Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis (NVS) is considering a spin off Alcon, its surgical equipment and contact lens business. While most of its peers are busy acquiring each other, Novartis is taking a more inward-focused approach also announcing today a $5 billion share buyback. Reporting its 2016 earnings, Novartis said: “Novartis is considering options for the Alcon Division. The… Read More »
As we near the end of the month, the completion of three spinoff transactions will be driving changes in various S&P Indexes. Citrix Systems(CTXS) will be spinning off its GetGo division which will then merge with LogMeIn(LOGM) in a reverse Morris Trust transaction. After the transaction is completed on January 31st, Citrix will remain in the S&P 500.… Read More »
Burdened by debt since its private equity buyout a decade ago, Avaya has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The telecommunications software and hardware company posted a loss of $750 million for its most recent fiscal year. It is burdened by $6.3 billion in debt and $400 million in annual interest expense. “Avaya’s current capital structure is over 10… Read More »
In late 2015, Sergio Marchionne led the successful IPO and spinoff of Fiat Chrysler’s(FCAU) Ferrari(RACE) division. Now various speculations suggest that he may spin off Maserati, Jeep, or the Parts division. Marchionne, who is set to retire in 2019, has tried to lure a buyer, publicly courting General Motors(GM), even, but has not found a partner. Alternatively, some believe… Read More »
Speculating about spinoffs – it’s not just for us, John Malone and deadline-driven journalists: 1) The Motley Fool handicaps the odds of a Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) spinoff in 2017. The basic premise is that JNJ has multiple segments with diverging sales trends (at least recently) so why not set one free. After playing through a few scenarios, the author ultimately suggests… Read More »
Toshiba Corp. (TOSYY) has today acknowledged that recent speculation about a potential sale of its flash memory business was bang on the money. The Nikkei newspaper reported earlier this week that the Japanese conglomerate may sell a 20 percent stake in the chip operations, raising as much as 300 billion yen ($2.7 billion). Memory is Toshiba’s most profitable… Read More »
E.ON(EONGY), German’s largest utility, is facing calls from activist investor Knight Vinke to spin out its power distribution business. This comes just months after the €4 billion demerger of its conventional power generation and commodity trading units into Uniper(UN01.DE). Knight Vinke, a European activist fund best known for its campaigns against UBS and Darty, was supportive of the… Read More »
Late last year Varian Medical Systems (VAR) pushed back the timing of its Varex Imaging spinoff to January 2017. Now the company’s board of directors is sticking with that target by officially approving the separation of the imaging business and setting January 28th as the distribution date. Varian shareholders as of January 20th should receive 0.4 shares of Varex for every 1… Read More »
Atlas Copco(ATCO-A.ST), the largest industrial corporation in Sweden by market value, today announced an intention to split into two listed companies, separating its industrial and mining operations. The Company intends to put the proposal to shareholders at its 2018 Annual General Meeting(AGM). From this morning’s press release: “NewCo will focus on mining/civil engineering customers and include the existing… Read More »
Biogen(BIIB) enters the final days before its spinoff of Bioverativ(BIVV), its global hemophilia business, as the new company begins when issued trading under the ticker BIVV. After the close of business on February 1, Biogen shareholders as of January 17 will receive one share of Bioverativ for every two shares they own. The distribution is expected to be… Read More »
Someone sure was busy during the Holidays. On the very first trading day of the new year, Marathon Petroleum Corporation (MPC) announced a number of strategic updates, most of them suggested (and naturally approved) by activist fund Elliott Management. While most of the news was related to its ownership of MPLX (MPLX and worthy of its own post), there was… Read More »
We want to introduce a new author to the site. The Limey is a sell side equity analyst based in London and is also (more importantly) a long time reader of this site. The Limey will look at spinoff situations in Europe and elsewhere. Xerox (XRX) completed the spinoff of its business process outsourcing (BPO) division Conduent (CNDT)… Read More »
Are you a business journalist on deadline with no idea what to write about? An editor with some space to fill? There are some stories that will work every time. How about this? Propose a spinoff that will never happen, like Amazon(AMZN) spinning off its web services business. Then, tell us why it won’t happen. Now, punch out,… Read More »
For years, Disney (DIS) shares were propelled upwards by consistently better results at its media network unit including ABC and ESPN. As ‘Event TV’ became live TV’s stand against streaming and recording options, sports became especially lucrative due to the high fees they were able to charge. Of course, things change. Costs went up, NFL & ABC ratings… Read More »
Hilton (HLT) completed the spinoff of a lodging REIT, Park Hotels & Resorts (PK), and of its timeshare business, Hilton Grand Vacations (HGV), earlier this week. The new companies begin trading the ‘regular way’ yesterday and shareholders should have received 1 HGV share for every 10 HLT shares owned and 1 PK share for every 5 HLT shares… Read More »