Robert B. Ford

But going out and splitting the two companies into two publicly traded companies really seems to show confidence that this company may not be the high margin health care products, health care device company that you know as Abbott, but it's an absolutely viable healthy nutrition product company.

And their chairman and CEO, Robert Ford, is fairly adamant that this is not about the nutrition business's troubles.

and those troubles really stem from their infant formula issues

they've

Abbott Laboratories is spinning off its nutrition business into a new standalone company, a move winning early praise from Wall Street, but leaving a billion-dollar question unanswered.

Abbott chief executive Robert Ford says the split will create the world's largest pure-play nutrition company, while allowing Abbott's core healthcare and device business to accelerate sales and boost overall margins.

Analysts at J.P. Morgan and BTIG agree, noting the nutrition division has weighed down Abbott's overall growth in recent quarters.

However, as Crane's John Asplund reports, a major cloud hangs over the deal, lingering infant formula litigation.

There's another one where one of their plants had, um, issues with contamination, led to a federal, um, litigation against them.

And then lastly, the, as, uh, Robert Ford mentioned in the call, this, it's, it's changing.

It's changing from kind of a healthcare type of segment to more of a consumer and a retail segment, and being part of an overall conglomerate-

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