Although its stock has doubled over the past year and rallied over 64 percent in 2017, InterActive Corporation does not get enough love from the market, Jim Cramer says.
"It's because IAC is a confusing conglomerate of online businesses that people simply don't understand. They don't know how IAC is structured, and more importantly, they can't keep track of what IAC even owns," the "Mad Money" host said.
So Cramer broke down the business to find the key to its soaring stock and how IAC has kept creating value over the years under the leadership of Chairman and Senior Executive Barry Diller.
IAC is an internet and media company and the parent of 16 key brands, some of which run their own, smaller brands under their wings.
Those 16 include Ask.com, Dotdash, HomeAdvisor, The Daily Beast, Dictionary.com, Vimeo, and Match, the online dating colossus that owns the dating app Tinder.
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"Put it all together and IAC's sites have more than 500 million unique monthly users, [and] 2.5 billion monthly page views," Cramer said. "Perhaps more important, IAC's been around for decades, and it's been a history of incubating great ideas then spinning them off as their own separate companies."
The company did so with Cramer-fave online travel company Expedia, TripAdvisor, Home Shopping Network, and Ticketmaster, which has since merged with Live Nation.
Its most recent spinoff was of Match Group, the parent company of Match.com and Tinder, but IAC still owns most of that business.
What intrigues Cramer the most about IAC's track record is that going back to the 1990s, Diller was always tuned in to up-and-coming trends and fads.
"In the '90s he embraced the rise of cable TV. But by the early 2000s, after the dot-com boom went bust, Diller quickly started de-emphasizing his cable franchises and turning more attention to the web," the "Mad Money" host said.
And while that led IAC to make landmark acquisitions like Expedia, LendingTree, CollegeHumor, Dictionary.com and Ask.com, the conglomerate never stopped shedding brands from its portfolio, either.
In the years after it bought all those companies, it spun off Expedia, LendingTree and a slew of others, coaxing out value by reforming these largely successful businesses.
Cramer added that although the company does not always acquire winners, it knows when to correct its strategy, as demonstrated by its purchase of Newsweek, which it sold 30 months later.
"Add up all these spin-offs, and get this: Barry Diller has created — and no one talks about this — $40 billion in value over the last decade," Cramer said. "That's a very impressive number when you consider that IAC itself is only an $8 billion company."
IAC is still employing its monetizing strategy, as demonstrated by Match Group and HomeAdvisor. Though the stock sold off in February 2016, it has come roaring back, up nearly 140 percent since that bottom.
"In terms of profitability, half of IAC's segments are actually losing money. They're still investing in themselves to promote future growth," Cramer said.
From Match Group's IPO, which had a rocky start but later bounced back, to HomeAdvisor's merger with Angie's List, which Wall Street embraced, IAC is maintaining its strong track record, shown in its two latest earnings reports, the "Mad Money" host said.
"Even though IAC has caught fire lately, I think the company and its terrific leader, Barry Diller, just don't get the respect or the attention that they deserve. Of course, I have to tell you, they do not seek it, just so you know. But Diller's proven to be an incredible and unheralded value creator over the years, and I bet IAC's stock has a lot more room to run," Cramer said.
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