Rovio is planning to raise approximately $36 million (€30 million) with its upcoming initial public offering (IPO), Reuters reported on Monday, with the newly reported figure being significantly below the $400 million mark that industry sources cited in mid-August. The Finnish entertainment company best known for its Angry Birds franchise was said to be considering going public for some time now, with the latest information indicating that it now decided to go through with that idea.
Apart from the gaming industry rising in value in recent years, another factor which is currently increasing Rovio’s chances of a successful IPO is its 2016 fiscal year, with the firm improving its performance largely thanks to the Angry Birds Movie which earned approximately $350 million with a $73 million budget. Rovio is already planning to make a sequel to its Hollywood blockbuster and some industry watchers previously speculated that the company is primarily interested in an IPO in an effort to raise additional funds that it would use to finance the movie it’s making with Sony’s Columbia Pictures. The Angry Birds Movie 2 is scheduled for a box office debut in 2019, meaning its pre-production phase is already in advanced stages and if Rovio is planning on financing the project with an IPO, it needs to file the necessary paperwork in the near future and ideally have its shares publicly listed by early 2018, if not sooner.
The company is still avoiding evaluating its business which some industry analysts believe may be worth around $2 billion. That figure is still far from a general consensus, with many experts being skeptical about Rovio’s ability to move away from the Angry Birds franchise and continue growing independently of its most successful project to date in the long term. Despite the overwhelming success of the Angry Birds Movie, new games from the franchise aren’t nearly as successful as their seminal predecessors, indicating that consumers are moving away from Rovio’s gameplay formula. Most market watchers agree that Rovio should commit more resources to new intellectual properties which could spawn potentially successful series, though that task proved to be a difficult one for the firm which has already been trying to develop new products and services in recent times with little major results. The last several years saw Rovio put a larger focus on publishing third-party games and the Angry Birds Movie, though it’s currently unclear how the company’s potential IPO would affect its general business strategy going forward. The Espoo, Finland-based firm has yet to comment on its reported decision to go public in any capacity.