AT&T and Hulu today announced this afternoon that the telecom giant has sold its 9.5% stake in Hulu back to the company. The deal which does not any governmental approval was for $1.43 billion, valuing the streaming company at $15 billion. AT&T had been reportedly looking to sell their stake — which they got as part of their acquisition of Time Warner — in order to reduce the debt from the deal.
With the acquisition, Disney has continued to grow their majority stake in the streaming company. As part of of Disney’s acquisition of Fox, they acquired 30% of Hulu — giving the media giant a 60% majority ownership of the streaming service.
As AT&T-owned WarnerMedia is expected to launch their own streaming service late next year, owning a minority share in Hulu did not make strategic sense. Comcast, which owns the other 30% of Hulu, has expressed interest in keeping their share, but that may change as they have since announced plans for their own streaming service in 2020.