As GSK's former consumer health unit Haleon nears its one-year mark of independent operations, its former parent company is shedding 240 million shares.
Since Haleon’s July 2022 demerger, GSK has kept a 12.94% stake in the consumer health company. But in a statement this week, GSK said it's selling 240 million shares, or a 2.5% stake, in the company. The company plans to sell the shares to institutional investors at an undisclosed price.
The sale is worth 823 million pounds sterling ($1 billion), Bloomberg reports.
Just last week, Pfizer, which has a 32% stake in Haleon, told the Financial Times that it would begin a “slow and methodical” sale of its holdings.
“We love the Haleon business but it's not strategic,” Pfizer’s chief financial officer Dave Denton told the newspaper.
Pfizer’s Haleon stake is worth just over 10 billion pounds ($12.5 billion). Haleon’s finance chief Tobias Hestler told Reuters that the move isn’t surprising as the Big Pharma had long been clear about its intention to offload its stake.
Pfizer and GSK merged their consumer health businesses in 2019. Then, last year, Haleon took flight on its own through a listing on the London Stock Exchange.
Like several other Big Pharma companies, GSK and Pfizer have pivoted in recent years to focus on innovative medicines and vaccines.
Meanwhile, in its first year of solo operations, Haleon made the top of a Caliber report ranking the most respected pharmaceutical brands.
The company launched with around 10.3 billion pounds of debt but pulled down 2022 revenues of 10.85 billion pounds ($13.57 billion). Haleon’s recently reported first-quarter revenues came out to 2.98 billion pounds ($3.72 billion).