Disney Values Hulu at More Than $9 Billion

In a recent regulatory finding, Disney pegged Hulu's value at a whopping $9.26 billion (with a 'b') according to Deadline. As part of an SEC filing, Disney laid out how they came to that estimate by providing details on their planned merger with 21st Century Fox (with that merger being valued at more than $70 billion) on Wednesday's intentionally designed data dump. After that transaction is finalized in 2019, Disney will have a 60 percent controlling interest in the streaming juggernaut.

Deadline reports that the $9.26 billion estimate exceeds what Hulu was valued at this past April, but also sits below what some analysts had predicted. Hulu's value appears to have gone way up since Time Warner purchased a 10 percent stake in it back in 2016, when it's value was considered to be beneath $6 billion. In addition to the 30 percent stake that Disney currently has (which they value at $2.425 billion...lots of numbers here), both Comcast and Fox also have 30 percent stakes.

According to Disney, once their Time Warner merger has been completed, they say their interest in Hulu will be worth $6.1 billion, which their filing says includes a $1.25 billion raise for acquiring control. Hulu currently has 20 million subscribers, which in combination with its valuation would seem to be massive, except in comparison to Netflix, which (thanks to all their originals) has 137 million subscribers and a market value of $114.3 billion.