British American Tobacco - H1 2023

Transcript

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

Good morning, everyone. I'm Tadeu Marroco, and I'm delighted to welcome you as BAT's Chief Executive to our half-year results presentation. With me this morning is Javed Iqbal, Interim Finance Director. Once we have been through our presentation, Victoria Buxton, our Group Head of Investor Relations, will join us on stage to enable us to take your questions, both over the phone and through the webcast facility. I will begin with our financial highlights for the half year, the progress we are making in our transformation, and outline my key areas of focus as Chief Executive. Javed will take you through our financial performance in more detail. With that, I will take it that you have all seen the disclaimers on slide two and three.

I'm pleased with how BAT has performed in the first half of this year, delivering growing revenue, profit from operations, and earnings per share. Our reported results reflect the impact of one-off items in the prior period, including impairment of our business in Russia and Belarus, the U.S. DOJ OFAC provision, restructuring charges relating to Quantum, and positive FX tailwinds. We will now focus on constant currency-adjusted results, unless otherwise stated. One of the important strengths of our company is the breadth and the scale of our global footprint, enabling us to consistently deliver balanced and sustainable results. In the first half, this is demonstrated by our strong performance in AME and APMEA, offsetting the U.S. Overall, we have delivered an increase in revenue, up 2.6%, profit from operations up 3.6%, and EPS up 5.3%.

I believe this is a resilient performance in today's environment, and we are on track for our full year guidance. I'm particularly pleased with our performance in new categories, with revenue up nearly 27%, driven by good volume and growth and pricing. Consumer numbers up over 1.5 million year to date, and encouragingly, we are now very close to breakeven. As a result, we continue to transform rapidly, with Non-Combustibles already reaching over 30% of our revenue in 23 markets. This represents nearly 1/3 of the 71 markets where we are currently present in new categories. Our transformation is even more advanced in many markets. Non-Combustibles, as a percentage of revenue, is already over 30% in France and more than 50% in the U.K., led by Vuse. Over 50% in Japan, Poland, and Kazakhstan, led by glo.

Over 70% of our revenue in Sweden is now in oral tobacco, driven by our success with Velo. Notably, Sweden is on track to become the first smoke-free market in the EU, with the smoking incidence approaching 5%. With a long-standing history of oral tobacco consumption and a fast-growing Modern Oral category, Sweden is a powerful example of the positive impact of tobacco harm reduction in action. As you know, I have been in my new role for 10 weeks now. During this time, I have been focused on examining how we can sharpen our execution. As a first step, last month, I announced the refreshed Management Board. I would like to highlight two important changes. Johan's new role as Chief Operating Officer, focused on delivering growth with accountability for driving business performance, operational excellence, and best-in-class execution.

Kingsley's new role as Chief Strategy and Growth Officer, focuses on enabling growth with accountability for strategic development and sharper consumer focus through an integrated approach to brands. This new structure supports my commitment to build an agile, modern, and progressive BAT, with a collaborative and inclusive culture, enabling simultaneous performance and transformation. As part of this, we must operate to the highest ethical standards, and this must remain a priority for both our employees and our business partners. Let me share some of what I have been doing in my first 10 weeks. One of my immediate priorities has been to visit a number of our key markets with my management team. I have to tell you that those visits has been humbling and reassuring in equal measure. BAT is a company with a great heritage.

Our two biggest assets have always been our people and our brands. I have spent time with our people in these markets, and I have taken the time to listen. What is clear to me is that through the right enablers, our organization is ready. Our people are excited about the transformation journey ahead, with the opportunity to drive real change, both for BAT and society more broadly. I'm clear that BAT has a unique set of strengths and capabilities already in place. However, we can and must do better in order to evolve and accelerate our transformation. While my management team and I agreed that our multi-category strategy is right, we are also fully aligned on the areas that need greater focus, supported by a more collaborative and inclusive culture.

