Rovio sees profits halved during 'foundation-building' 2013

Rovio saw its profits cut by more than 50 percent during the 2013 fiscal year, with the company describing the last twelve months as "foundation-building." Notably, the company's financial results showed the company is very eager to push its new Angry Birds business ventures, including animation and video distribution, at an equal pace to its core video game business. The company noted that, in the last year, it has formed a movie animation production team that is currently working on the first Angry Birds film, and a separate animation studio that is putting together 42 Angry Birds TV show episodes. So what of Rovio's game business? The company launched Rovio Stars, its own publishing program, while it pushed its free-to-play transition with Angry Birds Go!. And Angry Birds as a franchise has now seen more than 2 billion downloads in total. For the 2013 fiscal year, Rovio recorded revenues of 156 million euros ($216.3 million), up slightly from 152.2 million euros ($211.0 million) year-over-year, and profits of 26.9 million euros ($37.3 million), down 51.5 percent from 55.5 million euros ($77.0 million) year-over-year. Rovio's CFO Herkko Soininen noted that, if this year's various investments perform as they should, Rovio's 2014 fiscal year should be far better reading. The Wall Street Journal has an eye-opening set of charts to go with the news, that plot Rovio's revenue versus other big mobile hitters King and Supercell, as well as Minecraft studio Mojang.