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Sega Sammy will offer 9.25 euros for each share of the company
behind the mobile game Angry Birds, a 19% premium over Friday's
closing price, in its tender offer bid set to be launched around
May 8.
Following the announcement, Rovio shares rose as much as 18.8%
in early trade in Europe.
"In 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
Sammy CEO Haruki Satomi said in a statement.
The Sega Sammy announcement said Rovio's board of directors
supported the tender offer, making the acquisition a friendly
takeover.
"Combining the strengths of Rovio and Sega presents an
incredibly exciting future," Rovio CEO Alexandre
Pelletier-Normand said in the same written announcement.
Sega Sammy shares, however, fell 4.2% on the day prior to the
tender offer announcement but after it said it was considering
acquiring Rovio, amid investor doubts about synergy prospects.
"'Angry Birds' is known everywhere in the world. But the brand
is already past its peak," said Serkan Toto, founder of the
Kantan Games consultancy.
"I think investors (in Sega Sammy) are disappointed by this use
of 700 million euros."
Based on Rovio's short-term earnings prospects, the offer was
good for shareholders of the Finnish group even though it
ascribed limited value to the company's pipeline of new games,
Inderes analyst Atte Riikola said.
"There is considerable uncertainty at this point regarding the
success of future games... all in all, I think the bid is good
and Rovio's shareholders will be happy to accept it," he said.
Rovio received a 683 million euro takeover bid in January from
Israeli peer Playtika Holding Corp, but the talks were called
off last month.
($1 = 0.9102 euros)
(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo, additional reporting by
Bolseslaw Lasocki in Gdansk; editing by Himani Sarkar and Jason
Neely)
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