原文作者：Rob Fahey 译者：Megan Shieh

通过塑造《愤怒的小鸟》品牌，Rovio一度成为了智能手机游戏领域中规模最大的公司；目前该公司计划进行首次公开募股（IPO），新股总值与5-6年前的估值呈鲜明对比。

任何有资历的风险资本家/企业投资专家，在谈到成功“退场”这一议题时都可能会列出许多的关键因素。“退场”指的是一家羽翼未丰的公司通过上市或溢价出售的方式为其投资者带来利益。他们可能会谈及估值的运作方式、如何评估风险预测、评估企业知识产权的不同方式、以及该公司所拥有的人才和潜力，等等；除此之外，他们肯定都会谈到“时机”。

许多因素都很重要，但如果时机不对，它们的价值就会大打折扣。在像电子游戏这样快速移动的领域里，再好的技术/IP如果错过了它理应引领的趋势，就无法达到预期的效果。

Angry Birds Transformers(from insidemobileapps.com)

既然要谈时机的重要性，就很难不拿Rovio的IPO来做例子。它在NASDAQ（全国证券交易商自动报价系统协会）赫尔辛基（芬兰首都）分支的募资徘徊在3000万欧元（3600万美元）左右，并允许部分股东出售股票套现。很明显，这与Rovio五年前大肆宣扬的数字相差甚远。

2011年，Zynga提出以23亿美元的价格并购该公司；一年后，Rovio的并购总额被吹捧到了90亿美元的天价，前提是IPO必须在几个月或一年内实施。目前正在计划的最低报价仅仅是股市的冰山一角，明确标志着Rovio近年来的转变。

值得注意的是，能够将IPO提上日程就证明该公司目前确实做得相当不错。《愤怒的小鸟》电影在全球票房中表现出色（足以在2019年内推出续集），刺激了衍生商品的销量，并为该系列游戏的收入带来了强劲的增长。由于《愤怒的小鸟》是该公司唯一的热门/成功游戏，所以大家将Rovio看作是“开发了愤怒小鸟的公司”（尽管它希望能在全新的多人游戏《Battle Bay》上取得成功）。话虽如此，《愤怒的小鸟》横跨了一系列的媒介和商品，可以看得出Rovio在推动品牌授权业务方面已经轻车熟路了。

保持谦虚态度，将首次公开发行的股票总额定在3600万美元，对于这么一家公司而言无疑是正确的选择。考虑到该公司所拥有的内容，它做得算是相当不错了。不过如果当初把握准了时机，这家公司将会为它的投资者和创始人赚取数十亿美元。

然而，那些在2011和2012年间想要以天价收购该公司的企业，难道就真的是脑子坏掉了吗？原意为了当初的Rovio花那么多钱？

其实这些估值在某种程度上属于泡沫经济——简单地说，直到人们发现Rovio的盈利规模（似乎）无法超越《愤怒的小鸟》IP之前，它给人的感觉就像是电子游戏领域的明日之星。除此之外，价值的本质也值得考虑。正如开篇所暗示的那样，购买一家企业的原因有很多种。一个普通的投资者选择购买股票主要是因为他们期望回报；这种回报可能来自一家公司突飞猛进的成功，或是被溢价收购的大公司。

然而当一家公司并购其他公司时，情况就更复杂了。它们可能会并购：潜在的竞争对手，宁愿现在整合，也不愿在未来争锋相对（例如：Facebook收购了Instagram）；可以带入到未来产品里的技术/科技（就像苹果公司的大多数秘密并购案一样）；IP（迪士尼就是最好的例子，并购了Lucasfilm, Marvel 和 Pixar）；或是产品线（苹果收购Beats就是属于这一类）；也可能是人才和技术。这最后一种类有时被称为acqui- hire——当一家公司收购另一家公司时，不是为了该企业的产品，而是想要占有创造了这些产品的团队。

并购案通常会包含来自上述列表的一些因素。那么，这与Rovio潜在的数十亿估值有什么关系？分析家们之所以会给Rovio估值90亿美元，很可能是因为他们被巨大的泡沫经济表象蒙住了双眼——Rovio曾是电子游戏领域中的佼佼者，并且每个人都知道电子游戏行业前途无量（事实也是如此）；受到分析家怂恿的投资者们，会在我们所有人都意识到“问题”之前，把股票价格抬到令人眩晕的高度。“问题”指的是：Rovio只有《愤怒的小鸟》，而且当初没有预料到F2P模型的重要性,对游戏市场的转变应对不足。

