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Rovio looking to sell over 30 per cent of its stake in streaming service Hatch

To stream or not to stream that is the question

Rovio looking to sell over 30 per cent of its stake in streaming service Hatch

Finnish games and entertainment giant Rovio is looking to reduce its stake in cloud games service Hatch Entertainment.

Rovio currently owns 80 per cent of Hatch, but CEO Kati Levoranta says it intends to reduce this position to "below 50 per cent", meaning it's likely to part with over 30 per cent of the company. 

The Angry Birds firm says that Hatch is seeking external funding and are open to more partnerships in order to better develop the service further.

Going by Rovio's Q4 financial results, the streaming service has been something of a drain on its operating profit. The company said that its adjusted operating profit margin for these three months was 7.2 per cent; excluding Hatch from its calculations, Rovio says this figure would be 12.2 per cent. For the full 2018 calendar year, those figures are 11.1 per cent and 13.7 per cent respectively. 

The statement came alongside the Rovio's financial results, which stated that Angry Birds 2 has increased by 77 per cent year-on-year for gross bookings in Q4. 

Better develop

Since revealing the firm's financial results Rovio’s shares initially dropped 9.8 per cent.

Hatch Entertainment recently teamed up with Japan’s largest mobile operator DOCOMO to bring the platform to TV and mobiles across the country.

On top of this UNESCO and Hatch have partnered to introduce better educational games for one of the services on the streaming platform, Hatch Kids.


Deputy Editor

Matthew Forde is the deputy editor at PocketGamer.biz and also a member of the Pocket Gamer Podcast. You can find him on Twitter @MattForde64 talking about stats, data and everything pop culture related - particularly superheroes.