Angry Birds maker Rovio on track for 2012 IPO

Angry Birds maker Rovio is on track to file for an initial public offering that would value the company at more than $1 billion later next year, the company’s chief marketing officer Peter Vesterbacka said.

Vesterbacka told Bloomberg in an interview that the company is not ready to file for an IPO but would likely be ready later next year. Rovio has turned its popular game into a complete franchise, where merchandising (like selling stuffed angry birds) makes up anywhere between 10 and 20 percent of the company’s revenue, he said. Rovio is in the process of raising funding that would value it at more than $1 billion, according to earlier reports.

But Rovio executives typically make off-the-cuff comments like this, so it’s hard to gauge whether or not to take Vesterbacka’s comments seriously. The company’s head of global brand advertising Wibe Wagemans indicated to VentureBeat at the GamesBeat conference in San Francisco earlier this year that Rovio was in the process of raising money.

Angry Birds is a popular game on mobile devices in which players fling birds at structures to destroy pigs. It started on smartphones like the iPhone and on tablets like the iPad. It has since expanded to a large number of other platforms like web browsers and TV boxes that are powered by operating systems like Android.

The company finished raising its last round of money — $42 million –  in March this year. Rovio has been expanding through 2010 and 2011 and currently has 50 employees in Finland.