Specialist
Former Senior Product Manager at Hulu LLC
Agenda
- Implications of upcoming streaming platform roll-outs for Hulu's subscriber growth trajectory
- Hulu's pricing and packaging strategies
- Implications of partnerships for subscriber growth, acquisition costs, churn
- 2020 outlook and beyond – potential platform investments and international growth
Questions
1.
What do you think of Hulu’s operating environment? What key trends or drivers should we pay attention to?
2.
Do you think one company benefits more from bundling? In the Hulu and Spotify example, is the Spotify product more sticky than Hulu?
3.
How does the consensus adoption of 2-3 platforms per household impact Hulu? Does the importance of bundling increase for Hulu’s efforts to penetrate households?
4.
What do you think Hulu complements vs stands as a potential threat towards?
5.
What do you consider Hulu’s key differentiators? Do its tentpole content properties allow it to have lower churn profile relative to competitors such as Netflix?
6.
Over the next 12-24 months, do you expect subscriber fatigue, potentially leading to Hulu taking a subscriber acquisition hit in certain quarters vs others?
7.
How do you think Hulu is positioned? Is it immediately exposed to any threats or opportunities? Would you like to discuss any core parts of the business model?
8.
Do you think Hulu is well-positioned to expand the product offering to live content, given the well- entrenched players out there? What are the main execution risks associated with the live business?
9.
What do you think of Hulu management’s strategy so far? Do you see it as being well-aligned with the themes that we’ve touched on, is there anything you think should be done differently?
10.
Hulu has 28 million paid subscribers, and management is targeting 40-60 million by 2024. Given the current pricing structure, is it safe to presume Hulu might fall short of its target, are optimisations needed?
11.
You mentioned some of the partnerships still have green pastures. How are you applying that to Spotify and Sprint, for example? How much of those are drawn out and when do you expect the uplift they provide to saturate?
12.
Any thoughts on what happens to subscriber trends if, for example, Apple, Amazon and bid competitively for international content rights, and Hulu doesn’t get the strong content slate it needs? Especially given Disney missed out on the Sky acquisition?
13.
Could Hulu still reach the low threshold of the 40-60 million subscribers if international content becomes a bit challenged?
14.
Do you think the majority of the subscriber growth will come from the ad-supported service, based on how it’s priced now? What tweaks would you make to drive growth from the other service options?
15.
Do you think Hulu management’s goal is to skew the mix towards ad-supported, given that Hulu seems to be an ad-tech driven company? Are they trying to get less than 25% that are ad free, for example?
16.
How would you segment the market in terms of what proportion will opt out of ads? Will it be meaningful longer term or will subscribers have increasing tolerance for advertising in a D2C world?
17.
Disney has come out with a USD 12.99 per month bundle for Disney+, ESPN+ and ad-supported Hulu. How powerful of a bundle do you consider it?
18.
It seems Hulu’s pricing power will be pretty minimal for the next 1-2 years. Do you think that price hikes are a bad move?
19.
You mentioned how new partnerships would be a strategy if international content remained sound. Disney is pairing up with Verizon, so unlimited wireless subscribers get free Disney+. Does Hulu have any opportunity to tap into that, or would its partner Sprint prevent it?
20.
Is Sprint and its potential opposition to a new partnership a meaningful headwind?
21.
Do you think Hulu will break into the international landscape with a big distribution partnership? How do you think it could best execute that?
22.
Do you think there will be a significant first mover effect in that if Netflix or Hulu or Amazon get in first with an international distribution partnership it could become much more well-entrenched than the others?
23.
Partnerships come at a cost. Do you think there’s a meaningful difference between the lifetime value of a customer that comes via a platform vs one that comes organically?
24.
How might Hulu be able to bridge the gap, user engagement-wise, for those partnerships? Do you think the majority of subscribers that come via a Spotify partnership are pretty low-engagement?
25.
How do you think Hulu will benefit from Spotify ramping up on podcasts? How might Hulu integrate more deeply and optimise use across platforms?
26.
Do these partnership contracts typically involve the bundler offering the other service for free? Or does the bundler have to cover a portion of ARPU? Do you expect that dynamic to change? Does it depend on the partnership?
27.
Do you think SACs [subscriber acquisition costs] through partnerships are generally higher or lower than direct channels? Do you think this will improve or worsen over time?
28.
Do you think high churn is likely as promotional periods expire? What steps can be taken to mitigate churn?
29.
What are your thoughts on payback? Do you need to achieve payback within 12 months, especially if customers will churn out in summer months every year, for example?
30.
What are your thoughts on content and platform partnerships? Roku, Amazon and Apple are growing in importance as connected TVs grow as a percentage of total TV sales. How important are those relationships? Is Hulu in a better place than others in the industry?
31.
How can Hulu insulate itself from more intense competition in the future?
32.
How do you expect the advertising business to develop? Are there any exciting developments for Hulu specifically?
33.
Would you say transactional ad insertions on Hulu’s platform are a while away?
34.
What do you think of the quality of pause ads’ inventory? How could they be improved in targetability, ROI, etc?
35.
Do you think it would be best to hold off on ramping up ad-load on Hulu’s platform? If so, are there any opportunities for that platform in the future?
36.
Is it safe to say that dynamic ad insertion paints a picture of increased total ad inventory?
37.
What do you consider the main risks, uncertainties or challenges that Hulu is likely to face over the next 2- 3 years?
38.
Is there anything we haven’t done justice to that you’d like to discuss?
