In its SEC filing last week, The Walt Disney Co. (Disney) included its current valuation of streaming service, Hulu at $9.26bn. Reuters reports that this was among a trove of details regarding Disney’s planned merger with 21st Century Fox (Fox) in a deal valued at $71.3bn. Once the Fox transaction is completed in 2019, Disney will gain a controlling 60% interest in Hulu. The current valuation is slightly above the $9bn at which it was pegged in April but is lower than some analysts had estimated.
In 2016, Time Warner bought a 10% stake in Hulu for $583mn and at that stage Hulu’s value was pegged at below $6bn. The other partners in the venture (Comcast and Fox), each own a 30% interest in the company. Disney said that its current 30% stake in Hulu is worth $2.425bn. Once the Fox acquisition is completed, Disney’s interest in Hulu will rise to $6.1bn — a sum that includes a $1.25bn bump for gaining control, according to the filing. Hulu, which is available in the US and Japan, has c. 20mn subscribers. However, it remains tiny in comparison with Netflix which has 137mn subscribers worldwide and a $114.3bn market cap.
