Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen talking at company headquarters in Helsinki, Finland February 15, 2017. REUTERS/Tuomas Forsell
Helsinki: Finnish game giant Supercell saw its sales plateau last year amid harsh competition from its Japanese rival Nintendo's smash hit Pokemon Go, the company said Wednesday.
Supercell's sales in 2016 were 2.1 billion euros ($2.31 billion), showing no improvement over 2015 when the company saw its revenues triple from a year before.
Last June, a consortium led by Chinese technology giant Tencent bought a majority stake of 76.9 percent in Supercell from Japanese mobile firm SoftBank for $10.2 billion (9.65 billion euros).
Supercell's earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation grew by eight percent to 917 million euros ($1.01 billion), leading chief executive Ilkka Paananen to celebrate 2016 as the company's "best year so far".
The group is not listed and did not publish a full earnings report.
"We released our fourth game, Clash Royale, which has been really successful so far -- topping the charts in 131 countries right away and has now spent a total of 130 days at number one in the US," Paananen said in a statement.
Clash Royale, a competitive multiplayer defence game, was released in March 2016 as a spinoff from Supercell's previous hit game, Clash of Clans, which also remained popular among players.
"What makes me proud is that we've managed to stay as a small company despite this success. At the end of 2016, we were 213 people in total in our five offices across the world," Paananen continued.
Supercell was founded in 2010 and saw rapid growth in subsequent years despite releasing just four games so far.
