Liberty Interactive, a unit of Liberty Media, said it has authorized its board of directors to pursue the spin-offs of two of its businesses – CommerceHub and Liberty Expedia Holdings – to holders of Liberty Ventures Group stock.
The moves were a part of a flurry of deals for Liberty Media on Thursday – earlier in the day the company said it would spin off three units – Liberty Braves Group, Liberty Media and Liberty Sirius – into three separate tracking stocks.
CommerceHub (which helps clients with online sales channels) and Liberty Expedia (its Expedia online travel and Bodybulding.com fitness products sites) won’t be trackers, their shares will be backed by hard assets. According to Liberty, holders of Series A and Series B Liberty Venture shares would receive shares of the corresponding series of CommerceHub stock for every Liberty Venture share held. The same would hold true for Expedia shareholders.
CommerceHub founder Frank Poole will continue in his role as CEO of the company after the spin is completed in the first half of 2016.
"We believe the spin-offs should unlock value for our Liberty Ventures shareholders in an efficient manner and increase focus on the remaining attributed assets of Liberty Ventures,” Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei said in a statement.
Liberty Interactive expects that the Expedia Holdings Series A and Series B common stock will trade under the symbols LEXEA/B, respectively, and that the CommerceHub Series A and Series B common stock will trade under the symbols CHUBA/B, respectively, in each case, on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
Following the completion of the Spin-Offs, the Liberty Ventures Group will be comprised of all of Liberty Interactive’s businesses and assets other than those attributed to the QVC Group, including its subsidiaries Evite, Inc. and LMC Right Start, Inc., its interests in FTD Companies, Inc., Lending Tree, Inc., Interval Leisure Group, Inc., Time Warner Inc. and Time Warner Cable Inc., various green energy investments, the exchangeable senior debentures currently attributed to the Liberty Ventures Group and Liberty Interactive’s commitment to purchase $2.4 billion of Liberty Broadband Corporation’s Series C common stock in connection with (and contingent upon) the closing of the proposed merger of Charter Communications, Inc. and Time Warner Cable (subject to the exercise by Liberty Broadband of its right to reduce such commitment by up to 25%).
J.P. Morgan is acting as financial advisor to Liberty Interactive in connection with these transactions.
