Since a Blackstone-led group agreed to buy Hello Sunshine at a valuation of $900 million this week, there’s been lots of talk about the rich prices Hollywood studios are fetching amid a shortage of quality programming for streaming. Just how rich, though, has remained murky—until now.
The Information has learned that Hello Sunshine, maker of dramas such as “The Morning Show” for Apple TV+ and “Little Fires Everywhere” on Hulu, generated just $65 million in revenue last year, a figure that is expected to double to around $125 million this year. That means Blackstone and its partners are paying about 7.2 times this year’s projected revenue to buy the firm. That’s a big premium over where publicly traded entertainment companies, such as Lionsgate Entertainment and ViacomCBS, are trading. Below we look in detail at how the valuations of private and public entertainment companies diverge.
