Angry Birds' Rovio self-valued at $1 billion, may seek IPO in 2012

Angry Birds developer Rovio Entertainment's chief marketing officer Peter Vesterbacka has revealed that his company is probably worth more than $1 billion, and could file for an initial public offering as early as next year. The Finnish developer makes additional revenue via advertising, in-game purchases, and physical merchandise, and recently acquired the animation studio, Kombo. The company is currently hiring in both the U.S. and China, and Vesterbacka noted that he "is weighing more acquisitions."

"We're insanely profitable,” Vesterbacka told Bloomberg Television in a recent interview. "We are very, very profitable. We're not a publicly traded company yet, but we can fund our own growth."

Vesterbacka also revealed that the company is working on a "20-year plan" for the Angry Birds brand, across multiple distribution channels.

He claims that the smash-hit mobile game currently has about 150 million "active users," and asserts that merchandise sales account for somewhere between ten and twenty percent of the business. Factor in the upcoming Angry Birds movie plans and a number of past and present promotional tie-ins with other entities like Starbucks and Barnes & Noble, and Vesterbacka's supposition that Rovio could have "a good shot at being the first entertainment brand that has a billion fans," doesn't seem like a complete pipe dream.