Yahoo Company intends to acquire Hulu video service

Internet Company Yahoo continues its series of acquisitions: this time the internet giant considers Hulu video service. The company has submitted a formal proposal to buy the service.

Pay-TV operators DirecTV and Time Warner Cable, and investment funds Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Guggenheim Partners and Silver Lake have also submitted a bid for the service in addition to Yahoo. The amounts proposed by them are not disclosed. It was previously published in media that a group of investors led by the former News Corp manager Peter Chernin offered $500M for Hulu. Representatives of the company declined to comment this information.

Media companies Walt Disney and News Corp control Hulu through their subsidiaries ABC and Fox. The owner of NBC Comcast Corp Company is another investor of the video service. Hulu owners previously tried to sell the service, but rejected this idea after considering some bids in 2011.

Hulu's revenue for last year totaled $695M. The service reported in April that more than 4M users pay $8 a month for a subscription to Hulu Plus. However, as Disney and News Corp previously noted, Hulu was an unprofitable service. The service is available to the U.S. users only, it faces keen competition from YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and others.

Yahoo has recently acquired Tumblr blog hosting for $1.1B. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer tries to regain the popularity to the company's main assets, and to expand its advertising infrastructure and reach a wider audience.