Similac, Ensure and the other brands joining Abbott's new company

Abbott $ABT Laboratories owns a set of brands most American households can name without ever connecting them to the same corporate parent. Similac sits in the baby aisle. Pedialyte sits near the pharmacy counter. Ensure and Glucerna sit on a shelf near the vitamins. All of them belong to one division, and in October 2025 Abbott announced plans to separate it from the rest of the company. The Abbott nutrition spinoff would turn that entire business into a separate, publicly traded company, leaving Abbott itself focused on medical devices, diagnostics and established pharmaceuticals.

The logic is familiar to anyone who has watched large conglomerates reorganize over the past decade. Nutrition is a steady, consumer-facing business built on repeat purchases that families make out of necessity rather than impulse. Infant formula, oral rehydration solutions and adult nutritional shakes do not behave like heart valves or continuous glucose monitors, and they are not valued the same way by investors. Separating them gives each company its own balance sheet, its own management team and its own growth story to tell.

Abbott expects the separation to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and final board sign-off. The new company will trade on a U.S. exchange and be based in the Chicago area, where Abbott has been headquartered for more than a century. Its permanent name and executive leadership have not been announced.

For shoppers, the near-term effect should be close to invisible. Products keep their names, formulas and packaging, and they stay in the same spots on the same shelves. What changes is ownership: a new ticker symbol, a new board, and a portfolio that no longer competes internally for capital against Abbott's cardiovascular and diagnostics units.

What follows is a guide to the household brands moving into the new company. Each entry covers what the product does, who buys it, which rivals it faces, and what the split could mean for the parents, patients and caregivers who rely on it.

Illustration: Quartz

Similac is Abbott $ABT's flagship infant formula brand and one of the two largest sellers in the U.S., alongside Mead Johnson's Enfamil. It anchors the new nutrition company, since formula income rests on purchases parents repeat week after week through a baby's first year.

The lineup is broader than the familiar tubs suggest. Similac sells a standard milk-based formula for healthy full-term infants, a sensitive version for babies with mild lactose sensitivity, and formulations aimed at spit-up and gas, along with a soy-based option for families avoiding cow's milk protein. Similac NeoSure is made for premature and low-birth-weight babies, with more calories and nutrients per ounce to support catch-up growth after hospital discharge. Powder, liquid concentrate and ready-to-feed bottles cover different price points and convenience needs.

Distribution is what makes the brand durable. Feeding habits often begin in a hospital nursery or a pediatrician's office rather than a grocery aisle, and state contracts under WIC — the federal nutrition program for women, infants and children — steer a large share of U.S. formula purchases toward whichever manufacturer wins a given state's bid. Those institutional ties matter more to Similac's standing than advertising does, and they transfer intact to the new company.

Recent history shapes how investors read the separation. In 2022, contamination concerns at Abbott's Sturgis, Michigan, plant led to a recall and a production halt that deepened a nationwide formula shortage and drew congressional hearings over how few companies supply American infant formula. Abbott has not cited that episode as a reason for the spinoff.

Competition runs in two directions at once. Enfamil contests the same branded shelf space and the same hospital and WIC relationships, while store brands from Walmart $WMT, Target $TGT and Kroger undercut Similac on price with products regulated under the same federal nutrient standards. Holding ground against both is the commercial task the new company inherits.

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Pedialyte is an oral rehydration solution that replaces the fluid and electrolytes the body loses through vomiting, diarrhea, fever, heat or heavy sweating. It moves to the new nutrition company as one of Abbott $ABT's most recognizable over-the-counter products, sold without a prescription in drugstores, supermarkets and big-box stores across the U.S.

The science behind it is older than the brand. Oral rehydration therapy works because sodium and glucose are absorbed together in the small intestine, and water follows them across the intestinal wall. That pairing lets the gut take on fluid even while illness is driving it out. A measured solution of salts and sugar therefore does more for a dehydrated patient than plain water. The World Health Organization and UNICEF promoted the approach as a low-cost treatment for diarrheal disease in children, particularly in places where intravenous fluids are hard to reach.

Pedialyte carries more sodium and less sugar than a standard sports drink. That formulation difference traces back to its origins as a treatment for sick children rather than a beverage for athletes, and Abbott has leaned on the distinction in positioning the product against Gatorade, Liquid I.V. and the broader electrolyte-drink category.

