A model of Indignant Birds character ‘Red’ sits on display contained in the reception area of the Rovio Entertainment Oy headquarters in Espoo, Finland, on Thursday, Feb. 28, 2019.
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Japanese gaming giant Sega announced Monday it has made a 706 million euro ($776 million) offer for the maker of the Indignant Birds puzzle game, Finland’s Rovio Entertainment Oyj.
The deal can be for the whole lot of Rovio’s outstanding shares and options, valuing the stocks at 9.25 euros per share, a roughly 19% premium to their closing price before the announcement, Sega said. It’s valuing the choices at 1.48 euros.
Rovio’s board is in support of the offer, the corporate added.
Rovio games have been downloaded over 5 billion times, in response to the statement Monday. Meanwhile its Indignant Birds franchise has been licensed into other entertainment and consumer products.
Tokyo-based Sega was founded in 1960 and is best-known for its Sonic the Hedgehog and Total War franchises, as well consoles including the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, popular outside of Japan within the Nineteen Nineties.
It wants to make use of Rovio to expand its presence within the mobile gaming market and said it could use its live-operated mobile game development capabilities to spice up development of mobile-based versions of its existing games.
The Wall Street Journal had previously reported the Rovio deal was expected to be price around $1 billion.
Rovio shares were up 17.8% at 11:00 a.m. London time.
Shares of Sega Sammy, the holding company of Sega following its 2004 merger with games maker Sammy, closed 4.2% lower on Monday before the acquisition was announced.
“Among the many rapidly growing global gaming market, the mobile gaming market has especially high potential, and it has been SEGA’s long-term goal to speed up its expansion on this field,” said Sega Sammy’s Group CEO, Haruki Satomi, in a press release.
Indignant Birds is “loved internationally,” he said. “I’m confident that, through combination of each firms’ brands, characters, fanbase, in addition to corporate culture and functionality, there shall be significant synergies created going forward.”
Rovio CEO Alexandre Pelletier-Normand said Red, the lead character in Indignant Birds, and Sonic the Hedgehog were “two globally recognized and iconic characters made by two remarkably complementary firms, with a worldwide reach that spans mobile, PC/console, and beyond.”