Five Corporate Crown Jewels To Target After Tinder And Ferrari

Investors may soon have a new set of glimmering corporate assets such as dating app Tinder and iconic car brand Ferrari to pick over after their parent companies IAC/InterActive and Fiat Chrysler Automotive unveiled spinoff plans in recent months. It's part of a trend among large companies to simplify their businesses and set free prized corporate assets that may perform better independently, or be undervalued by stock investors.

McDonald's spun Chipotle Mexican Grill in the mid 2000s, giving birth to one of the best performing restaurant stocks in a generation. Home Depot's distribution business, HD Supply, is one of the gem stocks in infrastructure and logistics, and it hasn't slowed the retailer's growth. Morgan Stanley spun Discover Financial Services ahead of the financial crisis, and more recently General Electric spun its consumer finance arm Synchrony Financial. Both stocks have performed strongly on their own and freed their former corporate parent's to map out their own strategy.

The performance of those spinoffs and legions of other divestitures, especially in the years since the Great Recession, give credibility to a de-consolidation wave on Wall Street and an appetite among investors to have C-Suites constantly evaluate the best assembly of their corporate assets.

But even with activist hedge funds like Pershing Square, Jana Partners, Elliott Management and Trian Partners searching for assets to be unlocked and new ways to boost the share prices of large corporations, there remain a host of companies that sit on hidden crown jewels that could be the next Tinder, Ferrari or Chipotle to float on pubic stock markets.

Among those crown jewels is eBay's StubHub sports and entertainment ticket marketplace, pay TV titans HBO and ESPN , and security giants RSA.

Here are five corporate crown jewels for investors to watch over after Tinder and Ferrari.

StubHub

At a time when mobile and e-commerce startups have seen their billion dollar valuations multiply in a matter of months, StubHub, with its established revenue, scale, and high barriers to entry might garner a surprisingly high pricetag.

HBO

Time Warner's stock continues to push new record highs after a series of summer blockbusters from Warner Brothers. If CEO Jeff Bewkes feels the company's cable division, Turner, and its movie studio business can stand on their own, he could decide to spin HBO as an alternative to selling the company to 21st Century Fox.

McGraw-Hill Financial

McGraw-Hill could marry its S&P ratings and S&P Capital IQ analytics businesses and potentially spin out its S&P Dow Jones Index unit, a joint venture with CME Group. The company's Platt's commodities and J.D. Power commercial businesses would also be a perfect fit for private equity buyers.

ESPN/ABC

Disney studios like Pixar and Marvel are performing strongly; the company's parks and resorts around the world are in growth mode after expansion and continued economic recovery, making it an opportune time to allow lifeblood assets like ESPN the freedom to navigate industry change on their own.

RSA

A standalone 'core EMC' would fetch a higher stock multiple and could bolster RSA's services through acquisitions in the fragmented IT security sector. EMC could also plot an eventual spin of RSA, an asset that surely would attract interest from investors.