Firstly, recognizing our diverse global footprint, we must set out the organizational focus and priorities in a clear way to ensure we execute flawlessly across all our markets. Sharpening execution is central to our market archetype model, enabling better resource allocation around fewer, bigger priorities that can be measured and for which the markets are accountable. I understand this may seem a little theoretical, so let me bring the model to life with two markets, each representing a different archetype. In Bangladesh, we have actively focused on continuing to grow value share, revenue, and profitability in combustibles while we await clarity on new category regulation. In Poland, where over 50% of our revenue is now in new categories, we continue to grow share, driving strong new category revenue growth and improved contribution, alongside value from our combustibles business.

Every smoker we convert to our new category brands in Poland is margin creative to our business. This benefit is further amplified as our share of the market in new categories exceeds that of combustibles. These two markets are clear examples of where the model is working, by making better resource allocation decisions and delivering strong results. We will replicate these executional insights and ways of workings across our footprint. Secondly, we have further improved our new category contribution, reducing losses by GBP 200 million in the first half. Having invested significantly in the base, new categories are meaningfully contributing to Group results as we benefit from our increased scale. We are now profitable with new categories in 20 countries, more than doubling the number from the first half of last year.

It's important to note that we do not expect our pathway to profitability in new categories to be linear. We are making active choice to continue to invest in our transformation, with levels of investment reflecting our enhanced innovation cadence, further geographic expansion, and market openings. With our strong progress to date, I'm confident that we will achieve new category profitability in 2024. Vuse is a key driver of our performance, with our progress driven by our continued focus on three levers of profitability: Revenue Growth Management, COGS reduction, and marketing spend effectiveness. Vapour margins have historically been much lower than combustibles, THP, and Modern Oral, but we have made great progress over recent years to build a commercially sustainable model with Vuse. Our Vapour gross margin is fast approaching combustibles at a Group level, and in more established markets, we are already delivering a meaningful category contribution.

I'm proud of the strong progress we are making, and I'm confident that our transformation will deliver long-term multi-category growth and returns. My third area of focus is the all-important U.S. combustibles market. In the U.S., we are sharpening our execution with new leadership and enhanced focus, and by activating commercial plans through our broad, digitally enabled Revenue Growth Management capabilities. RGM is a dynamic approach to revenue optimization, powered by big data and analytics, enabling a granular view of elasticity curves. It brings together our consumer occasion-driven portfolio, pack price architecture, joint customer business planning, optimized pricing, highly targeted trade activation, and tailored retailer assortment strategies, ensuring that our portfolio is well-positioned to face competitive challenges and deliver profitable growth through all economic cycles. Our commercial plans are already starting to deliver early signs of U.S. combustibles volume share recovery.

Our volume share is up 60 basis points since January, driven by our 100 basis points increase in the important premium segment. While our progress is encouraging, we will continue to implement our plans carefully and thoughtfully. As a result, it will take time for this to deliver consistent combustibles value growth and returns. Turning to my fourth area of focus, THP, where I'm determined to significantly strengthen our consumer offering. To enable this, we are expanding our capabilities through increasing our investment in people and building new innovation hubs, including our Global Device Development Center in China, to drive an enhanced innovation pipeline. As a top priority, we have already reengineered our internal innovation processes. In addition, we are developing an agile innovation ecosystem through external partnerships, and in doing so, increasing the pace of our transformation to drive better returns.

glo HYPER X2 Air, which are currently rolling out, is the first step in an exciting, accelerated, medium-term heated tobacco pipeline. This enhanced innovation pipeline process is enabled by our 4D model. We are well positioned to leverage across category insights and foresights, meaning we sharply define and prioritize consumer opportunities. We leverage these consumer understandings through a focused discovery phase to validate the consumer proposition. We develop the commercial offering at an accelerated pace through our internal and external capability network, before finally leveraging our global scale and capability to fully deploy. This dynamic model is underpinned by our revamped product lifecycle capability and portfolio management discipline, which enables us to adopt, adapt to the economic conditions and competitive environments. Overall, this means better innovations and faster development, generating higher returns on investment. My next area of focus is to lead responsible new category development.