The customer base has widened well past the pediatric aisle. Abbott sells ready-to-drink bottles, powder sticks that mix into water and freezer pops. Several lines are marketed explicitly to adults: people recovering from a night of drinking, endurance athletes and anyone losing fluid in summer heat. Pedialyte's advertising and social accounts have played openly with the hangover association, a repositioning that turned a product once kept in the medicine cabinet for stomach bugs into a year-round seller.

That range gives Pedialyte a different revenue pattern than most of the portfolio heading to the new company. Demand climbs with flu season, summer heat waves and holiday weekends, and it reaches shoppers on retail shelves rather than through pediatrician recommendations, hospital contracts or insurance coverage.

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Ensure is Abbott $ABT's line of nutritional shakes and powders for adults, and it ranks among the larger revenue brands moving into the new standalone nutrition company. Its buyers are mostly older adults, people recovering from surgery or illness, and anyone whose appetite has dropped far enough that regular meals no longer cover their nutritional needs.

The line splits into tiers built around different goals. Ensure Original delivers a balanced mix of calories, protein and vitamins for general nutritional support. Ensure Plus carries more calories per bottle for people trying to gain or hold weight during an illness or a recovery period. Ensure Max Protein raises the protein content and cuts the sugar, a response to the shift across the category toward protein-forward formulations as high-protein diets reached mainstream shoppers. Most versions are sold as ready-to-drink bottles, with powder options for people who prefer to mix their own.

Retail sales are only part of the picture. Ensure also moves through hospitals, rehabilitation centers and long-term care homes, where Abbott holds institutional supply arrangements with health systems rather than selling bottle by bottle. Those arrangements carry weight a store shelf does not show. A patient who starts on Ensure during a hospital stay may keep buying it at the pharmacy after discharge.

Its closest competitor is Nestlé's Boost line, and the two brands have effectively divided the adult nutritional shake category in the U.S. for years. They often sit beside each other in pharmacy and grocery aisles. Both have pushed into protein-shake territory as newer drink brands crowd into the same space.

The institutional ties behind Ensure are hard for a challenger to replicate quickly, since they rest on dietitian familiarity, formulary placement and purchasing agreements built over decades. That distribution advantage gives the brand a durable base on the adult side of a portfolio that otherwise leans pediatric, weighted toward Similac, Pedialyte and PediaSure.

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PediaSure is Abbott $ABT's nutritional shake line for children who have outgrown infant formula, marketed to parents of picky eaters and kids whose pediatricians have raised concerns about weight or growth. It moves to the new nutrition company as the bridge product between Abbott's infant formula business and its adult shake brands.

Abbott markets the line to families with children roughly ages two through 13. The product is sold as a supplement rather than a meal replacement, delivering calories, protein, vitamins and minerals meant to cover what inconsistent eating leaves out. It comes in ready-to-drink bottles and in powder that mixes into milk, with flavors aimed at children — chocolate, vanilla and strawberry among them. Abbott also sells variations built around specific concerns, including versions with added fiber and a formulation with greater calorie density for kids who need more energy per serving.

The marketing channel sets PediaSure apart from most children's beverages. Abbott has long reached parents through pediatrician offices, where a doctor's suggestion carries more weight than a supermarket endcap. It also advertises through parenting media aimed at households worried about a child who refuses most foods. That positioning frames narrow eating habits as a nutrition problem with a product answer, which is part of why the brand draws scrutiny.

Sugar content is the most common criticism leveled at shelf-stable children's shakes, PediaSure included, along with the concern that a sweet drink displaces the solid foods a child needs to learn to eat. Abbott has reformulated the line over the years to cut added sugar while holding the calorie and protein levels parents buy it for.

Within the new company, PediaSure will likely stay grouped with Similac and Pedialyte as a pediatric anchor, since the customer overlap is substantial. A household that bought Abbott formula for an infant is a plausible PediaSure customer three years later. That continuity across a child's early years is one of the portfolio's structural advantages.

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Glucerna is Abbott $ABT's nutrition line for people living with diabetes, sold as ready-to-drink shakes, powders and snack bars built around a carbohydrate blend that digests more slowly than the sugars in a standard snack. The aim is a gentler rise in blood glucose after one is consumed, rather than the sharper spike a conventional shake can produce.

