IAC/InterActiveCorp Chief is “unlikely” to engineer a stock swap to make a clean break with John Malone’s Liberty Media, Chief Executive Barry Diller said in a conference call Wednesday.

In remarks after the release of first quarter earnings, Mr. Diller said that a rumored swap transaction with majority shareholder Liberty probably will not take place as part of plans to split IAC into five separate companies.

Speculation had surfaced that IAC would offer Mr. Malone its home shopping unit, HSN, and possibly other assets as part of IAC’s plans to split the company into five separate companies.

Mr. Diller also said a pre-spinoff deal involving private equity firms also would be a long shot.

“We’ve had lots of people on the door, talking about different ideas and schemes,” he said. “We’re probably not going to do any of them.”

IAC’s earnings per share fell 8 percent to $.18 per share versus the year-ago period. Results were dragged down by weakness at HSN, whose year over year operating income fell 42 percent, and the LendingTree mortgage unit, whose operating loss was 11 percent steeper than the prior year’s quarter.

“Building a real estate business in this market is not for the feint of heart” and when conditions improve, LendingTree will be well positioned, said Chief Financial Officer Thomas McInerney.

Profits also declined at the New York City company’s Ticketmaster unit, though Mr. McInerney said the subsidiary’s nonrecurring gains in the prior-year’s quarter made for a difficult comparison.

The other two units expected to be spun out of IAC are the Interval vacation time-share business and the New IAC, including search engine Ask.com, Pronto.com, Citysearch, Evite and the Match.com online dating business. Ask.com’s revenue climbed 28 percent to $215.5 million, attributed in part to increased revenue across proprietary searches because of a  renewed partnership with Google.

Mr. Malone’s Liberty Media owns about 30 percent of IAC, but controls 62 percent of the voting power through its dual-class stock structure. Mr. Diller’s plan to give the five new companies a single-class share structure, enraged Mr. Malone and led IAC and Liberty to lock horns in court. In March, Delaware Chancery Court Judge Stephen Lamb sided with Mr. Diller, saying an irrevocable stock proxy granted by Liberty gave him the leeway to move ahead with the spinoff and a single-class structure.

Liberty, based in Englewood, Colorado, is a holding company with stakes in shopping channel QVC, DirecTV and Time Warner.