I'm determined to manage external risks thoughtfully and transparently by increasing our engagement with regulators, policymakers, and relevant stakeholders, as well as leveraging our science. Given this, we need to have a louder voice. We have now created a new Management Board role to drive more proactive corporate and regulatory affairs. Our activities will follow a science-based approach to regulation to drive a level playing field in our markets. Regulation is a significant barrier to entry across new categories. While navigating regulations is not new to BAT, we must now focus on developing a more front-footed external approach led by our science. Finally, my sixth focus area is to enhance our financial flexibility. We need to be more agile in the near term to make the right active choice that will deliver long-term sustainable value.

I am clear that we will not compromise our commitment to accelerating investment in our transformation. As I have set out today, I'm also clear on my near-term priorities. To enable a more agile, flexible BAT, we will leverage our global portfolio to continue to grow profits and cash, deliver GBP 1 billion of efficiencies over the next three years to further fund our transformation, and reduce debt to strengthen our balance sheet. In addition, we will seek and evaluate opportunities to optimize capital allocation. We have significantly increased our free cash flow generation with four consecutive years of at least 100% operating cash conversion. This has enabled us to return a total of GBP 21 billion to shareholders within this period, while also making good progress on the leverage.

We remain committed to continue our 25-year track record of consistent dividend growth, rewarding our shareholders through all economic cycles. Over the next five years, we are on track to generate around GBP 40 billion of free cash flow before dividends. As we continue to execute on our transformation, our medium-term financial model for growth will evolve, and we will have more flexibility to allocate our capital to drive returns and reward shareholders by sustainably returning cash through dividends and share buybacks. With that, I will hand over to Javed to take you through the detail of our results.

Javed Iqbal (Interim Finance Director)

Thank you, Tadeu. Good morning, everyone. When I started my journey with BAT 27 years ago as a Management Trainee in finance in Pakistan, I never thought I would get the opportunity to present BAT's financial results to all of you as Interim Finance Director. Personally, it is a very humbling and a proud moment for me, but more importantly, it is a great testament to BAT's commitment to develop and grow a very diverse global talent pool. When I joined BAT, what fascinated me the most was our international footprint and truly multicultural working environment, where everyone gets an equal opportunity to learn, develop, and grow in their careers. As a business leader, I am always focused on creating a culture of respect and empowerment, or in Tadeu's words, inclusive and collaborative.

This has helped me in having a successful track record of developing high-performing teams and delivering strong and sustainable commercial results. In my role as Interim Finance Director, I'll be working with Tadeu and members of the Management Board to continue to drive the transformation journey of BAT. Some of the areas which will be in my primary focus are resource allocation, using tools like marketing spend effectiveness and RGM, and leveraging our digital hub capabilities and Global Business Services footprint. We will continue to invest in technology and move further on our digital transformation, making BAT a digitally connected organization. Of course, capital allocation and a sharper focus on cash generation will always be a high priority. Moving to first half results. Our first half results demonstrate continued delivery and the resilience of our business.

We delivered organic revenue growth of 2.8%, with new category revenue up nearly 27% and combustible price mix of 6%. Profit from operations was up 3.6%, with our operating margin up 90 basis point at current FX and 40 basis point at constant FX, driven by the investment in new category contribution and our continuous focus on efficiencies. Diluted EPS grew by 5.3%, or 8.5% on current currency basis. We continue to drive strong new category revenue growth and are well on track to deliver on our GBP 5 billion revenue target by 2025. This was enabled by progressively building our consumer base together with capturing consumption moments and growing poly usage. Non-Combustibles now represents 16.6% of Group revenue, 1.8 percentage points higher than in 2022.

I will now share more details on our key category drivers. Full market share across our key markets are available in the appendix. In Vapour, we extended our value share leadership, with Vuse achieving 38.3% in the key vapour markets, up 2.4 percentage points. In the U.S., the largest global vapour market, Vuse strengthened its number one position. Vuse share grew 5.7 percentage points to reach 47% in track channels, and we remain confident in our PMTA submission for Vuse Alto. We welcome the recent FDA actions with regards to illicit synthetic nicotine disposables in the U.S., which we estimate to be more than 50% of the total vapour market, and we continue to engage with the stakeholders to enforce the removal of unauthorized products.

