Barry Diller is at it again. The famous deal maker's InterActive Corp. (NASDAQ:IACI) announced this morning that it will acquire privately held Hotwire.com for $665 million in cash. The deal is expected to close by the fourth quarter of this year and be slightly accretive to InterActive's 2004 EPS.
If you haven't tried Hotwire's service, you're missing out on one of the best ways to save money on travel. Hotwire specializes in what's known as "opaque travel," meaning that consumers are shown a specific fare for a flight or hotel room, but without revealing the brand of the supplier until after the item is purchased. In return for this brand flexibility, Hotwire customers receive savings of up to 45% on airfares and up to 75% on hotel rooms.
Hotwire joins an all-star cast of travel properties under the InterActive umbrella, including Expedia.com and Hotels.com. All three properties will retain their distinctive brands and web sites, but will be managed as a single division, IAC Travel, under Erik Blachford, president and CEO of Expedia.
About the deal, Diller had the following to say in his typical brash style: ".travel is the largest business sector in the world, and this company is every year going to increase its share of that activity and in so doing will ensure that IAC is reaching its goal to become the largest and most profitable interactive company in the world by pursuing a multi-brand strategy."
Along with its formidable travel properties, InterActive Corp. also controls an assortment of top-tier web businesses including LendingTree, Match.com, Evite, Home Shopping Network, and CitySearch. Given the quality and diversity of InterActive's businesses, the company's cash-rich balance sheet, and its nearly $1 billion in free cash flow over the past year, InterActive's valuation looks surprisingly reasonable at the current market cap of $25.5 billion.
