Abbott to Spin Off Its $8.5 Billion Nutrition Business as Q3 2026 Earnings Match Forecasts

Abbott Laboratories stock fell 2.47% in the 15 minutes after the company said on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, that it plans to spin off its nutrition business, the maker of Similac and Ensure, as a separate public company. The headline reached the MoveSurge news feed at 07:25:00 ET, and ABT went from $101.50 just before it to $98.99 fifteen minutes later in premarket trading. Abbott reported third-quarter results the same morning, with adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $1.42, exactly what analysts expected.

At 10:21 ET the stock was at $100.08, down 2.31% on the day, according to Yahoo Finance. Abbott narrowed its 2026 forecast for adjusted EPS to $5.50 to $5.55 and kept the midpoint, so investors got a spin-off plan and an in-line quarter but no higher forecast.

What Abbott plans to spin off

The nutrition business has about $8.5 billion in annual sales, about 16,000 employees and 14 factories. Its brands are Similac, PediaSure, Pedialyte, Glucerna and Ensure. Abbott plans to hand shares of the new company to its own shareholders in a tax-free distribution and expects to finish by the end of 2027, once it has regulatory approvals, an effective registration statement on Form 10 and a final vote by its board. Daniel Salvadori, who runs Abbott's established pharmaceuticals and nutrition businesses, will become chief executive of the new company. Chief executive Robert Ford said the split lets Abbott focus on its faster-growing businesses, and the company said it will not change its 2026 forecast or the 2027 outlook it plans to give in January.

Nutrition sales rose 5.1% to $2.26 billion in the third quarter, about a sixth of Abbott's total, against 14.5% reported growth for the whole company. Similac is also the brand named in lawsuits that claim preterm infant formula causes necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), a serious bowel disease in premature babies. Abbott says the formula does not cause the disease. This would be Abbott's second large split: on January 1, 2013, it separated its research-based drug business as AbbVie.

Why reported growth was twice the comparable rate

Abbott closed its purchase of Exact Sciences, the maker of the Cologuard colon cancer test, on March 23, 2026, for about $20.6 billion. The deal added a new cancer diagnostics business that was not in last year's numbers, so reported growth of 14.5% overstates how fast the existing businesses grew. On a comparable basis, which leaves out acquisitions and currency effects, sales rose 7.0%. The gap is widest in diagnostics, where reported sales rose 46.7% and comparable sales 6.4%. Cancer diagnostics grew 13.8% on a comparable basis, while rapid and molecular tests grew 0.9%. Medical devices rose 7.8% on a comparable basis. Abbott expects comparable sales growth of about 6.0% for 2026.

How the stock traded

ABT ticked up to $101.93 in the first minute after the spin-off headline, a gain of 0.43%, then fell through the next quarter hour to $98.99. The shares were already well below their late-summer level: on August 26, 2026, the day the FDA approved its Libre Duo sensor, which tracks both glucose and ketones, ABT traded at $116.63.