The Walt Disney Company has now officially confirmed that it will purchase the remaining one-third stake in Hulu from Comcast. As previously reported, today was the first day that either party could begin the process of a sale.
Originally, the first day was not expected to start until early in 2024. However, Comcast and Disney appeared to be in a hurry to start proceedings after recently speeding up the timeline to allow the start of the process of a sale to begin from November 1st.
With Nov. 1 now here, Disney has wasted no time in confirming its intention to purchase the remaining one-third stake from Comcast. Disney says that it expects to pay $8.61 billion for the remaining stake, and by December 1st.
This one-third value points to the overall value of Hulu being $27.5 billion. This is also what was considered to be the guaranteed floor value, based on the original agreement both companies entered into back in 2019.
As previously reported, both companies recently employed a separate investment bank to help determine the actual value of Hulu. Based on the appraisals of those two banks, the final value of Hulu could be determined to be much higher.
As part of today’s announcement, Disney confirmed that, if the appraisal does result in a higher overall value, Disney will then pay Comcast its percentage of the difference.
At present, it still remains unclear how long the appraisal process will take to complete, so it might be some time before the final valuation is confirmed. On that point, Disney explained that it currently anticipates the valuation process to be finalized sometime in 2024.
Regardless of how long the process does take, it is now clear that Disney will soon own all of Hulu.
