Kimberly-Clark (KMB) Fell Following the Acquisition Announcement

Heartland Advisors, an investment management company, released its “Heartland Mid Cap Value Fund” fourth-quarter 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. As the overall stock market continues to widen, mid-caps are not experiencing the same. The high-quality value stocks continue to underperform, while speculative, low-quality, and momentum-driven sections of the market have received significant attention, and the valuation gaps are widening further. Against this backdrop, the Fund’s portfolio lost 1.92% in the quarter, versus the Russell Midcap® Value Index’s 1.42% return. The underperformance of its Quality Value holdings hit the performance of the strategy in the quarter. In addition, you can check the fund’s top 5 holdings to determine its best picks for 2025.

 In its fourth-quarter 2025 investor letter, Heartland Mid Cap Value Fund highlighted stocks such as Kimberly-Clark Corporation (NASDAQ:KMB). Kimberly-Clark Corporation (NASDAQ:KMB) is a leading personal care products company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. On January 12, 2026, Kimberly-Clark Corporation (NASDAQ:KMB) stock closed at $98.27 per share. One-month return of Kimberly-Clark Corporation (NASDAQ:KMB) was -4.16%, and its shares lost 22.12% of their value over the last 52 weeks. With around 69.96 million shares outstanding, Kimberly-Clark Corporation (NASDAQ:KMB) has a market capitalization of $32.615 billion.

Heartland Mid Cap Value Fund stated the following regarding Kimberly-Clark Corporation (NASDAQ:KMB) in its fourth quarter 2025 investor letter:

“Consumer Staples. One holding that ran into difficulties last quarter is Kimberly-Clark Corporation (NASDAQ:KMB), the tissue company behind well known brands such as Huggies, Cottonelle, and Kleenex.

The consumer products giant saw its shares fall more than 14% in November, not because of poor results or sub-par execution. Instead, the stock sank immediately after KMB announced its $48.7 billion acquisition of Kenvue, the consumer health company spun off from Johnson & Johnson which sells Tylenol, Neutrogena, Band-Aid and Listerine. We disagree with management’s capital allocation decision, as it takes KMB into new categories and poses significant integration risk.  We find it unfortunate that management made such an aggressive move after executing well against an internally focused playbook that positioned KMB for value creation in the coming years.  We fear that the Kenvue deal makes the company “bigger, not necessarily better”.

We trimmed the position in response to the Kenvue announcement. However, we balance deal-related question marks against a valuation of 13 times earnings (a historically wide discount to peers), better market share trends and improved margin performance in recent years.”

In another article, we covered Kimberly-Clark Corporation (NASDAQ:KMB) and shared the list of best consumer staples dividend stocks to invest in. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 2025 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.