Woolies - aka the Fresh Food People - are one of Australia's biggest supermarkets. And until June this year, they used to own two of Australia's biggest booze companies: Dan Murphy's and BWS. Oh, and a massive hotel chain called ALH.

Woolies' hotel and liquor bizzo was called Endeavour Group. But as of June, this crew are no longer the Kelly and Michelle to Woolies' Beyoncé. Nope, Endeavour and Woolies have demerged to form two separate companies.

Woolies said it wanted to focus on itself. But really, it just didn't want to be associated with Endeavour's pokies assets. 'Cos that don't sit well with their sustainability efforts. The de-merger freed up a lot of cash, which is why Woolies is now giving back $2bn to shareholders. Yay!

So what's the key learning?

We know the sharemarket loves a merger. But it also loves a demerger, which is when two companies split out to form their own individual companies.

Oz has a pretty good track record with demergers. In fact, Coles, Treasury Wine Estates and BlueScope were all the result of demergers. But there have also been a few duds. What's now Virgin Money UK was actually a spin-off from NAB, and that still hasn't managed to take off.

Demergers need time to get going, but when they do, they can be pretty successful. And it's because they allow businesses that were previously trapped inside a conglomerate...to do their own thang. It also means those companies are also able to be taken over by other bigger companies, which could send their share price higher.

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