Sega offered €9.25 per share in cash to the shareholders and
€1.48 per option to the option holders of Rovio, according to a statement on
Monday.
The Finnish company’s board unanimously recommended
shareholders accept the offer that is backed by 49 per cent of shareholders,
including Rovio’s founding Hed family.
The deal brings to a close talks the Finnish mobile-game
maker had engaged in with multiple parties since an US$810 million offer from
Israel-based Playtika Holding had become public in January.
Rovio said on March 22 that it had ended talks with
Playtika, but continued discussions with other parties it did not identify.
Japan’s Sega is doubling down on console and smartphone
gaming for long-term growth as its traditional businesses of pachinko and
arcade machines face dwindling audiences and have been in recent years hit by
waves of Covid-19 restrictions.
Some of its best known titles include Sonic The Hedgehog,
Crazy Taxi and Yakuza.
“Among the rapidly growing global gaming market, the mobile
gaming market has especially high potential, and it has been Sega’s long-term
goal to accelerate its expansion in this field,” Sega chief executive Haruki
Satomi said in the statement.
For Rovio, the famous Angry Birds franchise is the
cornerstone of the Finnish company’s operations.
First released in app stores in 2009, the branded mobile
games generate more than 80 per cent of its gross bookings.
It was the first mobile game to reach one billion downloads,
and Rovio went public in 2017 on the back of its success, with a market value
of about €900 million.
The company’s first months on the stock exchange were
characterised by dramatic slumps after its financial disclosures disappointed
shareholders. The shares have never fully recouped the losses.
In its early years, the Finnish firm developed more than 50
games, typically with gloomy titles such as Darkest Fear, Cyber Blood, and Wolf
Moon, before striking gold with Angry Birds, an entertaining confection that
capitalized on the iPhone’s touchscreen technology, new at the time.
Rovio’s reliance on Angry Birds has worried investors, and
the company has sought to expand to other brands and types of games.
It has “several” new games in development and has acquired
smaller rivals and games studios to grow in hyper-casual and puzzle games.
The company calls the Angry Birds brand its “most precious
asset”, bringing it discoverability in the crowded gaming market, and even
generating a small slice of its revenue from licensing.
Recent projects include a Netflix show that followed two
movies since 2016, and Rovio also generates royalties from consumer products.
Sega’s offer is a premium of 63 per cent compared with
Rovio’s closing price on Jan 19, prior to Playtika’s offer, and about 19 per
cent relative to the closing price on Friday.