News

Angry Birds 2 and Dream Blast drive up Rovio games revenue to $74m in Q1

Angry Birds Dream Blast is already the games division's second-biggest revenue driver

Angry Birds 2 and Dream Blast drive up Rovio games revenue to $74m in Q1

Rovio games revenue grew 16.6 per cent year-on-year to €66.3 million ($73.7m) in Q1 2019.

Gross bookings for the division meanwhile grew 12.3 per cent to €65.8 million ($73.2m). Rovio put the growth down the strong performance of its flagship title Angry Birds 2 and the January launch of Angry Birds Dream Blast.

Dream start

Gross bookings for the latter came in at €6.9 million in Q1. However, Rovio noted that in March the quarterly gross bookings run-rate for Dream Blast had passed €11 million ($12.2m).

That makes it the company’s second biggest game ahead of Angry Birds Friends, which brought in €7.2 million ($8m) for the three months.

Gross bookings for Angry Birds 2 were at €32 million ($35.6m) for the quarter, with the game growing 48 per cent year-on-year.

User acquisition investments in Rovio’s portfolio amounted to 35.8 per cent (€23.7 million) of the games segment's sales - up from 25.7 per cent the year prior.

While the company actually lowered its UA investment in Angry Birds 2, the figure is a record for the company, with the majority going toward the launch of Dream Blast.

Rovio currently has 14 games in development, two of which are in soft launch. It aims to launch its next game globally during the second half of 2019.

Rising sales, falling profit

Sales for Rovio’s brand licensing division fell 48.2 per cent to €4.6 million ($5.1m), though this was expected given lower revenue from The Angry Birds Movie. The sequel, The Angry Birds Movie 2, is set to release in August.

Overall Rovio revenue came in at €70.9 million ($78.9m) for the quarter, up 7.8 per cent year-on-year. Operating profit fell 16 per cent to €7.5 million ($8.3m) compared to last year. Excluding Hatch, which Rovio is looking to offload some of its shares in, profits hit €9.3 million ($10.3m).

The developer expects group revenue to grow to €300 to €330 million ($334m to $367m) in 2019 with a profit margin of between nine and 11 per cent. Excluding Hatch once again, the profit margin is forecast between 12 and 14 per cent.

For more insights into Rovio, we recently covered just how much money the company's games have made, prior to this latest financial report.


Head of Content

Craig Chapple is a freelance analyst, consultant and writer with specialist knowledge of the games industry. He has previously served as Senior Editor at PocketGamer.biz, as well as holding roles at Sensor Tower, Nintendo and Develop.