Rovio Entertainment, the creator of the hugely successful Angry Birds franchise, has a simple reason behind its lack of plans for an IPO:
It doesn’t need one.
The Finnish gamemaker already is a well-run machine — the company’s revenues appear to have grown from $550 million in 2011 to $2.4 billion in 2012, and Chief Marketing Officer Peter Vesterbacka said it was “insanely profitable.”
Powering the machine is the company’s ability to turn a video game into a success across numerous media, with Angry Birds spawning everything from T-shirts to TV shows to theme parks.
That might be for the best, at least for now. While the IPO market has been perking up lately, investors still have lots of bad memories with social deals, as evidenced by fellow social gamemaker Zynga (NASDAQ:ZNGA) and its 65% post-IPO drubbing.
However, if the market’s bull charge continues, don’t be surprised if Rovio changes its tune. The company’s management has at least hinted in the past that it has been preparing for an IPO, and if the company’s long-term goal really is to become the next Disney (NYSE:DIS), it will probably need to go public at some point down the road.
Tom Taulli runs the InvestorPlace blog IPO Playbook, a site dedicated to the hottest news and rumors about initial public offerings. He is also the author of “How to Create the Next Facebook” and “High-Profit IPO Strategies: Finding Breakout IPOs for Investors and Traders.” Follow him on Twitter at @ttaulli. As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
A long-time follower of the IPO scene, back in 1999 Tom started one of the first sites in the space called WebIPO. It was a place where investors got research as well as access to deals for the dot-com boom. Tom also wrote the top-selling book, Investing in IPOs. In it, he covers all the aspects of analyzing an IPO, such as reading the prospectus, detecting the risk factors and understanding some of the arcane regulations. But don’t worry — if that process is too intimidating for you, thankfully Tom will do the legwork for you right here in the IPO Playbook blog.
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