Avanos Medical, Inc. (AVNS)

Avanos Medical, Inc. is a medical technology company headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia. It was created in 2014 when Kimberly-Clark spun off its health care business to shareholders under the name Halyard Health, which began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in October of that year. The business at that time made surgical and infection prevention products as well as medical devices used in chronic care and pain management.

In 2018 the company sold its surgical and infection prevention business to Owens & Minor for about $710 million and renamed itself Avanos Medical in June of that year. The renamed company concentrated on two areas, chronic care and pain management. It kept the NYSE listing under the symbol AVNS, replacing the previous HYH ticker. The chronic care franchise included digestive health products such as MIC-KEY enteral feeding tubes, Corpak feeding solutions and NeoMed neonatal and pediatric feeding systems, along with respiratory health products such as closed airway suction systems sold under brands including Ballard and Microcuff. These products were sold to hospitals, other care facilities and distributors in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

The pain and recovery portfolio centered on non-opioid options. It covered acute pain products such as the On-Q and ambIT pain pumps, the Game Ready cold and compression therapy systems, and interventional pain therapies including Coolief radiofrequency pain relief and, following its acquisition of OrthogenRx in 2018, knee osteoarthritis injection products. The company marketed these through direct sales teams and third-party wholesale distributors.

The transaction that ended its public life was an agreement with affiliates of investment funds advised by American Industrial Partners, or AIP, an industrially focused private investor with about $17.8 billion in assets under management. AIP agreed to buy all outstanding shares for $25.00 per share in cash, a deal valued at about $1.272 billion. J.P. Morgan Securities was lead financial advisor to Avanos, with UBS Investment Bank also advising and Alston & Bird as legal counsel.

For shareholders, the transaction replaced ownership of a listed medical device maker with a fixed cash payment. The $25.00 price was set in the merger agreement and did not depend on the performance of any acquirer's stock, so the value received was known in advance once the closing conditions were satisfied.

Take-private transactions of this type generally remove the target from public reporting requirements. Following closing, Avanos was expected to file for deregistration of its common stock with the SEC, so it no longer publishes quarterly and annual reports, and its financial results are no longer publicly disclosed in the same way.

Avanos announced the completion of the acquisition on July 27, 2026. At closing its common stock ceased trading on the NYSE, a Form 25 was filed, and Avanos became a privately held company with its headquarters remaining in Alpharetta, Georgia. Former shareholders received the cash merger consideration for each share, and there is no successor public ticker.