The line is positioned as medical nutrition rather than general wellness food. Abbott sells it through pharmacy chains and the diabetes care section of grocery and big-box stores, where it sits near test strips, lancets and glucose tablets instead of in the protein-drink aisle. That placement reflects who buys it: people with a type 1 or type 2 diagnosis, and some with prediabetes working to keep carbohydrate intake under control.

Glucerna's customer base is narrower than Ensure's but tends to use the product more consistently. A shake taken as a between-meal snack or a quick breakfast becomes part of a daily routine that already includes medication, glucose checks and meal planning worked out with a physician or registered dietitian. That makes it less dependent on flavor launches and seasonal marketing than most shelf-stable nutrition brands.

Its closest competitor on the shelf is Nestlé's Boost Glucose Control, and the two have largely defined the category between them. The segment is small next to adult nutrition overall, but it is steady, and both brands lean on clinical positioning rather than mass-market advertising.

One distinction matters for anyone tracking the split. Abbott also sells the FreeStyle Libre continuous glucose monitor, a sensor worn on the arm that tracks glucose levels throughout the day, and that device business is staying with Abbott as part of its diabetes care unit. Only the Glucerna nutrition products move to the new company. The outcome is a corporate separation between two product lines sold to the same patient — the shake goes one way, the sensor stays put.

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ZonePerfect, Abbott $ABT's nutrition bar line, moves to the new company as its only real foothold in the snack aisle. It is the one part of the portfolio sold almost entirely through supermarkets, club stores and convenience shelves rather than pharmacies, hospitals or pediatrician offices.

The name traces to the Zone diet popularized by Barry Sears, which centers on balancing carbohydrates, protein and fat within each meal instead of cutting out a single macronutrient. ZonePerfect bars carry that framing forward, sold on the idea of steady energy from a mix of the three rather than the single-ingredient minimalism or high-protein maximalism that shapes much of the current bar market. The line leans on chocolate and peanut butter flavors, with lower-sugar and higher-protein versions added as shopper preferences shifted toward both.

The audience is broader and far less defined than the one buying Abbott's medical nutrition products. ZonePerfect sells to commuters, desk workers and parents packing school lunches, not to patients following a care plan. That widens the potential customer base and removes any clinical gatekeeper from the purchase, but it also strips away the pricing power and distribution protection that come with a doctor's recommendation.

The bar category has consolidated around much larger food companies. Kellogg $K bought RXBAR in 2017, Mars completed its purchase of Kind in 2020 and Mondelez $MDLZ acquired Clif Bar in 2022, placing three of ZonePerfect's most visible rivals inside global snack conglomerates with deep retail leverage and large promotional budgets. Competing for shelf space with those owners is a different problem than competing against Mead Johnson in infant formula or Nestlé in adult shakes, categories where two established players split most of the market between them.

For the standalone nutrition company, ZonePerfect's results will hinge on flavor refreshes, promotional pricing and placement near checkout rather than on the institutional contracts that anchor Similac, Ensure and Glucerna. That makes it a direct measure of how the new management team runs a purely consumer-facing brand.

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Among the brands moving to Abbott $ABT's new nutrition company, EAS is the one built for gym-goers rather than patients. Short for Experimental and Applied Sciences, it sells whey protein powders, ready-to-drink protein shakes and meal-replacement products, including the Myoplex line, aimed at people training for muscle gain or athletic performance.

Abbott acquired EAS in the mid-2000s, long after the brand had made its name in bodybuilding and fitness circles on its own. That history still shapes how the packaging looks and reads in a store. Labels lead with protein grams and performance language rather than the clinical, caregiver-facing design used across most of the rest of the portfolio heading to the new company.

EAS sits in the most crowded category of any brand in the spinoff. Optimum Nutrition, Muscle Milk and a long list of direct-to-consumer powder companies that grew out of online fitness communities all chase the same shopper. Switching costs are close to zero. A lifter choosing between two tubs of whey compares price per serving, protein content and flavor, not a pediatrician's recommendation or a hospital discharge sheet.

