Hulu ‘on track’ for 23 million subs

Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale

Hulu is on track to reach over 23 million subscribers by year end, according to Hulu CEO Randy Freer who discussed the topic at Business Insider’s Ignition conference.

The Hulu chief said that the streamer is on track to add more subscribers by the second half of 2018 than it did the first. Between January and June 2018 subscribers went up from 17 million to 20 million, meaning that the company is due to report at least 23 million subscribers by year end.

Freer presented Hulu as a rapidly growing company. He said Hulu’s live TV business grew 10x more than AT&T’s DirecTV Now during its third financial quarter.

“We were growing in October and November. We had our best third quarter, our best October, our best November,” he said.

The exec is still eager to scale the product, however. Freer said: “I think our numbers will be really impressive, but we need to get 30, 40, 50m homes in a way that we can scale.”

Freer also set out intentions to expand the company internationally in the future. “We’re exploring all opportunities to expand the geography…we have support from ownership to drive that that opportunity,” he said.

As the streaming war goes on there is much speculation on whether Disney, now 60% shareholder of the company as it completes its 21^stCentury Fox acquisition, will look to buy the full stake of Hulu from Comcast, which owns 30%.

Minority shareholder WarnerMedia, which owns a 10% stake, laid out intentions to sell its part in the company during an analyst event last week.