year, with 50% profit margins, and the game will sell tens of billion of dollars every year. The eventual goal for the company is to reach Disney’s market cap of 60 billion Euros.

Rovio was identified by Goldman Sachsas one of the most potential IPO candidates recently. According to Techcrunch the company officials attended Goldman Sachs’ Private Internet Company Conference in Las Vegas at the end November. Tekniikka&Talous report says Rovio is likely to list in Hong Kong stock exchange in 2013 and is estimated to be valued in between 2-7 billion Euros. Soon to be Nasdaq listed Zynga Inc, which according to NY Times tried to acquire Rovio for 2.25 billion $ in cash and stock earlier this year, priced its initial public offering at the higher end of expected range yesterday afternoon and is expected to net 1 billion, valuing the company at close to 7 billion USD.