A mannequin of Indignant Birds character ‘Pink’ sits on show contained in the reception space of the Rovio Leisure Oy headquarters in Espoo, Finland, on Thursday, Feb. 28, 2019.
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Japanese gaming big Sega introduced Monday it has made a 706 million euro ($776 million) supply for the maker of the Indignant Birds puzzle recreation, Finland’s Rovio Leisure Oyj.
The deal could be for the whole thing of Rovio’s excellent shares and choices, valuing the shares at 9.25 euros per share, a roughly 19% premium to their closing value earlier than the announcement, Sega mentioned. It is valuing the choices at 1.48 euros.
Rovio’s board is in assist of the supply, the corporate added.
Rovio video games have been downloaded over 5 billion occasions, in keeping with the assertion Monday. In the meantime its Indignant Birds franchise has been licensed into different leisure and client merchandise.
Tokyo-based Sega was based in 1960 and is best-known for its Sonic the Hedgehog and Complete Warfare franchises, as properly consoles together with the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, in style outdoors of Japan within the Nineteen Nineties.
It desires to make use of Rovio to develop its presence within the cellular gaming market and mentioned it could use its live-operated cellular recreation improvement capabilities to spice up improvement of mobile-based variations of its current video games.
The Wall Road Journal had beforehand reported the Rovio deal was anticipated to be value round $1 billion.
Rovio shares have been up 17.88% at 9:00 a.m. London time.
Shares of Sega Sammy, the holding firm of Sega following its 2004 merger with video games maker Sammy, closed 4.2% decrease on Monday earlier than the acquisition was introduced.
“Among the many quickly rising international gaming market, the cellular gaming market has particularly excessive potential, and it has been SEGA’s long-term aim to speed up its growth on this area,” mentioned Sega Sammy’s Group CEO, Haruki Satomi, in a press release.
Indignant Birds is “liked the world over,” he mentioned. “I’m assured that, by way of mixture of each corporations’ manufacturers, characters, fanbase, in addition to company tradition and performance, there might be vital synergies created going ahead.”
Rovio CEO Alexandre Pelletier-Normand mentioned Pink, the lead character in Indignant Birds, and Sonic the Hedgehog have been “two globally acknowledged and iconic characters made by two remarkably complementary corporations, with a worldwide attain that spans cellular, PC/console, and past.”
