Speaking to the magazine Rovio Chief Marketing Officer Peter Vesterbacka said the company valuation of $700 million to $1 billion made by Forbes in July 2011 is way too low.
Clarifying his statement, Vesterback said the company isn’t for sale:
Accompanying the sky-high valuations for technology, especially the networking Internet companies like LinkedIn (LNKD) and Facebook, games for mobile phones have rocketing valuations as well.
Angry Birds is a simple but very famous mobile game around the world. Every month, around 50 million play the game. The game costs 99 cents ($4.99) on the IPad. Comparable deals have happened; in October, maker of Rolando and Topple sold to Japanese game developer DeNA for $400 million, 13 times revenue. And Playdom, the owner of Social City and Bola for Facebook games, sold to Disney (DIS) at nine times revenue. With similar multiples, Rovio should be valued at $700 to $1 billion. Potential investors need to realize how fragile the business model is, and the asset Rovio has right now is the brand “Angry Birds”. The hugely popular game, in which green pigs go head-to-head with angry birds, has turned its little-known Finnish developer, Rovio, into a multi-billion dollar giant.
The famously irate birds have been downloaded more than 300million times since the game’s launch in 2009.
Now a multi-billion dollar price tag has been attached to their feathered heads by chief marketing officer Peter Vesterbacka. The company was instead worth several billions, he said, noting the £15.1billion value of Facebook games company Zynga.
Sky-high valuations of internet companies have come into focus in recent times, with talk of a repeat of the internet bubble burst of 2000.