Gawker: valleywag, expedia

IAC down more than half a billion in second quarter

Paul Boutin — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:40:00 EDT

In the second quarter, IAC swung from a $94.6 million profit last year to a $421.6 million loss this year. Don't blame Jakob Lodwick! His former company, Vimeo, is nowhere near the top of IAC/InterActiveCorp's expense report for the past quarter. The real problem at Barry Diller's Internet empire is Cornerstone Brands, a rollup of catalog companies undermined by weak consumer spending in home and apparel retail. Cornerstone's losses led to a $300 million writedown in goodwill in IAC's second quarter. In addition, the soft real estate market cut revenue for home financing site LendingTree nearly in half.

IAC is moving ahead with plans to spin off four of its divisions by the end of August: HSN (which includes Cornerstone), Ticketmaster, Tree.com (which includes LendingTree), and Interval Leisure Group, which operates vacation sites including ResortQuest Hawaii. That leaves IAC with Ask.com, Match.com and Citysearch. What's happening? Simple: Diller and company have learned that bundling a bunch of diverse online businesses together doesn't create the promised "synergy" of the Web 1.0 boom. Better to let each site fend for itself. Since IAC got rid of Expedia in 2005 (Barry Diller's still chairman of the board), the travel site's ups and downs have closely followed the travel market. That's the watercooler version. You can wonk out with the full details.

Goldman Sachs is now 10 percent less impressed with Internet

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:20:26 EDT

Citing a more challenging consumer environment, greater customer-acquisition costs and investor reluctance to pay above-market prices for shares, Goldman Sachs today cut price targets for Internet stocks including Google, eBay, and Amazon by 10 percent. For more reasons why Wall Street is suddenly less impressed with your tech stock portfolio, see Goldman's entire report, embedded here:

These tech stocks leave you exposed to today's bad news

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:55:31 EST

On Friday, Citigroup's Mark Mahaney judged tech stocks on four criteria: International exposure, countercyclical hedges, least risk to 2008 Wall Street estimates and intrinsic valuation. Which means what? Dunno. Go to Seeking Alpha for that. But to find out if your company's on the OK or Not-So-OK list in light of this morning's Fed rate cut and stock-market dive, check out this list.

The don't panic (yet) list: Amazon.com, eBay and Google, because they're not dependent on the U.S. Expedia, eBay, Google and Priceline, because a bad economy makes the good deals they find more valuable. IAC and Monster are OK because of their healthy "free cash flow yield." Got that?
The go ahead, panic list isn't much of a list: It's Yahoo. Duh.

(Photo by azrainman)

A Facebook application, "Where I've Been,"...

Owen Thomas — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 13:44:47 EDT

A Facebook application, "Where I've Been," reportedly sells to TripAdvisor, a division of online travel agency Expedia, for $3 million. This proves the strength of Facebook's so-called "platform" as a vehicle for flipping cheap, trivial ideas to gullible big companies, something everyone in the Valley has been longing for. Update: TripAdvisor is denying some or all of the report, dashing everyone's dreams of Facebook-app millions. [Inside Facebook]

Orbitz flies the not-so-bubbly skies

Owen Thomas — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 14:47:37 EDT

Despite millions of dollars spent on advertising, Orbitz remains, for doddering old webheads like yours truly, a disgusting carbonated beverage, not a troubled online trip booker. But investors are expected to find tomorrow's Orbitz IPO, in which the much-traveled Internet company hopes to raise $617 million, just as yucky. Here's why.

This is Orbitz's second IPO in less than four years. Launched by an airline consortium as a competitor to Travelocity and Expedia in 2000, it went public in December 2003, Orbitz was bought by Cendant, spun off as part of Travelport, and taken private. And the hoped-for proceeds of the IPO are not going to bulk up Orbitz; instead, they'll be used to pay off Travelport's debt. Online travel agents have a diffident future, at best: Hotels and airlines have figured out more profitable ways to sell rooms and seats directly to travelers, cutting out the middlemen. A bubbly drink, a not-so-bubbly stock: I prefer to remember Orbitz as the former.

(Image from Suck.com)