In Canada, France, the U.K., and Germany, we maintained value share leadership in closed systems, with the modern disposable segment continuing to accelerate total category growth. This drove strong volume and revenue growths in AME. Outside the U.S., we continue to approach the modern disposable segment in a responsible way, with ongoing commitment to underage access prevention, take-back schemes, and marketing practices. We are making good progress on driving profitability in Vapour, with a positive contribution in three of the five key markets, driven by increased scale and marketing spend efficiencies. In Tobacco Heating, glo reported revenues was up 10% or 12% on organic basis. Continued category volume share momentum in key AME markets, including Poland and the Czech Republic, was offset by highly competitive markets in Japan and Italy.

As a result, glo's THP category volume share was down 110 basis points to 18.2%, while our share of the combined combustible and THP category continued to grow. As Tadeu highlighted, we have much more to do on strengthen our THP offering, but I am pleased to say that our newest innovation, glo HYPER X2 Air, is delivering positive early results. Our Modern Oral portfolio continued to grow, with Velo volume up 33% and revenue up 42%, driven by geographic expansion and innovation. We continue to grow our volume share of total oral, while our volume share by Modern Oral category was mainly impacted by our continued prioritization of Vapour in the U.S. as we await the outcome of our PMTA submission for a new Velo product.

Outside the U.S., we maintained leadership of the Modern Oral category, I'm delighted to share that Velo is now the largest oral nicotine pouch brand in Sweden. We continue to see a significant opportunity for Modern Oral in emerging markets, with strong growth in Pakistan and a national rollout ahead of plan in Kenya. Turning to combustibles. Our volume declined by 5.8%, mainly due to significant excise increases in Pakistan, lower U.S. industry volume, and share loss due to our premium positioning. Cigarette price mix remains strong, up 6%, with price offset mainly by geographic mix. This resulted in 0.2% increase in revenue. Group volume share was up 10 basis points, driven by gains in AME, with stable share in APMEA, partially offset by the U.S.

Group value share was down 40 basis point as the impact of our commercial plans in the U.S. and losses in APMEA more than offset growth in AME. We are performing very well in combustibles outside the U.S., with reinvigorated portfolio, refreshed brands, and sharpened execution. This demonstrate the benefit of our global footprint and our ability to deliver in the challenging environments. Turning to regions. In AME, total revenue was up 9%, driven by higher revenue from combustible, with a resilient volume performance and a favorable pricing environment, offsetting some geographic mix headwinds. Alongside continued growth across each new category, with revenues up nearly 37%. Adjusted profit from operations was up nearly 8%, driven by improved financial performance in key markets, including Germany, Poland, Brazil, and Mexico.

In APMEA, total revenue was up nearly 10%, driven by a robust combustible performance, led by pricing and combustibles volume growth in Bangladesh, alongside continued growth across each new category, with revenue up 15%. Adjusted profit from operations in APMEA was up 9%, driven by strong performances in Australia, Sri Lanka, and a continued recovery in global travel retail. In the U.S., combustible industry volume was down 8.4% in the first half. Beyond market secular decline, industry volume was pressured by a combination of macroeconomic headwinds, driving reduced average daily consumption and downtrading, together with increased poly usage. Importantly, elasticities remain stable at around 0.4.

On top of the industry contributors, our volume performance was impacted by lower volume share as a result of our more premium skewed portfolio, lapping the benefits of SAP-related inventory phasing in the comparator and the California flavor ban. As a result of our combustible volume decline, 12.4% in the U.S. As Tadeu highlighted, our commercial plans are starting to deliver early signs of sequential volume share recovery. This is supported by the industry premium segment starting to stabilize, with our share of the premium segment growing to its highest point in three years, driven by strengthening performance from Newport and Natural American Spirit. In addition, Lucky Strike continues to perform well in the value segment and now has more than 3% share of the total market. In Vapour, Vuse continues to expand its leadership position, driving revenue up 23%.

