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Once again, Barry Diller and John Malone are going their separate ways.
Malone’s Liberty Interactive yesterday bought out Diller’s controlling stake in TripAdvisor — for a 63 percent premium.
Diller, who is also giving up his chairman’s position in the Newton, Mass., travel-review company, is getting $300 million, or $62.50 a share, for his 4.8 million shares.
TripAdvisor closed yesterday at $40.91 a share, up 6.6 percent. It shares have soared more than 62 percent this year.
Diller acquired TripAdvisor in 2003 as part of his purchase of Expedia and some on Wall Street expect the billionaire to sell his stake in the Bellevue, Wash., company to Malone.
Meanwhile, Diller is putting a sunny face on the TripAdvisor sale.
“My only reason for resigning as chairman and disposing of my interests is that I have more obligations than time and transferring control of TripAdvisor to Liberty is something I’m very comfortable with,” Diller said in a statement.
After buying Diller’s controlling stake, Malone’s Liberty Interactive will own 57 percent of the voting power and 22 percent of TripAvisor’s equity.
Diller and Malone have spent the last two years separating their interlinked holdings. Diller stepped down as CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp in 2010, buying Liberty Media’s stake back soon after he got pushed out of the chairman’s role at Live Nation.
The deal, sources said, signals Malone’s continued to desire to wrest back voting control while ridding himself of Diller’s influence.
The long-running disagreement with Diller has its origins in Malone’s unhappiness with Diller’s free-spending ways in the early days of Malone-backed IAC — which Diller ran after exercising his voting rights. The sparring culminated in a court fight back in 2008 involving Diller’s plan to spin out many of the IAC companies.
Needham & Co. analyst Laura Martin, who covers TripAdvisor, noted that the two have been unraveling their interests for years.
“Barry had too much of the vote and Malone had too much of the economic interest,” she said. “This has taken them years [to resolve].”
Martin thinks the acquisition will be good for TripAdvisor, since Malone typically gives his chiefs a free hand, while Diller is more hands-on.
Malone will likely buy out other public shareholders, Martin said.
“Maybe they think its a sector that will be consolidated and this would give them the ability to control the price before Barry Diller sold it at a price that isn’t high enough. That could be why they paid a hefty price,” she said.
A spokesperson for Barry Diller said his relationship with Malone is “completely amicable.”
The company said the reason Liberty Media paid a premium for the TripAdvisor stock was due to a 17-year-old shareholder agreement that gave Diller voting stock.
Travel search engine Kayak was acquired by Priceline for $1.8 billion in November shortly after Kayak’s August IPO.
Perhaps anticipating a Malone move on Diller shares in Expedia, shares in that company traded up 5 percent during the day before settling at $60, up 4 percent — near a 52-week high.