(FORTUNE Magazine) – Just what has John Malone created? Liberty Media--officially free from AT&T as of early August--is a complicated beast. It's so complicated, in fact, that investors may have a whale of a time figuring out how much it's really worth. (Make that an octopus.)

Consider the empire Malone has quietly been assembling over the past several years. He has stretched his tentacles across the globe, snapping up pieces of cable, satellite, and content companies of all shapes and sizes--from 4% of the world's largest media company, AOL Time Warner (parent of FORTUNE) to 49% of privately held Discovery Communications. Indeed, the value of Liberty's eight largest holdings comes to an estimated $40 billion. Adding in bits of Viacom, Gemstar-TV Guide, Priceline.com, and dozens of others, Prudential analyst Katherine Styponias, with 2001 earnings estimates, figures Liberty's assets are worth $52 billion. That's far more than Liberty's current market cap of $38 billion. Ahem--it also means the stock, at $14.70, trades for a 26% discount to the company's true worth.

--Christine Y. Chen