In January, the United Kingdom pharmaceutical firm
GSK
turned down
Unilever
’s
offer of 50 billion pounds sterling, or about $60 billion, to buy its consumer healthcare division, saying the price was too low.
Six months later, the former division is a stand-alone public company called
Haleon
(ticker: HLN), with a market value of £24 billion, or $29 billion—about half of what Unilever was willing to pay. That gives investors in the GSK (GSK) spinoff a chance to get in at a bargain price—just over $6 for each American depositary receipt, or ADR.
The company is valued at 13.5 times the FactSet consensus estimate for 2023 earnings. That’s a lower multiple than that of other companies selling consumer healthcare products, including
Unilever
(UL), which trades at over 17 times its estimated 2023 earnings, and
Procter & Gamble
(PG), which trades at 24 times projected earnings.
While Unilever sells ice cream and Procter & Gamble sells toilet paper—among many other products—Haleon is a large-cap, pure-play consumer healthcare firm. Other public pure-play consumer healthcare companies, notably
Perrigo
(PRGO) and
Prestige Consumer Healthcare
(PBH), operate at a far smaller scale, with market values of less than $6 billion.
That lack of a peer group, and Haleon’s skimpy track record as a stand-alone company, make it more speculative than other consumer products companies. More clarity will come after a few quarters of earnings reports, plus
Johnson & Johnson
’s
(JNJ) planned spinoff of its consumer health division next year. Haleon and the J&J spinoff will make up a new category—newly public consumer health companiesthat spent decades under Big Pharma’s umbrella.
Haleon, which started trading…
..
