Angry Birds developer Rovio has lowered its 2019 outlook for revenues and profits.

In the case of revenues, it now predicts sales will be somewhere between €295-310 million, down from an original prediction of €300-330 million.

It said this ‘slight lowering’ was due to lower revenue expectations from older games and reduced brand licensing.

More significantly Rovio has also lowered its profit outlook from 5-8 per cent (previously 9-11 per cent).

The company has positioned this as a long-term investment as it will be spending more than planned on UA marketing.

UA costs are expected to be 35-40 per cent of total games revenues for 2019, with an average payback time of 12 months.

Spend now, profit more, later

“We see a window of opportunity in the market to scale up our top games and we are seizing this opportunity,” commented CEO Kati Levoranta.

“The continued good performance of Angry Birds Dream Blast, which reached a yearly gross bookings run-rate of €70 million in August, enables scaling up user acquisition to record numbers in the third quarter.

“With additional investment in UA we want to maximize the opportunity to grow our games business in Q4 and set a good baseline for next year,” says Rovio’s CEO Kati Levoranta.

Levoranta also revealed Rovio plans to soft launch 2-3 new IPs during 2019, with the hope of launching 1-3 new games in 2020.

Rovio recently launched new match-puzzler Sugar Blast.