The New York Times is reporting this morning that Hulu, the streaming television show and movie website, is readying to go public “through an offering that could value the company at more than $2 billion”.
The offering would follow other recent high-profile offerings in the past two weeks, first from Demand Media and then Skype.
In its report, the New York Times cites unidentified sources who have been “briefed on the matter”, saying that Hulu executives have begun discussing with investment banks an initial public offering that could come as soon as this fall.
The company recently released some numbers showing that it expected to double the $100 million it made in 2009. Still, PaidContent points to comScore stats that show Hulu as sitting in the tenth spot in the “top entertainment” category, with 24 million uniques, as compared to YouTube’s 144 million uniques.
While both the New York Times and Paid Content question both the IPO market and how Hulu would fare in it, others, such as Daring Fireball’s John Gruber come right out and say that a Hulu IPO might not work out. Gruber calls the whole thing “a little (a lot) premature” and notes that “they’ve got no revenue, and their content comes from companies that may well chose to create their own online publishing services.”
Indeed, Hulu has already lost content from Comedy Central and has not been able to ink deals with both CBS and CW.
