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Liberty likes TicketMaster look

Company would be interested 'at right number'

By David Milstead, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published December 6, 2007 at 12:05 a.m.

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In the clash of media titans, conventional wisdom has been that John Malone will acquire Home Shopping Network from Barry Diller.

There may be another part of Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp that Liberty Media eyes for its portfolio: TicketMaster.

Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei told the UBS Global Media & Communications Conference in New York on Monday that TicketMaster "is a great business, and at the right number, sure, we would be interested in that business." It could provide synergies with DirecTV, which Liberty Media will soon control thanks to a deal with Rupert Murdoch.

Maffei's commentary on IAC's businesses is not just idle chatter. Diller announced Nov. 5 that he would separate IAC into five companies in order to unlock shareholder value.

His biggest shareholder is Liberty Media, with a 24.1 percent stake, and Malone, Liberty's chairman and major stockholder, is seeking that value, negotiating with Diller over what he'll take to green-light the split-up.

In a Wall Street Journal interview published in October, Malone said, "There was a time when there was, I think, a 20 percent Barry premium" on Wall Street. "Today, you could argue there is a Barry discount."

Given that comment, it's hardly rude for Maffei to be openly speculating about which of IAC's businesses Liberty Media might like.

Liberty Media owns QVC, the chief competitor to IAC's Home Shopping Network, making that the most logical prize.

But Maffei said talks broke down over price. He said a proposal from IAC had Liberty Media giving up its stock, essentially getting out of IAC businesses growing their price-to-earnings multiples faster than Home Shopping Network. IAC was then placing a higher multiple on Home Shopping Network than on the faster-growing businesses, "in fact . . . substantially higher than where QVC was trading."

"This didn't seem to us like a great deal," Maffei said. "But at the right price, we are a buyer."

And if it goes public in the spinoff: "We don't have to price it with Barry; we would let the public price it and see if it's attractive, and then we can do it at the time of our choosing, not when Barry is trying to make us buy it."

Maffei dismissed most of the other businesses, saying, "There is somebody else out there, I'm guessing, who is a better owner for Lending Tree than us." IAC's Interval "is a nice cash flow business, frankly, within Expedia. I think it probably belongs in Expedia." And Ask.com is "the one Barry is most likely to end up (with)."

But with Ticketmaster, he said, "I can see synergies, particularly when you look at DirectTV as one of the largest sellers through its concert programs of entertainment."