Home shopping cable network HSN came one step closer to trading as a pure-play TV shopping stock when parent InterActiveCorp said Monday that four spinoffs from it will start trading on a “when-issued” basis Tuesday.
The when-issued status is permitted once regulatory approval is received prior to official trading, which IAC scheduled Aug. 21, before the opening of Wall Street.
The ticker symbol for the shopping business company is HSNIV. The other new companies being spun off from IAC are Interval Leisure Group time sharing (IILGV), Ticketmaster (TKTMV) and LendingTree (TREEV). Parent IAC will continue to trade, as well.
IAC said that in the 20 trading days after the spinoffs, its shares will temporarily trade as IACID due to stock-exchange rules and then revert back to IACI.
Separate trading of HSN will give investors a pure-play basic-cable-network stock and the TV shopping company will be easier to acquire if another company makes a buyout bid.
Besides TV operations, HSN owns the Cornerstone Brands portfolio of catalogs and related Web sites that include Frontgate, Ballard Designs, Garnet Hill, Smith+Noble, The Territory Ahead, TravelSmith and Improvements.
IAC, led by media mogul Barry Diller, won a bitterly contested court decision in March that allowed the breakup to proceed, over the objections of IAC’s biggest shareholder, John Malone-led Liberty Media.
Soon thereafter, IAC and Liberty patched up differences.
