Often, the parent company starts by selling a portion of the new company to the public, to establish a market and a following among investors. That way, by the time of the spin-off, stock in the new company may be liquid enough to be sold relatively easily, or retained with some confidence as a worthwhile investment.
In our experience, and in most academic studies of the subject, this helps the parent and its corporate spinoff. Both generally do better than comparable companies for at least several years after the spinoff takes place.
When a company carries out a spinoff, it sets up one of its subsidiaries or divisions as a separate company, then hands out shares in the new company to its own shareholders. It may hand out the shares as a special dividend, or give its shareholders an opportunity to swap shares of the parent company for the shares of the newly established spinoff.
Study after study has shown that after an initial adjustment period of a few months, stock spinoffs tend to outperform groups of comparable stocks for several years. (For that matter, the parent companies also tend to outperform comparable firms for several years after a spinoff.) The above-average performance of spinoffs makes sense for a couple of reasons.
First, company managers naturally prefer to acquire or expand their assets, not get rid of them. Getting rid of assets reduces a company’s total potential profit. The management of a parent company will only hand out a subsidiary to its own investors if it’s nearly certain that the subsidiary, and the parent, will be better off after the spinoff than before.
Second, spinoffs involve a lot of work and legal fees. Companies only have an incentive to do spinoffs under two sets of favourable conditions: When they feel it isn’t a good time to sell (which often means it’s a good time to buy); or, when they feel the assets they plan to spin off will be worth substantially more in the future, possibly within a few years.
Quite often, a big company will spin off a small subsidiary because it feels the subsidiary is a tiny gem, but that it’s too small to make an impact on the much larger financial statements and market capitalization of the parent.
At TSI Network we’ve had great success with a number of spun off stocks over the years. That’s especially true of the many spinoffs we have recommended that have gone up after they began trading, and have later attracted a takeover bid at a substantial premium over the market price.
Needless to say, things don’t always work out this well. Spinoffs and their parents do sometimes run into unforeseeable woes. But on the whole, in investing, spinoffs are the closest thing you can find to a sure thing.
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We think that spinoffs are the closest thing you can find to a sure thing for two main reasons:
1) The management of a parent company will only hand out shares in a subsidiary to its own investors if it’s all but certain that business, and the parent, will be better off after the spinoff.
2) Spinoffs involve a lot of work and legal fees. The parent will only spin off the unwanted subsidiary if it can’t sell the stock for what it feels it’s worth.
Based in Toronto, Xanadu is developing quantum computing hardware and software. Quantum computers use electrons, rather than transistors, to carry out a vast number of calculations simultaneously. That makes them much faster than regular computers.
In June 2015, Gannett Co. Inc. (New York symbol GCI) spun off its newspaper operation as a separate company operating under the Gannett name. The remaining broadcasting and Internet unit was then renamed Tegna. Under the deal, for every two shares investors held, they received one share of the spinoff company and two TGNA shares.
Danaher’s latest spinoff came in September 2023 when it handed out shares in Veralto Corp. (New York symbol VLTO), which makes products that monitor water quality. Investors received one Veralto share for every three Danaher shares they held.
Danaher is up slightly since the split, partly due to government cuts to research projects. However, cost cuts will improve its profitability. Veralto, on the other hand, is up 16% as demand for equipment related to water-cooling systems in new AI datacentres continues to grow.
XPO’s revenue in the quarter ended September 30, 2025, rose 2.8%, to $2.11 billion from $.05 billion a year earlier. If you exclude currency exchange rates, revenue was flat. Thanks to savings from a restructuring plan, as well as using AI to optimize its pick-up and delivery schedules, earnings before unusual items gained 11.5%, to $1.07 a share (or a total of $128 million) from $0.96 a share (or $113 million).
In November 2022, XPO then spun off its truck brokerage business as a separate firm called RXO Inc. Investors received one RXO share for each XPO share they held.
Since their splits, GXO is down 22% while RXO has dropped 49%. That’s due to fears of a slowing economy and the impact of tariffs. However, their recent acquisitions should set them up for strong gains as the economy rebounds.
Under pressure from Starboard Value and other activists, Kenvue has accepted a takeover offer from Kimberly-Clark Corp. (New York symbol KMB), the maker of personal care and tissue products.
Since then, the stock has soared over almost 500%. That’s mainly because the company is a leader in its niche business. Despite that big gain, we feel Trisura can continue to move higher, particularly as it’s winding down some of its riskier policies in the U.S. That should spur its earnings growth.
The company’s relatively small size could also turn it into an attractive takeover target for a larger industry player.
In the quarter ended September 30, 2025, revenue jumped 55.7%, to $364.6 million from $234.1 million a year earlier. That gain was due to acquisitions and a 97.1% jump in the number of patient visits in Canada. Earnings soared to $41.0 million, or $0.16 a share, from $4.1 million, or $0.02.