By Anne Kauranen; Edited by News Gate Team
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Reuters, February 9 – Rovio (ROVIO.HE), a Finnish game developer best known for its Angry Birds series, reported a dip in fourth-quarter profit on Thursday and predicted the first-ever decline in the worldwide mobile gaming industry in 2022.
According to the company’s financial statement, “the market normalized after supercharged growth during the commencement of COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021, when the worldwide market expanded annually by 30.1% and 12.5%, respectively.”
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Rovio, which is presently the focus of a buyout approach from its larger, U.S.-listed rival Playtika, said that Apple’s iPhone privacy modifications had a negative impact on game producers’ earnings.
The gamemaker claimed that “Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework has significantly damaged game publishers’ ability to target high-value users.”
Rovio’s fourth-quarter adjusted operating profit fell by 55% to 5.9 million euros ($6.3 million), while its revenue fell by 2.5%.
Rovio claimed that while its games surpassed the competition, its 2022 loss was the result of a writedown on a subsidiary that had attempted to create Hatch, a 5G gaming platform that never saw widespread commercial success.
The company added that it anticipates flat revenue and profit growth this year and noted that the mobile gaming market showed signs of stabilizing near the end of the year.
“It was gratifying to see the U.S. market reverse to moderate growth after five straight quarters of contraction,” CEO Alex Pelletier-Normand said in a statement.
Rovio announced on Monday that it had begun a strategic assessment and had engaged in “preliminary nonbinding conversations” to take Playtika’s offer for its shares into consideration.
($1 = 0.9319 euros)
By Anne Kauranen; Edited by News Gate Team
