According to Bloomberg, the French drugmaker Sanofi has informed interested parties of its offer for the acquisition of its consumer unit by mid-July.
报道称,波士顿的Advent International和巴黎的PAI Partners被认为是最认真的潜在买家。 卢森堡的CVC Capital Partners以及美国的Blackstone、TPG和Clayton、 Dubilier & Rice也在竞争中,而瑞典投资者EQT AB已不再参与。
In February, Bloomberg reported that several of those companies had shown interest in acquiring the division, which was valued at about $20 billion.
Sanofi said it does not comment on "market rumors". However, in an announcement in October 2023, the company said it planned to create an independent company as early as the fourth quarter of 2024, and the independent consumer company would be listed in Paris and set up its headquarters. At the time, Sanofi noted that the "most likely" path to the separation would be through a capital markets transaction, with Sanofi retaining a significant minority stake in the new company.
Sanofi's consumer division, which sells well-known brands such as Allegra allergy pills, Gold Bond talcum powder, Icy Hot muscle pain relief cream and Selsun Blue shampoo, generated €5.2 billion ($5.6 billion) in sales in 2023, or 11% of the company's total revenue.
Sanofi's divestiture push began in 2019 when Paul Hudson was appointed CEO. Shortly after taking office, Hudson was restructured to operate Consumer Healthcare as a separate business unit.
In 2021, Sanofi sold 16 consumer health brands to Stada Arzneimittel in Germany. Then last year, Stada bought several more brands.
In October, Hudson praised the "streamlining" of the company's consumer healthcare portfolio to "focus on key brands" as part of the success of its Play to Win strategy.
In fact, this wave of consumer health department spin-offs has been going on for nearly a decade in multinational pharmaceutical companies, with Pfizer, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, and others all making this common choice. On the one hand, this may be due to the fact that investors tend to value separately listed consumer goods companies higher than they value the consumer goods divisions within pharmaceutical giants. On the other hand, in the case of pharmaceuticals and medical devices, diversification has also become an obstacle to focusing on the main business. As a result, more and more large, diversified businesses are looking to simplify their business structures to increase focus.
Among them, Johnson & Johnson and GSK took the lead in drawing an end to their consumer health business.
On May 13 this year, Johnson & Johnson said that it sold 182 million shares of Kenvue, a spun off and listed consumer health company, to Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase through a "debt-to-equity swap" nearly a year after spun off and listed its consumer health business, Kenvue. These shares represent 9.5% of the issued share capital and are all remaining shares held by Johnson & Johnson.
Kenvue inherits Johnson & Johnson's 100-year accumulation in the C-end, and has many well-known consumer health brands such as Bondi Band-Aid, Tylenol Pharmaceuticals, Listerine Mouthwash and other 4 big brands worth 1 billion US dollars and 20 brands worth more than 150 million US dollars, with a total annual business scale of nearly 15 billion US dollars.
As early as November 2021, Johnson & Johnson announced that it would spin off its consumer health division from its pharmaceutical and medical device businesses. In September 2022, the spin-off division plans to go public as an independent company, which is Kenvue. Kenvue has said that after the listing is completed, Johnson & Johnson holds at least 80.1% of the voting rights of the company's shares. However, in August 2023, Johnson & Johnson slashed its stake in the new company, retaining only 9.5%. With the sale of its remaining stake in May this year, Johnson & Johnson said goodbye to its century-old consumer health business.
On 16 May, GSK announced plans to sell around 385 million of its stake in consumer health company Haleon. This represents approximately 4.2% of Helion's issued share capital and is GSK's current shareholding in Helion. As a result of the transaction, GSK's stake in Helion will be completely divested, meaning that it has completely exited the consumer health segment less than two years after divesting the asset.
Helion was first formed in December 2018 by the merger of GSK and Pfizer's Consumer Health divisions, with GSK holding 68% and Pfizer holding 32%. In July 2022, Helion completed the spin-off from GSK and listed on the London Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange.
Helion has a portfolio of well-known brands, including Calqi and Shancun in the field of vitamin and mineral supplements, Comfortda and Polydente in the field of oral health, Fenpide and Voltarin in the field of pain management, Xincontec and Fushuliang in the field of respiratory health, and Baiduobang and Lanmeishu in the field of skin health.
Following the successful spin-off and premium listing of Helion, GSK initially retained its 12.94% stake. But through three sales in May 2023, October 2023 and January 2024, GSK reduced its stake in Helion to around 4.2%. The outright sale in May this year marks the end of GSK's history for the consumer health business.
For Pfizer, since the merger of Consumer Health and GSK's Consumer Health in 2018 to form Haleon, changes have not been as frequent or decisive as GSK's, but the intention to phase out the consumer health business has been revealed.
In March 2024, Pfizer will reduce its stake in Helion from 32% to around 24% by selling shares in Helion worth about £2 billion. In May 2023, Pfizer had announced plans to reduce its stake in Helion in a "slow and methodical" manner over a period of months. A full exit may be just around the corner.