Less than 14 months after becoming a standalone company, Johnson & Johnson’s consumer healthcare spinout Kenvue is staring down an activist investor.
The investor, Starboard Value, has built a stake in the Johnson & Johnson spinoff and believes the company has underperformed since becoming a separate company in August 2023, according to people familiar with the matter. It wasn’t immediately clear how much Starboard had invested in the firm.
The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. Kenvue shares $KVUE were up 6.2% Monday afternoon. Starboard and Kenvue didn’t reply to requests for comment.
The owner of the Tylenol brand was spun out from J&J last year and has seen its share price fall 13% since going public in May 2023. J&J sold its remaining shares in Kenvue earlier this year.
The spinoff follows a trend of pharmaceutical conglomerates shedding consumer health businesses to make a more focused bet on life science research and development.
It’s the second major healthcare position taken by Starboard this month, after the investor took a roughly $1 billion stake in Pfizer, representing about 0.6% of the company.
Starboard is expected to reveal more of what it’s pushing for at Pfizer and Kenvue on Tuesday, when the investor’s CEO Jeff Smith presents at a conference alongside other activists.
The Pfizer situation, while only weeks old, has been one of the messiest recent episodes in activism. Starboard initially had the backing of the drugmaker’s top former executives — former CEO Ian Read and CFO Frank D’Amelio — only to watch them reverse positions days later.
Representatives of Starboard met with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, lead independent director Shantanu Narayen and possibly other board members on Oct. 16.