GSK offloads £800m stake in healthcare spin-off Haleon
It comes a week after Pfizer said it planned to sell its 32% stake in the business.
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Your support makes all the difference.Pharmaceutical giant GSK has sold more than £800 million of shares in its spin-off healthcare group Haleon.
The FTSE 100-listed group said it has offloaded 240 million shares – around a 2.6% stake – a week after Pfizer announced it planned to sell its 32% stake in the business.
GSK sold at 335p per share, meaning the stake went for a discount of about 2.3% from the closing price of 342.85p on Thursday.
The discounted sale raised around £804 million, GSK said.
The firm spun off its consumer healthcare business Haleon, which owns household brands including Sensodyne toothpaste and painkillers Panadol and Advil, in July last year.
Haleon, which employs around 22,000 staff around the world, floated on the London Stock Exchange in Europe’s biggest listing for more than a decade.
In September, the firm reported a double-digit hike in revenue and profits in its first set of company results since splitting from GSK.
The company still has a 10.3% stake in Haleon, while drugmaker Pfizer holds nearly a third of its shares.
However, the boss of Pfizer said it would begin offloading its stake amid efforts to reduce debt, according to a report earlier this month in the Financial Times.
Dave Denton told the newspaper the sell-off would begin within months but in a “slow and methodical” manner so as not to reduce Haleon’s market valuation.
Both companies pledged not to dispose of any further shares in Haleon for 60 days after the sale, GSK said.
Russ Mould, investment director for AJ Bell, said: “They both said they would sell down their positions in time, but the ease at which GSK has placed 240 million shares in Haleon would suggest it won’t have a problem selling the remaining 10.3% stake in the business.
“Essentially that is also good news for Haleon and the perceived risk to its share price from the significant overhang – there is nothing worse than two major shareholders openly saying they don’t want to keep their shares for long.”
Haleon’s share price edged up by about 0.5% on Friday morning, while GSK’s was up by 2%.