Skint AT&T flogs its 10% of Hulu for $1.43 billion

Having dropped $85 billion on Time Warner AT&T needs to raise some cash sharpish and getting out of OTT TV company Hulu us a start.

Hulu is a private company that is roughly 60% owned by Disney, 30% by Comcast and 10% AT&T. The latter stake (9.5% to be precise) is being bought back by Hulu itself for $1.43 billion, valuing the whole company at $15 billion. Hulu will presumably apportion the stake such at Disney owns two thirds of the company and Comcast one third.

“We thank AT&T for their support and investment over the past two years and look forward to collaboration in the future,” said Hulu CEO Randy Freer. “WarnerMedia will remain a valued partner to Hulu for years to come as we offer customers the best of TV, live and on demand, all in one place.”

AT&T says it will use the case to pay down its debt pile a bit, but the ongoing relationship of its expensively acquired media business with OTT players like Hulu will remain a source of intrigue. Disney recently announced its own streaming service, as did Comcast’s NBCUniversal at the start of this year.

On top of that Apple is getting funny ideas, Netflix and Amazon continue to throw money at original content and you’ve got all the various on-demand versions of traditional broadcasters. They can’t all go it alone. So the aggregation of this proliferation of video on-demand is a critical issue. How long WarnerMedia will remain a valued partner of Hulu now that AT%T doesn’t own a piece of it remains to be seen.