Despite the challenging environment, we have continued to expand our operating margin by 280 basis points, driven by further improving Vuse profitability and continued efficiency savings. In California, the long-term impact of the flavor ban continues to evolve. Menthol products are reportedly still being sold illicitly due to lack of enforcement, and we have also seen elevated flavored volume in surrounding states, despite the industry's best effort to avoid this. Due to our menthol SKU, 45% of our portfolio had to be delisted at the end of last year in California. Our combustible volumes declined around 25% in H1, as many consumers moved to our non-flavor variants, and our new FDA-authorized SKUs are performing well. Adjusting for a 13% pre-ban rate of decline, our underlying retention rate in California as a result of the flavor ban has been above 85%.

Vuse has performed very strongly in California, with 100% retention, despite menthol representing 60% of volume prior to the ban. Driven by the strength of our brand equity, Vuse has retained all of its pre-ban volume as consumers switched to our tobacco pods. Vuse gained 8.7 percentage point value share in tracks channel versus pre-ban. Overall, nicotine consumption was broadly stable in H1 due to accelerated growth of the illicit modern disposable segment, as consumers continue to access illicit flavored nicotine product. We continue to believe there are more effective ways to achieve tobacco harm reduction than restricting access to flavors. That can play an important role in encouraging adults to switch to reduced-risk products.

At the same time, we will continue to advocate for and support enforcement activities against illicit products to help ensure that available products adhere to high consumer safety standards and support a level competitive playing field. Returning to Group performance, operating margin expanded strongly, up 90 basis point at current rates and 40 basis point at constant rate. We absorbed headwinds of 2% from both increasing inflationary pressures and transactional effects on profit. This was supported by our strong progress improving new category profitability and additional efficiency savings. Turning now to EPS, we delivered constant currency adjusted diluted EPS growth of 5.3%. This reflects our resilient operating performance and the benefit of continued strong ITC delivery, which more than offset increased net finance cost and tax.

Our cash flow conversion of 72% in the first half puts us well on track for another year of cash conversion in excess of 90%. Due to the timing of leaf purchases and MSA payments, our cash flow is always second-half weighted. We expected full-year gross CapEx of GBP 550 million below adjusted depreciation and amortization. We continue to make good progress on deleverage. As guided earlier, this year, our average cost of debt is 4.3%, which is well below the current market rates, and we continue to expect to see the impact of higher rates in our net finance cost in 2023 and moving forward. We expect full year net finance cost to be around GBP 1.9 billion, subject to both FX and interest rates volatility.

Over the next five years, this business is on track to generate GBP 40 billion of free cash flows before dividends, with cash conversion in excess of 90% and leverage moving towards in the middle of our 2x-3x net debt to EBITDA corridor. This will provide greater business resilience, while continuing to support future financial agility. As Tadeu outlined, we remain fully committed to further invest, to better execute and deliver our strategy, while also rewarding shareholders throughout. We remain fully committed to our 65% dividend payout ratio over the long term, and growth in sterling terms. Once our leverage target is reached, we will review how to sustainably return cash to shareholders. With that, I'll hand over back to Tadeu. Thank you.

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

Thank you, Javed. Looking forward, we are on track to deliver our full year 2023 guidance, driven by strong new category growth, a further reduction in new category losses, a resilient Combustible performance, and continued efficiency savings and strong cash generation. We expect to deliver organic revenue growth of 3%-5%, excluding Russia and Belarus, and adjusted diluted mid-single figure EPS growth, reflecting an incremental new category investment, continuing investment in U.S. combustibles, higher net finance costs, a transactional FX headwind of around 2%, and these will all depend on the timing of the transfer of our business in Russia and Belarus. Extrapolating current spot rates, we expect currency translation to be a 3% headwind on full year adjusted diluted EPS growth.