然而，Zynga的出价（23亿美元）则是基于完全不同的逻辑。 Zynga并不是真的需要《愤怒的小鸟》，也没有打算为这个IP付出数十亿的代价。2011年间，Zynga是Facebook社交游戏开发商中的佼佼者，同时也是F2P商业模式的先驱之一，但在移动领域却名不见经传。当时它的核心领域是网页游戏，尚且未能把这些专业知识和受众移植到智能手机上的技术和策略。Zynga被远远地甩在了后面，而它自己也很清楚；因此它提出收购Rovio并不是为了获得《愤怒的小鸟》，而是想要将创造了世界上最成功手游的工作室收入囊中。简而言之，Zynga想要的是‘研发并发布一个超热门移动游戏的经验’，这在2011年的时候十分稀有，可以说是无价之宝。

Rovio目前是一个非常有能力的公司，而它也得到了恰当的重视。不过Rovio五年前拥有的价值只会转瞬即逝——仅仅是在智能手机上推出一款热门游戏的专业知识。对于合适的出价者而言，这些知识和经验确实价值数十亿。但在今天，它几乎毫无价值，虽说Rovio靠着《愤怒的小鸟》在全球范围内赚了不少钱，但怎么说都比不上数十亿美元的收购。

除了在高峰时期销售，在低谷中买进之外，一家公司必须认识到自己拥有的实际价值，这些价值的受众，以及价值存在的窗口。 Rovio在这点上做错了——也许是因为过度自信，也许是错误地评估了市场方向，但至少他们能够渡过难关，得到第二次机会。大多数的公司不会有这样的二次机会。未能对公司的价值进行诚实和深入的评估，这是一个代价高昂的错误；而机不可失，失不再来。

本文由游戏邦编译，转载请注明来源，或咨询微信zhengjintiao

Talk to any good venture capitalist or expert in company investments, and they’ll likely list many of the same factors as being vital for a successful “exit” – the point when a fledgling company brings home the bacon for its investors either through a stock market flotation or a high-value sale to a larger player. They’ll talk about how valuations work, about learning to assess risk profiles, about the different ways of valuing a company’s IP, its talent and its potential; but they’ll all, at some point, definitely talk about timing.

Lots of factors are important, but without the right timing, they don’t count for much. That goes doubly in a rapid-moving sector like videogames, where the best technology or IP can fall flat if it misses the trend it ought rightly to have led.

It’s hard not to look at Rovio’s plans for its IPO, revealed this week, and think about the importance of timing. The company’s intentions are modest; it will float around €30m ($36m) worth of new shares on the Helsinki branch of the NASDAQ. The total valuation this would give the company isn’t clear, but it’s obviously a long way from the kind of numbers touted around Rovio as little as five years ago.

Back in 2011, Zynga offered to buy the firm for $2.3 billion; a year later, numbers as high as $9 billion were being touted for an IPO expected to be happening within a matter of months, perhaps a year at most. The minimal offering now being planned, little more than a toe in the waters of the stock market, shows just how much has changed for Rovio.

It’s worth pointing out, of course, that the fact that this IPO is happening at all is a sign that the company is actually doing pretty well at the moment. The Angry Birds movie acquitted itself solidly at the global box office – enough to put a sequel on the slate for 2019 – and in turn drove solid growth in sales of Angry Birds merchandise and revenues for the Angry Birds games. The company has not, in other words, learned how to be anything other than The Angry Birds Company (though it’s hoping for success with its new, commendably featherless, multiplayer title Battle Bay) – rather, it has learned how to be better at being The Angry Birds Company, executing effectively on its sole successful IP across a range of media and merchandise.

