Softbank buys an additional 22.7% of Supercell

    We might have thought that the Softbank and Supercell acquisition story was over after the 2013 purchase of 51% of Supercell’s shares for $1.5 Billion. But news broke this morning that Softbank has acquired an additional 22.7%, bringing their total shares to 73.2% on a fully-diluted basis.

    Softbank’s announcement says that this 22.7% has come from the stock held by existing external investors and that Supercell will continue operating independently with Ilkka Paananen still serving as CEO.

    In 2014 Supercell reported a massive revenue of $1.7 billion and earnings of $565 million, which certainly will raise their valuation up from €3 billion. The question then is what is Supercell’s new valuation, and are all existing investors bought out now?

    In their initial acquisition Supercell and Softbank talked about how they share a similar 300 year vision for gaming, meaning this acquisition could help keep the companies closer. But at the same time Softbank, with a majority of shares, can initiate Supercell IPO, which certainly could easily raise a similar number to King’s $7 billion float.

    Questions to Supercell and their existing investors were not returned at the time of posting.

    Update: More information can be found on the Accel blog!