Disney filing places value on Hulu

Disney has valued The Handmaid’s Tale SVOD provider Hulu at around US$9.26 billion (€8.13 billion), according to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing made this week.

The Handmaid’s Tale

The SEC filing, submitted on Wednesday (November 21), shows that Disney made US$450 million in “capital contribution” to Hulu in 2018.

The platform, in which Disney will have a 60% stake upon completion of the 21st Century Fox acquisition in the first half of 2019, has around 20 million US subs.

Disney’s current 30% stake in the platform is valued at around US$2.42 billion, but post-Fox merger, that interest will rise to US$6.1 billion, according to reports.

The filing has also shed more light on Disney’s plans around third-party dealings for its content, highlighting that following the launch of Disney+ in late 2019, the business “may not license its films to third parties” for VOD or 18-month pay TV windows, as well as subsequent free and pay TV windows.

Disney details that it had licensed exclusive domestic pay TV rights to Netflix for all films released theatrically only during calendar years 2016 through 2018, with the exception of DreamWorks films, which are licensed to Showtime under a separate deal.

The Mouse has also said that, following the completion of the Fox deal, it expects the combined company to have approximately US$40 billion of short and long-term debt, and interest expense of approximately US$2 billion per year.

Elsewhere in the document, Disney revealed that ESPN has around 86 million domestic subscribers, while Disney Channel and Freeform have 89 million and 88 million subs, respectively. Internationally, ESPN has 157 million subscribers, while Disney Channel has 225 million.

Disney also divulged subscriber numbers for the A+E Networks portfolio, in which it has a 50% stake. While A&E and History has the most domestic subscribers with 89 million, Lifetime has 88 million, LMN and Viceland (A+E has a 50% stake in the Vice channel) have 67 million, while FYI has 54 million.

Disney employed 201,000 people worldwide as of September 2018.