That shapes how the brand fits into the new company. Infant formula and medical nutrition are partly protected by institutional channels — hospital feeding programs, allergist referrals, long-term care supply contracts and state WIC agreements. EAS has none of that insulation. Its sales run through grocery, mass retail, specialty sports nutrition shops and e-commerce, where visibility depends on marketing spend and retailer relationships that have to be renewed constantly.

The brand is also small next to the portfolio's anchors, which makes it a useful read on the new company's priorities. A standalone nutrition business setting its own capital budget has to decide whether to reinvest in a competitive consumer category or concentrate resources on the higher-margin, institutionally protected lines. Whether EAS gets new formats and flavors after the separation, or holds its existing shelf space without much investment, will signal which direction the new management team picks.

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EleCare and Similac Alimentum, Abbott $ABT's formulas for infants who cannot tolerate standard cow's milk-based products, move to the new nutrition company with the rest of the Similac franchise. They are small-volume products with outsized importance, because the babies who use them often have no practical substitute.

Alimentum is a hypoallergenic formula built on extensively hydrolyzed protein. The milk protein is broken into fragments small enough that most infants with cow's milk protein allergy can digest it without triggering an immune reaction. It is also fed to infants whose colic is linked to protein sensitivity. EleCare takes that idea further by skipping intact protein and starting from free amino acids, the individual building blocks proteins are made from. The amino acid-based design serves infants with severe allergies, multiple food protein intolerances, or gut conditions that rule out even hydrolyzed formula.

Both cost more than standard formula. Both are usually reached through a pediatrician, allergist or gastroenterologist rather than chosen off a shelf by a parent comparing labels. Clinical recommendation, hospital feeding protocols and specialty pharmacy distribution matter more here than conventional retail marketing. Insurance coverage is uneven, and WIC programs differ on which specialty formulas they cover and what medical documentation a family must supply. Access to these products has been a recurring policy question at the state level.

The 2022 supply disruption at Abbott's Sturgis, Michigan facility hit this group hardest. A family using standard formula could often switch to a store brand or a competing product. A family whose infant was prescribed an amino acid-based formula had few equivalents available. Some searched across state lines or worked through hospital channels to find supply. That concentration has not changed much since — Abbott and Mead Johnson account for most of the specialty formula sold in the U.S.

Inside the new company, these formulas are expected to stay bundled with Similac's infant nutrition operation rather than run as a separate brand unit, since they share manufacturing lines, regulatory oversight and the same clinician relationships.

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Abbott $ABT's rationale for the split comes down to fit: a consumer packaged goods business built on formula, shakes and electrolyte drinks runs on different economics than a medical technology business built on heart devices, diagnostics and glucose monitors. Separating them lets each side be financed, managed and judged on its own terms.

What Abbott keeps is the device and diagnostics half of the company. That includes the diabetes care unit behind the FreeStyle Libre continuous glucose sensor, the cardiovascular and structural heart portfolio, the diagnostics division that scaled up sharply on testing demand during the COVID-19 pandemic, and an established pharmaceuticals business selling branded generic medicines outside the U.S. Those segments move on clinical trial results, regulatory clearances and hospital purchasing cycles.

Nutrition moves on an entirely different set of inputs: birth rates, retail shelf space, commodity costs and government contracts such as WIC. Investors who want exposure to one are not automatically looking for exposure to the other. A conglomerate structure forces the market to settle on a single valuation multiple for a company doing two unrelated things. Splitting them gives analysts a cleaner read on each.

The healthcare sector has recent precedent for this kind of separation. Johnson & Johnson $JNJ carved its consumer health division out as Kenvue in 2023, creating a standalone company around Tylenol, Band-Aid and Listerine while J&J concentrated on pharmaceuticals and medical technology. Outside healthcare, Kellogg $K separated its cereal business from its snack business that same year, and General Electric $GE broke itself into three companies.

Independence also changes how money gets allocated inside the nutrition business. Capital for manufacturing capacity, reformulation work or advertising no longer has to win an internal argument against a cardiovascular device program. The new company's leadership will set those priorities itself across Similac, Ensure, Pedialyte and the rest of the lineup.

Abbott has said the new company will be headquartered in the Chicago area, where Abbott itself has been based since its founding in 1888. The permanent name, executive team and ticker symbol have not been announced, with the separation targeted to close at the end of 2026.