Corteva Completes $39 Billion Split Into Vylor After States' Bid to Block Deal Fails

Corteva Inc. completed the split of its seed and crop-protection businesses into two separately traded public companies on Oct. 1, capping a restructuring that survived a last-minute legal challenge from California and 20 other states accusing the agrochemical giant of using the deal to dodge billions of dollars in "forever chemicals" liability.

The transaction spun off Corteva's seed and genetics operations — including the century-old Pioneer brand — into a new, independently traded company called Vylor Inc., which began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker "VYLR" at the opening bell. The remaining business, which keeps the Corteva name and its "CTVA" ticker, now operates as a stand-alone crop-protection company selling herbicides, insecticides and fungicides.

Every Corteva shareholder of record as of Sept. 24 received one share of Vylor stock for each Corteva share they held, under a distribution structured to be tax-free for U.S. shareholders, according to a company notice filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The numbers

Vylor was designated the "accounting successor" to Corteva's combined historical financial statements, which is why the new seed company arrived as the far larger of the two by market value. Vylor closed its second session of trading on Oct. 2 at $67.26 a share, down 1.5% on the day, for a market capitalization of roughly $44.9 billion, on volume of about 13.6 million shares, according to stock-market data. "New Corteva," the crop-protection company, finished the same session at $11.92 a share — a roughly 85% single-day drop from its pre-split price that reflects the technical value transfer to Vylor rather than any loss to shareholders, who hold stock in both companies — for a market cap of about $8 billion.

On a combined 2025 basis, the businesses that became Vylor generated $9.9 billion in seed net sales, led by $7.0 billion of corn and $1.9 billion of soybean revenue. The crop-protection business retained by Corteva posted $7.5 billion in 2025 net sales, led by $3.7 billion in herbicides. Vylor is targeting $11.2 billion to $11.9 billion in net sales by 2029, while Corteva is targeting $8.4 billion to $8.7 billion over the same period, the companies have said.

Years in the making

The split traces back to Corteva's own origins: the company was created in 2019 as the agriculture spin-off of the DowDuPont merger. Corteva's board approved breaking the company up a second time, announcing in 2025 that it would separate its seed and crop-protection units into two independent, publicly traded companies by the fourth quarter of 2026. The board formally approved the distribution terms on Sept. 14, and the SEC declared Vylor's Form 10 registration statement effective on Sept. 24, clearing the way for the Oct. 1 distribution date, according to Corteva's SEC filings.

Vylor will be headquartered in Johnston, Iowa — long the home of the Pioneer seed brand — while the crop-protection business keeps Corteva's existing headquarters in Indianapolis. Chuck Magro, who had led the combined company, becomes Vylor's chief executive; Luke Kissam, the former Albemarle Corp. chief executive who joined Corteva in June to run its crop-protection unit, becomes chief executive of the renamed Corteva.

A legal fight over 'forever chemicals'

The separation almost didn't happen on schedule. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, joined by attorneys general from 20 other states and nine cities and counties including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Philadelphia, asked a federal court in South Carolina on Sept. 14 for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to stop the spin-off, arguing it would move roughly $39 billion in assets into Vylor while leaving PFAS-contamination liabilities tied to Corteva's DuPont lineage behind in a thinly capitalized entity.

"This family of chemical manufacturers has been constantly changing hats and engaging in a decades-long campaign of deception to evade accountability for the widespread damage they caused," California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in announcing the coalition's court filing.

The states' filing, lodged in the federal court overseeing multidistrict PFAS litigation, cited a 2021 cost-sharing agreement under which Corteva, DuPont de Nemours and Chemours Co. capped their combined contributions to legacy PFAS claims at roughly $4 billion — a structure the states argue was designed to limit the companies' exposure to "forever chemicals" claims from water systems, farms and residents nationwide.

A district court initially declined to let California file its emergency motion; a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed that procedural ruling on Sept. 30 and sent the case back to the district court, but denied the states' request to delay the spin-off while the case proceeded, saying it was not weighing in on the merits of California's claims. On remand, the district court denied the states' motion to block the distribution, and Corteva proceeded with the Oct. 1 closing after waiving a related closing condition tied to the litigation.

Who's affected

The split reshapes two Fortune 500-scale employers at once. Corteva's roughly 20,000 employees are now divided between the Indianapolis-based crop-protection company and the Johnston, Iowa-based seed company, with both retaining major operations in their respective headquarters regions as well as Vylor's announced corporate business center in southeast Pennsylvania. Farmers who buy Pioneer-brand seed or Corteva-brand crop chemicals should see no immediate change in products or supply, the companies have said, though they will now be dealing with two separate corporate entities, research pipelines and investor bases. Index investors were also affected: Vylor was added to the S&P 500 in Corteva's place, while the smaller, restructured Corteva no longer carries the same index weighting it held before the split.

What's next

The Fourth Circuit's ruling means California and its co-plaintiffs can still pursue their underlying claims that the corporate restructuring was a fraudulent transfer designed to escape PFAS liability, even though the spin-off itself was not stopped — a fight likely to play out for years alongside the broader multidistrict PFAS litigation in South Carolina. For Vylor, management has pointed to a roughly $19 billion technology pipeline, including new corn and soybean trait platforms and a hybrid wheat system slated for 2027, plus a licensing arm it calls Vylor One that it has said could generate more than $500 million in income by 2027. Wall Street's early read has been mixed-to-constructive: several analysts maintained positive ratings on the newly separated companies in the days around the split, framing it as a bet that two focused, "pure-play" agricultural businesses can be valued more richly apart than they were combined — provided the legal cloud over the deal's structure doesn't follow Vylor's balance sheet into court.