There have been a lot of articles and blog posts recently regarding the split-up of IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI). Basically, IAC is an internet/retail/media conglomerate that has been trading at a discount because of its complexity. Last Monday, Barry Diller announced that IAC will be splitting up into 5 separately traded public companies. I won’t go into too much detail as it has been discussed more thoroughly elsewhere. (A few good descriptions can be found here and here).

The two divisions that I’m most interested in as businesses are HSN and Ticketmaster. Below I go over HSN in more detail. Out of all five, I think that (depending on timing) HSN, Interval and LendingTree will have the most downside pressure once spun off.

I don’t know much about LendingTree. But with what’s going on in the housing and mortgage sectors right now, investors will probably dump it in favor of IAC’s more desirable properties. Namely Ticketmaster and the IAC internet properties.

Home Shopping Network

The Home Shopping Network (HSN) is the largest division of IAC in terms of sales. Out of the businesses that IAC currently owns, HSN was also the first to be acquired by Barry Diller. It sells a variety of products over the air, 24 hours a day, in over 89 million homes across the world. HSN has a 30% share of the home shopping market, with QVC(owned by John Malone/Liberty Media) and ShopNBC accounting for the other 60% and 10%, respectively.

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