According to Comicbook, it has been recently announced that The Walt Disney Company is to acquire 33% stake that Comcast’s NBCUniversal currently owns in Hulu. This deal is currently in motion after Comcast exercised its right under the put/call arrangement between the two companies. The deal is expected to be finalized on the first of December. When the deal is finalized, Disney will be paying NBCUniversal $8.61 billion. Since 2019 Disney and Comcast have been in a currently stated agreement over Hulu.
The announcement states, “Under the terms of the put/call arrangement, by December 1, Disney expects it will pay NBCU approximately $8.61 billion, representing NBCU’s percentage of the $27.5 billion guaranteed floor value for Hulu that was set when the companies entered into their agreement in 2019, minus the anticipated outstanding capital call contributions payable by NBCU to Disney.”
The announcement continued, “Under the appraisal process agreed to by Disney and Comcast, Hulu’s equity fair value will be assessed as of September 30, 2023, and if the value is ultimately determined to be greater than the guaranteed floor value, Disney will pay NBCU its percentage of the difference between the equity fair value and the guaranteed floor value. While the timing of the appraisal process is uncertain, we anticipate it should be completed during the 2024 calendar year.”
According to Comic Book, earlier in the year Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that the company was open to selling some of its networks such as ABC, FX, and Freeform. This announcement was due to Iger’s plan to cut down spending by an estimated 5.5 billion.
Iger said, “We’re going to be open-minded there too, not necessarily about spinning ESPN off, but about looking for strategic partners that can either help us with distribution or content. But we want to stay in the sports business. Sports is very, very attractive media and we have a unique position and we feel that we should stay in it.”
Iger continued, “Over time when I came back, I was open-minded about Hulu because there is this agreement with Comcast that actually calls for a transaction, their stake to us, sometime in 2024 and I didn’t want that to be an automatic. I wanted to look at that objectively. I spent a lot of time looking at that as part of the future of our streaming business and ultimately concluded that we would be better off having Hulu than not having Hulu.”