NFLX Netflix Inc

By Allison Prang 

Hulu had more than 25 million subscribers at the end of 2018, up by eight million from the year earlier, the streaming service announced Tuesday.

Hulu said its subscriber total rose 48% on a year-over-year basis. Its subscriber count includes customers for both its subscription service and live TV offerings.

Despite Hulu's growth, its subscriber count is still much smaller compared with rival Netflix Inc. As of Sept. 30, Netflix had about 137.1 million streaming members worldwide, according to the company's recent quarterly filing. That number rose 25% from the comparable quarter in 2017 when Netflix had 109.2 million members.

Walt Disney Co., one of Hulu's largest investors, has a 30% stake in the streaming service. Disney would also get 21st Century Fox's 30% stake in Hulu if Disney's deal to purchase certain assets from 21st Century Fox closes.

For Hulu's investors, such as Disney, Hulu's growing popularity comes with a higher price tag. For its 2018 fiscal year that ended this past September, Disney reported a $102 million equity loss from companies in which it has investments, which includes Hulu, compared with equity income of $320 million for the comparable quarter a year earlier, according to the company's annual filing. The conglomerate partly attributed that decline to increased losses at the streaming service.

Hulu's higher losses were because of increased labor, programming and marketing costs, but subscription and advertising revenue both rose helping to curb the decline, Disney said in its filing.

Hulu said its advertising revenue for 2018 was almost $1.5 billion, an increase of more than 45%. The company said that is the most it has brought in for advertising so far.

Hulu also said the average time per month spent on Hulu by one of its subscribers in 2018 -- whose median age was 32 -- rose 20%.

Write to Allison Prang at allison.prang@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 08, 2019 11:14 ET (16:14 GMT)

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