In summary, I'm pleased with our resilient delivery in the first half and the renewed sense of energy in the business, and I'm confident we are on track for our full year guidance. I'm particularly proud of our ability to perform and transform simultaneously, while consistently rewarding our shareholders through growing cash returns. I'm clear that there is much more to do. Together with my management team, we are energized to deliver on our focus areas outlined today in order to accelerate our transformation. I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone in BAT for their continuous strong support and for delivering these results. I'm excited about the opportunities ahead, and I'm confident that we will deliver long-term multi-stakeholder value. We will now be joined on stage by Victoria for the question and answer session.

Victoria Buxton (Group Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Tadeu, good morning, everybody. If you joined us via the webcast, you can type your questions in directly into the online question box, or if you've joined by the call, you can press star one on your telephone keypad. While we wait for questions up from the phone lines, Tadeu, I can see that we've already got one for you. Given your 30-year career at BAT and four years as Finance Director, what will be different now you're Chief Executive?

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

Well, first of all, I'd like to start saying that I'm very honored to have been appointed chief executive. As you could see, and I have outlined that in my presentation, there is a lot of a single set of strengths in BAT already. I have been always clear since I took over as CEO, that we have the right strategy. We cannot ignore the fact that the world out there has changed substantially. The landscape we operate is much more complex, the macroeconomics is much more challenging, and this will require a sharpened execution. One of my focus area, clear focus area, is how we take much more measures in terms of doing resource allocation across geographies, across categories.

That's why the market archetype is a very powerful example. I addressed some of my key focus immediate actions which relates to increase our resilience in our U.S. combustible business from the economic cycle point of view, but on the regulatory cycle view as well. Innovations, we are start to change the way we innovate in the Group. We want to improve that substantially and then address the gaps that we have around THP. And for sure, return of investment is, will be a major focus for us moving forward when we make those calls in terms of execution. The second leg is related to. I would like the Group to be much more outward looking.

We need to have a more sustainable, engaging agenda with stakeholders, policyholders, regulators, policymakers, in order to making sure that we have an informative debate about the landscape where we operate. We refer to that in the presentation. We have to create a level playing field. There is a lot of desire for many governments to improve in some elements of the new categories that we agree with. It's a question of us to have the right discussion.

I would like to sharpen up the narrative of BAT and be much more outspoken out there, and, being the foot through, in the, in the front foot means that I have created a new role in the Management Board, in corporate affairs, exactly to give me the backing to be able to do that and to, you know, articulate the whole organization towards that goal. Thirdly, is about the culture. is, I genuinely have progressed with, you know, trying to promote a much more collaborative, inclusive culture, and that's what I want to see everywhere in BAT.

I really believe that this can be very powerful, and I have read early signs that I think that the vast majority of the BAT employees agree with me. That would be my third area of focus.

Victoria Buxton (Group Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Tadeu. We'll now go to the phone lines. I'll pass back over to the operator.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Richard Felton from Goldman Sachs, please go ahead.

Richard Felton (Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. My first question is gonna be on the U.S. combustibles market. Look, today, you referenced the early signs of improvement for your business there, but it still remains under quite a lot of pressure. My question is, you know, you've changed leadership of that business about a month ago. What do you think David is gonna be doing differently to improve performance going forward for your U.S. combustibles business? My second question, also in the U.S., but on your Vapour business, where volume declined by 6.5% in the first half. I'm sure that is a result that you and the team are not satisfied by. How do you think about restoring volume growth for U.S. Vapour?

I guess, sort of within that, how do you think about the balance between margin and volume growth for that part of the business, specifically? Thank you.

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

Okay. Thank you, Richard. Look, I'm really excited to have David come in as a new CEO of Reynolds. David came with a massive experience on the combustible side. He was the head of marketing, looking after the GDBs, the Global Drive Brands that we have in the Group for many years, four, five years, before he moved on and is driving today one of the key areas within Europe. Under his leadership, he was able to put us in a very leading position in Vapour in the key markets in Europe and also Modern Oral.

