Disney’s SEC filing sheds light on Hulu value

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

The SEC filing, submitted on Wednesday (November 21), shows that Disney made $450m 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 20m US subs.

Disney’s current 30% stake in the platform is valued at around $2.42bn, but post-Fox merger, that interest will rise to $6.1bn, 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 $40bn of short and long-term debt, and interest expense of approximately $2bn per year.

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

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 89m, Lifetime has 88m, LMN and Viceland (A+E has a 50% stake in the Vice channel) have 67m, while FYI has 54m.

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