Angry Birds maker Rovio is finally going public

[Shawn Knight]

Rovio Entertainment, the Finnish company behind the wildly successful Angry Birds franchise, said on Tuesday that it is moving forward with its initial public offering in Helsinki.

Better late than never, eh?

Angry Birds is one of the most popular mobile gaming franchises ever conceived. Originally released in December 2009 for iOS, the game tasks players with flinging birds at pigs that have stolen their eggs. The puzzle / shooter / strategy game was an immediate hit and has spawned a number of sequels as well as merchandise, toys and even a movie.

Rovio reached its pinnacle years ago and was largely expected to go public in the 2012 time frame. Ultimately, it decided to hold off which seems like a mistake in hindsight.

All told, Rovio’s games have been downloaded more than 3.7 billion times as of June 2017 and they had an average of 80 million monthly active users as of the second quarter of this year.

That said, one can’t help but think that the Angry Birds franchise isn’t nearly as popular as it once was… even if it does have an average global brand awareness of 97 percent as Rovio claims. That combined with the fact that Rovio hasn’t had a follow-up hit on the same level likely means that the company left a lot of money on the table by waiting to go public.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/70857-angry-birds-maker-rovio-finally-going-public.html

 

[VitalyT]

Yuck!

Let's see if their stock follows the same projectile as in the game.

 

[SirDigby]

I may be completely wrong in this but maybe it was right to wait.
Angry Bird's trajectory was not sustainable at it's peak, so to go public then would've likely caused a lot of shareholder disappointment and possibly lead to bankruptcy from the share price going through the floor?
IDK I'm not an economist, just trying to play devil's advocate.

 

[Steed]

I have to think that there may be some sort of strategy here. They may have something in the works which they think will keep people glued to their phones, so they go public before it is released, and then rise the wave afterwards. That would be a strategic way to make a lot of money.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I have to think that there may be some sort of strategy here. They may have something in the works which they think will keep people glued to their phones, so they go public before it is released, and then rise the wave afterwards. That would be a strategic way to make a lot of money.

That WOULD be smart.

But this is the same rovio that managed to piss off their user base by shoveling ads into paid for copies of angry birds, and based on angry birds 2, has lost both the touch for getting people to play their game and has fallen into the "shovel ads and lotteries into our games for revenue" band wagon.

So I'll place my bets on this being a Smartphone startup that overgrew its budget, and in its bloated state thinks an IPO will fix their issues. Much like Roku has done.