Comcast, Disney Move Up Start of Hulu Negotiations

livemint.com:

Comcast and Disney have agreed to move up the date on which they begin negotiating the fate of their jointly-owned streaming service, Hulu, the cable company’s CEO said Wednesday. The companies plan to begin work negotiating a potential sale of Comcast’s minority stake in Hulu on Sept. 30, months earlier than their initial January start date.

Hulu, home to shows such as “The Handmaid’s Tale" and “The Bear," is likely worth more than $30 billion, Comcast chief executive Brian Roberts said. The negotiations between Disney and Comcast come as entertainment companies struggle to make their services profitable and determine what consumers are willing to pay. At the same time, linear TV channels are losing subscribers rapidly, putting more pressure on companies to turn a profit on streaming.

Disney became a majority owner of Hulu when it acquired 21st Century Fox’s major entertainment assets in 2019, a deal that boosted the company’s stake in the streaming service from one-third to two-thirds. It left Comcast with a one-third stake. Under an agreement reached that same year, both Disney and Comcast have the right to force a sale of Comcast’s stake at fair-market value, with a minimum valuation of $27.5 billion for the whole service.

Last week, Disney and Comcast decided to move up the date on which either company can force a sale of the cable company’s Hulu stake to Sept. 30, Roberts told investors at Goldman Sachs’s Communacopia and Technology investor conference in San Francisco. Doing so will provide investors of both companies better clarity of what it will mean for them, he said.