:quality(75)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/bloomberglinea/5KBLKKZF2VDELFD33OMXZXQZA4.jpg "A model of Angry Birds character 'Red' sits on display inside the Rovio Entertainment Oy headquarters in Espoo, Finland.")
Bloomberg — The maker of the Angry Birds mobile games, Rovio Entertainment Oyj, soared the most on record on Friday after saying strong sales growth in the first quarter would continue for the remainder of the year.
Shares rose as much as 21.5% in Helsinki, the most since the game developer’s 2017 initial public offering, amid heavy trading volume. The company’s revenue rose 27% to 85 million euros ($90 million), topping estimates. Adjusted operating profit came in at 10 million euros, more than twice the average analyst projection.
:quality(75)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/bloomberglinea/DZ3MSF4NV5AUNDKO3TMLIQFOFY.png "Rovio shares rise most on record on Friday")
“Rovio had a huge earnings beat in the first quarter,” analyst Atte Riikola at Inderes Oy, said in a note, adding he expects Rovio to invest less in growth and still reach its “strong earnings outlook.”
“This is reflected on the bottom line with force and puts upward pressure on our earnings estimates,” he said.
Two of Rovio’s staple games had their best quarters in years. The biggest game, Angry Birds 2, had gross bookings of 30.3 million euros, the most since early 2019, while Angry Birds Friends generated the most revenue since late 2016. Angry Birds Journey, launched in January, brought in 10.1 million euros in gross bookings. Rovio also said its games have now been downloaded more than 5 billion times.
Some of the sales growth came as a result of record spending on marketing, with user acquisition investments rising to more than 31 million euros, equivalent to more than a third of the Games unit’s revenue.
