Israeli gambling giant Playtika made a lucrative all-cash acquisition offer for Rovio Entertainment, the Tel Aviv-based company has announced. The proposal was put forward following a fairly uneventful year for the Finnish developer during which it launched only two games, Angry Birds Journey and a rerelease of the original Angry Birds.
Playtika is one of the world's largest casual and casino games publishers whose latest full-year financials reveal it hit 35 million monthly players in 2021, which places it in Rovio's ballpark, user-wise. However, the nature of the gambling niche means Playtika is significantly better at monetizing its player base than the Angry Birds maker is. While the Finnish company posted $259 million in operating revenue in Q3 2022, its suitor's turnover amounted to $647 million across that same period. The fact that Rovio's revenue streams also include non-gaming endeavors like The Angry Birds Movie widens that gap in game monetization efficiency.
Playtika has now made an offer to buy Rovio at the equivalent of $9.79 per share. The all-cash proposal is valued at $812.8 million, 55% over Rovio's January 18 market capitalization. The Angry Birds maker's stock price skyrocketed to over $8.60 in the early afternoon hours at the Helsinki Stock Exchange. Such a turn of events indicates that investors are predominantly confident the deal would win regulatory approval, if accepted.
Playtika, which is a publicly traded company since early 2021, said it believes combining Rovio's IP with its refined monetization and logistical capabilities would generate "tremendous" shareholder value, as per CEO Robert Antokol. The Israeli publisher revealed it already made a 6% lower offer for Rovio in November, confirming that the Finnish firm's board of directors has been mulling a sale for some time now.
While Angry Birds 2 and other recent Rovio games failed to replicate the success of the series' early installments from the dawn of the smartphone era, the franchise did claw its way back into brief global relevancy circa 2016, largely propelled by the overwhelmingly positive reception of The Angry Birds Movie. The 2019 follow-up to that flick wasn't as well received among the fandom or critics, grossing less than half of the original's $350 million box office.
That notwithstanding, The Angry Birds Movie 2 still made back its $65 million budget more than two times over, paving the way for a third film that's scheduled to release in April 2023. Rovio also kept busy with an array of Angry Birds animated series, the last one of which is currently on its third Netflix season. It's still unclear whether Playtika would continue pursuing Rovio's filmmaking ambitions in the event that the companies agree on a sale.
Source: Playtika / Business Wire