Hulu Prepares Public Option

August 19th, 2010

Hulu plans to introduce an initial public offering as early as this fall.

Although Hulu gets a lot of traffic, it has had difficulty turning its popularity into profit. It hopes to change things by making an initial public offering.
An IPO could have the additional benefits of increasing confidence in the company, possibly luring back content producers like Viacom, which recently removed popular shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report from Hulu.
However, with many other companies poised to go public and a lack of confidence in IPOs in general, going public may not solve Hulu’s problems.

The planned IPO could value the company at more than $2 billion.
Hulu reported that it made $100 million last year, but it is also on track to make that amount again in the first half of this year.
Hulu produced more than $566 million ads this past June – more than double YouTube’s amount.