Rovio's fortunes are on the rise in the first half of 2016

Rovio Entertainment made a bit of a surprise move today by publishing a brief report of its earnings for the first half of 2016, and the reason is clear: the numbers look good, with revenue for both Rovio as a whole and its games division up year-over-year.

What's notable here is that Rovio appears to be making a show of riding a financial updraft; the company typically only publishes a brief note about its full-year earnings every April, and for the last few years those earnings reports have been less than stellar.

Now, the company says it earned €76.4 million (~$86.1 million USD) in revenue during the first six months of 2016, roughly €10.3 million more than it did in the same period last year.

It did not break that figure down to spell out how much came from games vs. its other interests (which include cartoons and toys), but did note that revenue from the Rovio games business was up 24 percent year-over-year during the first half of 2016.

Also, these figures reportedly do not include earnings from the Angry Birds film adaptation that came to theaters in May; Rovio says the film did well enough that it is planning to produce a sequel.

Earlier this year Rovio's new games chief Wilhelm Taht talked up the film to Gamasutra, even as he acknowledged that "2014 and 2015 were challenging years" that drove the company to refocus on free-to-play games.

"We're keeping our heads down and building out our games as services," Taht told Gamasutra. "We acknowledge that we're living in a live ops era."