Back in October we wrote about the negotiations Sulake was having with its employees about reducing the work force. The plan back then was to reduce the workforce by 20%, which would have meant something along the lines of 40 people. They ended up sacking 28 people, to cut costs, and thus stayed well below the initial plan of 20%. Juhani Lassila, their Communication Exec stated in the Finnish M&M article that the current restructuring and cuts have dramatically improved their profitability.
While 28 people were fired, I’ve heard from close sources that others have left the company of their own will and the environment isn’t all that lively inside the company. This of course is completely natural when a startup that has grown to a multinational gaming house has its first real employee negotiations and ends up cutting its workforce by this much.
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According to Kauppalehti, Sulake Corporation’s 2008 was by a small margin a profitable one. The group of companies turned over 50,1 million euros and managed to create a 1 million euro profit on it. The company’s earnings before tax were still in the red, but the IFRS calculated tax receivables turned the company statements profitable. The company has been injected with some 45 million euros of investor money of which some 20 million euros have been put aside for the losses of the previous years.
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Sulake, the Finnish company behind the successful Habbo Hotel, has opened up Bobba to public beta. Bobba is a mobile only virtual world and is in very early stages of adoption. I was the 113th registered user on the site. This is something we heard of a while back with Sulake’s report on their 2008 profit.
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The Finnish corporation behind the overwhelmingly successful teen community site Habbo Hotel, Sulake, has reported a €4.8 million profit for the financial year 2008. The company also created record sales, up more than 20% in December, closing in at €50 million for the year 2008. Even though Sulake has made a nice profit, there is still plenty of downside to cover in the coming years to make up for all the loss it has accumulated over the years. This is the first year Sulake has reported a profit since its founding in 2000.
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The Helsinki based virtual goods operator Sulake saw a profitable first half in 2008. According to Kauppalehti, net profits were around 400 000 euros. The revenues rose approximately 20% to 25,6 million euros for the first 6 months of 2008. Majority of the sales came from sale of virtual goods in Habbo Hotels world wide. According to the company, the annual growth for 2008 will be around 30%.
This is yet more proof, that the company is being heavily pumped into IPO condition. Some sources have told us that 2009 would be the year after all, as the sub-prime crisis smashed the IPO possibilities in 2007.
On Wednesday 27th of August, Sampo Karjalainen – a co-founder of Sulake – will tell the story of the company from the founding moments to this day in an event organised by Tommi Rissanen of Digibusiness – Digital content cluster.
Last year they had Jyri Engeström talk about the path that Jaiku took and it was a huge success, so they decided to redo it this year with another successful Finnish entrepreneur. I sure hope this continues every year and the industry keeps those successful speakers coming.
The event takaes place on the stairs of EGO at Unioninkatu 13, Helsinki at 2pm.
The event is free, but due to limited space – please RSVP to Tommi Rissanen if you’re coming.
Habbo Hotel has registered one hundred millonth member. The user account was created in the UK. M&M, a Finnish marketing and advertising medium, has also stated in their news that in the five and half months of this year about 20 million new characters were created (3,5+ million a month).
M&M also reports on business figures (well, proportional at least). Sulake’s May 2008 is 20% bigger in terms of revenue than in May 2007. It is also said to be positive, making this year the first profitable one.
Eero Aarnio, one of the most famous Finnish designers, has taken his work online to Playforia, the 3D virtual world created by Apaja. He created the timeless Ball Chair in 1963, which has been hugely popular around the world. Apaja, the company behind the casual gaming site, has built Playforia as part of their service portfolio to gather audience from the huge population living in online worlds. According to Asmo Halinen, one of the founders of the company, over 30% of the users in Playforia and Aapeli are over 30 year olds.
Apaja is venturing into the same direction as Sulake, who has done a lot of co-operation with 3rd party content suppliers in their Habbo Hotels. It’s definitely a feasible way of bringing in valuable content and creating that link between the virtual and real world that users normally crave for in some sense.
Disclosure: the author is a former employee of Apaja.
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