Online video site Hulu is again up for sale, with Yahoo and pay-TV operators DirecTV and Time Warner Cable among the seven bidders, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
The person was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke Friday on condition of anonymity, after several news outlets reported on the bidding.
The person did not offer details on the prices offered. Published reports have pegged a bid by a group led by former News Corp executive Peter Chernin at US$500 million. The other three bidders were all private equity firms: Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co; Guggenheim Partners; and Silver Lake, in partnership with talent agency William Morris Endeavor, according to the person.
The Walt Disney Co and News Corp control Hulu through their broadcast subsidiaries, ABC and Fox. Comcast Corp, owner of NBC, is also an investor, although it gave up its say in Hulu’s affairs as a condition of its purchase of NBCUniversal in 2011.
Hulu’s owners tried to sell the site before, but decided against it in 2011 after months of entertaining outside offers. Talk of a sale resurfaced after Hulu CEO Jason Kilar announced in January that he would step down at the end of March. Since then, Hulu has been led by interim CEO Andy Forssell.
Its owners have struggled over the right strategy for the service. It offers free viewing of recent episodes of broadcast network shows like ABC’s Modern Family or NBC’s Saturday Night Live with ads, but those episodes are also available elsewhere, such as on the networks’ own Web sites. The paid version, called Hulu Plus, provides access to a deeper catalog and allows viewing on mobile devices and Internet-connected TVs, but several networks including ABC and NBC have developed apps that allow full-episode viewing on mobile devices for free.
Hulu made US$695 million in revenue last year and said in April that more than 4 million customers pay US$8 a month for Hulu Plus. Both Disney and News Corp have said that Hulu is losing money.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”