The story
Spin-off and IPO
On November 12, 2021, Johnson & Johnson announced that it would spin off its consumer health division as a separate company in an effort to streamline operations. The new company would assume well-known consumer brands such as Aveeno, Band-Aid, Neutrogena, and Tylenol, while Johnson & Johnson would focus on the pharmaceutical and medical device sectors. CEO Alex Gorsky said that the split was in response to "a significant evolution in these markets, particularly on the consumer side", and would enable faster expansion for both businesses.
Other pharmaceutical companies that made similar moves around this time included Merck & Co., which sold its consumer health business to Bayer in 2014, and Pfizer, which merged its consumer health division with that of GSK plc in 2019. The November 2021 announcement also occurred the same week that General Electric and Toshiba each announced that they would split into multiple entities.
The New York Times noted that Johnson & Johnson had long benefited from a "halo effect," namely a lingering positive connotation ascribed to the company name stemming from its popular household brands such as Johnson's Baby, but that its reputation had declined as a result of various controversies in recent years; Johnson & Johnson was the subject of litigation over its role in the opioid epidemic in the United States, as well as over allegations that its talc-based baby powder contained asbestos and caused ovarian cancer for some consumers. The spin-off was seen as an effort to move past these controversies and assuage shareholder apprehension.
The Times also pointed out that, while the consumer health business operates many well-known brands, it was not nearly as lucrative as the pharmaceutical and medical device sectors, taking $15 billion in revenue in 2021 compared to the latter's combined $77 billion, and commented that the popularity of the consumer brands "does not do much to advance Johnson & Johnson's medical businesses, which are far more important to the company's finances".
On February 23, 2022, the consumer health business was registered as a corporation in Delaware, under the provisional name JNTL, Inc. On September 28, 2022, Johnson & Johnson said that the new consumer health company would be called Kenvue, a combination of "ken", a Scottish English word for 'knowledge', and "vue", a homophone of "view" intended to evoke the concept of 'sight'. At the time, Kenvue's total number of employees was about 22,000.
In January 2023, Kenvue filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering (IPO). Kenvue issued about 1.89 billion shares, of which about 170 million were to be offered at the IPO. This meant that after the IPO, Johnson & Johnson would retain almost 91 percent of the shares.
The IPO took place on May 4, 2023. Shares of Kenvue were priced at $22, implying an initial equity valuation for Kenvue of about $41 billion, and traded at $26.90 at the end of the first trading day. Raising about $3.8 billion in capital for Kenvue, it was the largest IPO since the IPO of Rivian on November 10, 2021. The IPO was seen as a useful gauge of broader investor confidence. Observers cited rising interest rates and predictions of a looming recession to explain the slowdown in the U.S. IPO market since 2022 and said that Kenvue was an "idiosyncratic" IPO candidate as it was well-established, with an extensive track record of profitable years under its parent company.
On July 24, 2023, Johnson & Johnson launched an exchange offer to split off Kenvue, allowing Johnson & Johnson shareholders to exchange all, some, or none of their shares of Johnson & Johnson common stock for shares of Kenvue.
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In August 2023, Kenvue was added to the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats index.
In March 2025, following the purchase of a stake in the company by activist investment firm Starboard, Jeffrey Smith, the CEO, took a seat on Kenvue’s board of directors. In July 2025, Thibaut Mongon, the first CEO of Kenvue, was terminated, and a review of the company’s strategy was begun.
Acquisition by Kimberly-Clark
In November 2025, Kimberly-Clark, a consumer products giant whose brands include Kleenex, Kotex, Huggies and Softex, agreed to spend about $40 billion to acquire Kenvue. In terms of sales, the two companies had been roughly equal—in 2024, Kimberly-Clark had revenue of about $20.1 billion, while Kenvue's revenue was about $15.5 billion. The cash-and-stock deal will result in Kimberly-Clark shareholders owning about 54 percent of the new, combined company, with Kenvue shareholders owning about 46 percent.
From Wikipedia’s article on Kenvue, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.8