The News
It’s not often that a government press conference warning the dangers of a household product buoys the maker’s stock, but that’s the strange position that Tylenol parent Kenvue finds itself in today. Shares traded up as much as 5% Tuesday morning, despite President Donald Trump urging people to “fight like hell not to take” the drug but failed to back up unfounded claims that it causes autism, and defied the guidance of some scientific advisers standing warily behind him at the podium.
Call it the “better than feared” bump, which has been a feature of markets since Liberation Day — as has the “worse than hoped” decline. See Bayer’s recovery from a separate MAHA report that stopped short of banning pesticides, or swinging stocks of automakers as new tariff exemptions are won.
Investors have long expected Kenvue, which Johnson & Johnson spun off in 2023 to focus on prescription drugs, to draw takeover interest. The company is working with Centerview bankers on a strategic review as it faces pressure from at least three different activist investors, including one on its board. The White House’s warnings last week sent arbitrageurs fleeing, but many saw the lack of hard evidence at Monday’s press conference as a chance to buy back in at a lower price.
Meanwhile, one crisis-communications professional questions Kenvue’s pushback strategy. Like other companies in Trump’s crosshairs, it’s stuck between defending its products and picking an open fight with the White House.
Notable
- There’s a certain irony that Kenvue has struggled to stem investor worries, given Tylenol’s handling of a poisoning crisis in the 1980s is still held up as the gold standard for corporate crisis communications.