A modest IPO with an initial offering of shares in the tens of millions is about right for the company described above; a firm with a single strong IP that it’s learned to exploit effectively across movies, mobile games and merchandise. The company is doing well with what it has. But still; with better timing, this is a company that would have earned billions for its investors and founders. Was that just passing madness? Were those 2011 and 2012 valuations just terrible business sense on the part of those so keen to part with their cash for a slice of Rovio back then?
To some degree, certainly, there was an element of a bubble involved in those valuations – and the simple narrative, that Rovio looked like the next big thing until it turned out that it didn’t know how to bottle the lightning that struck Angry Birds, holds a degree of truth. Alongside that, though, it’s worth thinking a little bit about the nature of value. As hinted at in the opening paragraph, there are a lot of reasons for buying a company. An ordinary investor buys shares because they expect a return (there are other reasons, some complex, emotional and not readily analysed by a focus on economic incentives, but it’s primarily about return); that return may come from the company being a soaraway success, or from the company being so desirable to another, larger company that it is acquired at a premium.

When companies buy other companies, though, the picture is more complex. They might be buying a potential competitor they’d rather integrate than face off against (think of Facebook buying Instagram, for example). They could be acquiring technology they think will fuel their own future products (as is the case with most of Apple’s quiet acquisitions). They could be buying IP (Disney is the king of this, buying Lucasfilm, Marvel and Pixar), or they could be buying a product line (Apple buying Beats comes under this category), or they could be buying talent and know-how. This last category is sometimes called an acqui-hire, when a company purchases another not because they want their products (the product is often shut down – this happens to successful small software firms all the time, to the utter exasperation of their users) but because they want the team who created them.

Usually, an acquisition will include a few elements from that list in its reasoning process. So how does that relate to Rovio’s potential multi-billion valuations? Well, the stock market figures from analysts, who reckoned as high as $9 billion, was probably simple madness riding on the outer skin of a very big and volatile bubble. Rovio was the biggest name in mobile games, and everyone knew mobile games were going to be huge (as indeed they have become); investors, urged on by analysts, would have driven up the stock price to dizzying heights before the problem that we’re now all aware of came to light, namely that Rovio only really had one mobile game, and that it hadn’t anticipated the importance of the F2P model.

Only a couple of years after that hypothetical IPO, Rovio would have been in a disastrous situation – Angry Birds was at its lowest ebb, no other IPs were picking up the slack, the F2P model had left them in the dust as competitors like King and Supercell had soared past them. Unlike the real world, where all of that happened but the company was able to plod onwards, regroup and achieve some modicum of success, our hypothetical multi-billion-dollar IPO Rovio would have lost billions in shareholder value, and it’s unlikely any of the senior team would have survived the ensuing revolt. (Though, of course, they’d all have been stonkingly rich, so don’t shed too many tears for their hypothetical woes.)

Zynga’s offer of $2.3 billion, however, was based on an entirely different logic. Zynga didn’t really need Angry Birds, and wasn’t really prepared to pay billions for it. In 2011, Zynga was the most successful player in the Facebook game space, and one of the leading pioneers of F2P business models – but on mobile, it was nowhere. Its domain was browser games, and it simply hadn’t adopted the technologies and strategies required to move that expertise and audience onto smartphones. Zynga was being left behind and it knew it; it offered to buy Rovio not in order to own Angry Birds, but in order to own the studio that had created the world’s most successful mobile game. In short, Zynga wanted to buy something which back in 2011 was almost impossibly valuable, precisely because it was so rare – experience of creating and launching a hit mobile game.

That’s why timing is so crucial; not just because risks and rewards rise and fall over time, but because the very thing which makes a company valuable can change over time. Today, Rovio is a very competent company with a single good IP, and valued appropriately as such. Five years ago, though, Rovio owned something that could only ever be fleeting – just about the only expertise on the planet in launching a hit game on smartphones. That knowledge and experience, to the right bidder, was quite genuinely worth billions (and it’s interesting to wonder what the mobile game space might look like today had Zynga and Rovio actually been able to marry their respective know-how in an effective way); today, it’s almost worthless, with the tale of how Rovio made a global hit out of Angry Birds being worth a minor book deal at best, not a multi-billion dollar acquisition.

That’s the core of why timing is everything. It’s not just about selling at the peak and buying in the troughs; it’s about recognising what it is that a company actually owns that’s valuable, to whom, and what the window for the existence of that value might be. Rovio got this wrong – perhaps through overconfidence, or simply a mistaken assessment of the market’s direction – but at least they were able to weather the storm and are getting a second chance. Most companies don’t. Failing to make an honest and deep assessment of where a company’s value lies is a costly mistake which generally has no do-overs. （Source: gamesindustry.biz ）