SoftBank, GungHo to buy majority stake in Finland’s Supercell for $1.53 bn
16 Oct 2013
Japanese telecoms group SoftBank Corp and its subsidiary GungHo Online Entertainment Inc will jointly acquire a majority stake in Finnish mobile game maker Supercell, for 150 billion yen ($1.53 billion).
SoftBank, which recently acquired a majority stake in US telecoms operator Spirnt, and GungHo will jointly establish a special purpose company in Finland and SoftBank will invest 80 per cent or around $1.24 billion, while GungHo will invest 20 per cent or around $306 million.
Post closing, the special purpose company will hold 51-per cent of Supercell by buying the company stock from existing shareholders for a total $1.53 billion.
Following the transaction, will continue to operate independently and maintain its headquarters in Helsinki, Finland.
Supercell is a mobile game company and its two game apps, Clash of Clans and Hay Day, have reached the top position in Top Grossing ranking of Apple's App Store in 137 countries and 96 countries, respectively.
From February 2013 to August 2013, Supercell was the No.1 publisher in the world among the apps in the Games category of the App Store.
GungHo started its online game business in 2002, and it has since come up with
Puzzle and Dragons game for smartphones that has hit over 19 million downloads in Japan and over 1 million downloads in both North America and South Korea.
Softbank, Japan's third-largest mobile phone company, run by president Masayoshi Son, has recently gone on an acquisition spree in order to offset declining revenues in its home country.
It recently splurged $21.6 billion for a 70 per cent stake in Sprint Nextel Corp, the third-largest wireless carrier in the US, and paid $2.3 billion to acquire its local smaller rival eAccess.