Speculation is running high that the board of the UK’s biggest drugmaker, Glaxo Smithkline (GSK), is increasingly willing to placate activist shareholders by splitting the company and that new CEO Emma Walmsley may well play along.

The British newspaper Financial Times (FT) has reported that GSK board chairman, Philip Hampton, is talking to investors about a split within two to three years. Such a move would signal a marked strategy change for the company under Walmsley’s tenure. Her predecessor, Andrew Witty, stepped down from the CEO’s chair last year rather than continue to debate the long-running issue.

The board’s willingness to discuss a split-up, the FT said, comes after “several top-10 investors” pressed it to consider spinning off the consumer division.  One of the newspaper’s sources said investors at present are unhappy because GSK’s share price, despite having risen 18% over the course of this year, is still down more than 4.6% year-on-year. This is in spite of the dividend having been maintained at 80p for the fourth consecutive year.

Another reason the impatient shareholders believe the time is now right for GSK to break into two parts, is Swiss drugmaker Novartis’ decision announced in March to sell its 36.5% stake in the two drugmakers’ consumer health joint venture for $13 billion. This will for the first time give GSK the freedom to do with the business what its management – or shareholders – want.

The jv was created in 2015 as part of a multibillion dollar swap arrangement that saw GSK transfer its cancer portfolio to Novartis in exchange for the Swiss drugmaker’s vaccines portfolio, while the two combined their consumer drugs assets.

Saying the consumer business has “very good potential for growth,” GSK has forecast operating margins for the activities in the “mid-20s percentages” by 2022. Any decision to proceed with a spin-off, the FT said, would likely depend in part on how far the company can shore up its pharma division, which on the whole has produced fewer blockbuster drugs than its rivals in recent years.

When Glaxo presents its Q2 2018 results next week, the drugmaker’s new R&D chief, Hal Barron, is expected to deliver an update on strategy, which some analysts believe could throw more light on potential breakup plans. Barron, who did stints at Roche and Genentech and is well respected in the drugs sector is one of several new top-level hires under Walmsley’s leadership.

Commenting on the rationale for the mooted split in a note to clients, analysts at USB noted that consumer assets within pharma companies “do not get consumer-like multiples."

But while from this viewpoint a breakup “would seem to make sense,” the bank cautioned that “the dividend cover as well as the current repositioning of GSK would not allow for this for a few years to come.”