On balance, Friedberg’s prediction matches what has actually happened between late 2021 and 2025, even though the exact return figure (20–30%) is an approximation and outcomes vary widely.

1. Conglomerate breakups did continue in the following years

Since the podcast (Nov 2021), there has been a clear ongoing wave of large conglomerates breaking themselves up:

• General Electric completed the separation of GE HealthCare in January 2023 and later split into GE Aerospace and GE Vernova, fully dismantling the classic GE conglomerate structure. GE HealthCare’s spin was announced as part of a 3‑way split in 2021 and executed in 2023.(en.wikipedia.org)
• 3M announced in 2022 that it would spin off its health‑care division; the Solventum spin was approved and completed on April 1, 2024, explicitly to “build two world‑class companies” and unlock value.(news.3m.com)
• Kellogg separated into Kellanova (snacks) and WK Kellogg Co (North American cereal) in 2023, again framed as value‑unlocking portfolio simplification.(investor.kellanova.com)
• Johnson & Johnson separated its consumer‑health arm into Kenvue via an IPO and exchange offer in 2023, sharpening J&J’s focus on pharma and med‑tech.(investor.jnj.com)
• Honeywell announced in early 2025 that it will split into three businesses (aerospace, automation, advanced materials), explicitly citing GE’s breakup as a model.(barrons.com)

Strategist and bank reports note that US spinoff activity has been elevated and expected to keep accelerating: announced US spinoffs rose 33% in 2022, and Goldman/Trivariate and Bloomberg highlight that spinoffs remain a popular tool to boost shareholder value as cost of capital has risen.(news.bloomberglaw.com) This is exactly the “continuation of the breakup trend” Friedberg described.

2. Activist shareholders are targeting large conglomerates and pushing breakups

Friedberg also said activists would buy into big conglomerates and agitate for separation. That pattern is clearly visible:

• Honeywell: Elliott Management built a >$5B stake and publicly pushed Honeywell to break itself into separate aerospace and automation businesses, arguing the conglomerate structure depresses valuation and that a split could deliver up to 75% upside. Honeywell’s 2025 three‑way breakup plan directly follows that pressure.(cnbc.com)
• 3M/Solventum: After 3M spun off Solventum, Nelson Peltz’s Trian took about a 5% stake and began pushing for further portfolio simplification and divestitures to raise margins and focus the business.(wsj.com)
• Kenvue (J&J consumer spin‑off): Activists Starboard Value, TOMS Capital, and later Third Point all took stakes and pressed for strategic changes, including a sale or further break‑up.(fiercepharma.com)

More broadly, activism itself has remained strong or risen:

• A Lazard/Barclays‑cited review shows record or near‑record activist activity, with over 240 campaigns in 2024, and a growing share of those focused on strategic/portfolio restructuring at large cap companies.(reuters.com)

This is very much in line with Friedberg’s claim that activists would keep going after big, complex conglomerates and push for structural breakups.

3. Do breakups “typically” create ~20–30% more value?

Friedberg’s more specific claim is that these breakup campaigns will usually lead to the combined equity of the separated pieces trading about 20–30% higher than the pre‑breakup conglomerate.

While not every case works out this well, the central tendency in the data for corporate spin‑offs and breakups is broadly in that range, sometimes higher:

• A large study of ~1,100 US and European spinoffs from 2000–2022 by The Edge Group finds that, on average, spinoffs returned 17% one year and 25% two years after separation, versus 5–9% for the parents and less for the benchmarks—i.e., roughly high‑teens to mid‑20s excess returns.(forbes.com)
• Earlier Edge/Deloitte data summarized by multiple sources show US spinoffs returning about 27% in the first year vs roughly 3% for the S&P 500 and ~21% for the parents—again in the 20–30% ballpark for the spun entity and solid double‑digit gains combined.(therobusttrader.com)
• S&P Global finds that, over longer horizons, U.S. spun‑off entities outperformed their industry peers by ~8% in year one and ~22% over three years, supporting the idea that breakups usually generate sizable value uplift over a few years.(spglobal.com)
• Trivariate Research, as summarized by Bloomberg and others, reports that spinoff stocks have recently outperformed the S&P 500 by about 10 percentage points over 18–24 months, and the Bloomberg U.S. Spinoff Index rose 62% in one year—well ahead of the broader market.(bloomberg.com)
• In the marquee GE case, a full‑cycle analysis credits the breakup with roughly a 400% total shareholder return from trough to post‑split, far above Friedberg’s 20–30% heuristic.(forbes.com)

At the same time, Friedberg’s “typically 20–30%” is not universally true on a deal‑by‑deal basis:

• Lazard’s 2025 activism review finds that the typical immediate stock pop from an activist campaign is closer to 2–7 percentage points over a few days, not 20–30%.(reuters.com)
• Edge/Deloitte’s work and CNBC’s summary show that about 40% of spinoffs fail to create any positive one‑year return, meaning the strong averages are driven by a subset of big winners.(cnbc.com)
• Some high‑profile recent breakups, like WK Kellogg Co after the Kellogg split and Kenvue after the J&J separation, have struggled operationally and in share price and only later attracted buyers paying premiums, suggesting value creation was uneven and not cleanly in the 20–30% range in all cases.(ft.com)

So the precise per‑deal claim (“the share price will go up by 20–30%” after activists push a breakup) is somewhat overstated and hides a very skewed distribution: many modest or negative outcomes, some extremely strong ones. But if you interpret his 20–30% as a typical medium‑term uplift for successful breakups on average, the large‑sample empirical work and headline cases support that order of magnitude.

Bottom line

• The structural trend Friedberg described—ongoing dismantling of conglomerates and use of breakups as a value‑unlocking tool—clearly continued after 2021.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Activist investors have indeed targeted large conglomerates and pushed explicitly for breakups or radical portfolio simplifications (Honeywell, Solventum, Kenvue, among others).(cnbc.com)
• Empirical data on spinoffs and breakups show average value creation in roughly the high‑teens to mid‑20s percent range (and sometimes higher) over 1–3 years, which is broadly consistent with his “20–30%” shorthand, though outcomes are very uneven and far from guaranteed.(forbes.com)

Given that all three core elements of his prediction have largely materialized, the fairest overall judgment is that Friedberg’s call was directionally and substantively right, albeit overly neat about how uniformly that 20–30% uplift would show up across individual breakups.