Kenvue Inc. shares KVUE were cheered in their Wall Street debut Thursday, as the Johnson & Johnson JNJ spinoff, with consumer brands including Tylenol, Band-Aid and Listerine, saw it’s stock open 16.0% above its initial public offering price. Kenvue raised $3.8 billion as it said late Wednesday that it sold 172.8 million shares in the IPO, up from previous expectations of 151.2 million shares, at $22 a share, which was at the higher end of the expected pricing range of between $20 and $23 a share. With 1.87 billion shares outstanding after the IPO, the pricing values the company at $41.08 billion. The stock’s first trade was at $25.53 at 12:47 p.m. Eastern, for 15.7 million shares. At the opening price, the company was valued at $47.67 billion. Shares of J&J, which owns 1.72 billion Kenvue shares, or 91.9% of the shares outstanding, slipped 0.5% in midday trading. Kenvue’s debut comes at a time when the IPO market had all but dried up, and investors haven’t been showing shares of recent IPOs much love. The Renaissance IPO exchange-traded fund IPO has lost 7.7% over the past three months while the S&P 500 SPX has slipped 1.8%.
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