The business move Kevin Hart just pulled off is no laughing matter.
As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, Kevin Hart just sold a minority stake in his newly-formed media venture, HartBeat, to a private equity firm called Abry Partners. And the numbers are somewhat staggering.
Abry is investing $100 million to acquire a 15% stake in HartBeat. Paying $100 million for a 15% stake, mean’s Kevin’s company is now valued at…
$650 million
(Photo by Chris Polk/PMA2014/Getty Images for dcp)
A significant portion of the $100 million cash infusion will go to Kevin personally, with another chunk going to HartBeat for planned investments and content productions. More importantly for Kevin, his remaining 85% ownership stake in HartBeat is now officially worth…
$552 million
Even before this mega-deal, Kevin was one of the highest-paid entertainers in the world. In a typical year, Kevin earns $40-60 million. The majority of those earnings typically come from touring thanks to Kevin’s routinely-sold-out stadium tours.
This new venture will allow Kevin to earn significantly more money through content licensing deals such as an upcoming Roku series called “Die Hart” and a Netflix series called “Me Time.” According to the Wall Street Journal, Kevin currently has dozens of projects in the works for a variety of streaming services.
Prior to this deal we estimated Kevin Hart’s net worth to be $200 million. Conservatively assuming Kevin personally received around half of the $100 million cash infusion, that will likely result in a $25 million after-tax windfall for the comedian. It would not be inaccurate to say that the full $552 million enterprise value of Kevin’s 85% stake should be added to his former net worth. If you did that, it would not be inaccurate to say that Kevin’s new net worth would be north of $750 million. To be extremely conservative, and to take into account a future tax bill when a liquidity event eventually occurs, we now estimate Kevin Hart’s net worth to be $450 million.
That’s no joke.