David brings a mix of experience, which is quite unique, not just in combustible, but also in new categories, and his style of management pretty much talks in the way I see the company moving forward. I'm very excited to have him there, and I think that he will do, together with the Reynolds team, a fantastic job. As you point out, the situation in the U.S. is difficult, because at the end, we had the secular decline and elasticity normal declines that was exacerbated by the macros. The macro is a combination, basically, of the incentives that came in the federal state levels that was withdrawn after post-COVID. At the same time, with massive inflationary pressures that put a lot of pressure in terms of consumer purchase power.

Us being skewed in the premium segment, we suffer most. This for sure. There was some other elements to explain our volume decline, like a SAP rollout, but in essence, we were exposed to a segment that was struggling, given the circumstance that we were facing in the U.S. The good news is that we are seeing, for the first time, early signs of stabilization of the premium segment, so at the industry level, which is a very positive for us. Also, the action, the commercial plans that we have put in place is already start to showing up.

The improvement that we have seen is quite, you know, encouraging from January to now, in terms of our market share improvement in Newport in particular, but also Natural American Spirit, the premium segment as a whole and the Group as a whole. For sure, those economic cycles come and go. What we want to ensure is that when they, this one finish, we came out of this much stronger when we came in, and that's exactly why we are working with all these commercial plans across our brands. I think that David will be a great additive for what we need to put in place in the U.S. That's about David in the U.S.

The U.S. Vapour market, you're absolutely right, is quite frustrating, to be honest, to see the whole increase in these unauthorized products, synthetic nicotine products. We believe that they are well ahead of 50% of the vapour markets today in the U.S., well ahead of that. What is, and this for sure, is putting pressure on the overall consumption of the track channels. When you see the reduction of, as a group, as an industry, 15%, so BAT performed better, and then we had a reduction in 106. You see that this is just as a consequence of this exponential growth of this disposable nicotine device.

If you add that to the, to the mix, it's a completely different ballgame. You will be nowhere near the 15% reduction that we are seeing, because we are seeing a lot of traction of, smokers actually using this type of products. What is encouraging is that the latest movements from the FDA in terms of, trying to issue, for example, MDOs for some of those manufacturers, being very explicit that they are illicit products, even raising our penalty. We, we will be supporting this initiative from the FDA for sure. There is a massive white space for every single percentage points that they are able to reduce.

We are quite, I would say, optimist that this will materialize, because we know that a lot of the problems that we have in Vapour in terms of youth access is coming from the use of this type of products naturally. I think that there will be a lot of mobilization from different agencies in order to tackle this the problem in the U.S., and we'll be, you know, willing, you know, to see this happening.

Richard Felton (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Gaurav Jain, Barclays, please go ahead.

Gaurav Jain (Head of EU SMID, EU packaging, and Global Tobacco and Cannabis)

Hi, good morning, Tadeu. Good morning, Javed. Three questions from me, if I'm allowed. The first one is, you know, the definition of leverage that you have, and I think a lot of investors are very confused, that what is the 2x-3x net debt to EBITDA? Like, is it the way you are reporting adjusted net debt and adjusted EBITDA? We need to make various adjustments like remove Canada, EBITDA, and net cash, then put restructuring charges, remove Russian net debt, add in hybrids. You know, how should we interpret that 2x-3x corridor?

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

You, okay, you want to take this?

Javed Iqbal (Interim Finance Director)

Yes. I think this is how we are reporting them right now. This is how they are reported in our numbers, and we are moving towards the mid of the corridor of 2x-3x of net debt to EBITDA, as they are reported in our numbers. As you see, we have made a good progress from above 3x last year to now reaching 2.6x in the middle of the year. We remain on track towards moving towards that target. It is, as they are reported in our number, not with that adjustments.

Gaurav Jain (Head of EU SMID, EU packaging, and Global Tobacco and Cannabis)

Thank you.

Javed Iqbal (Interim Finance Director)

Yeah.

Gaurav Jain (Head of EU SMID, EU packaging, and Global Tobacco and Cannabis)

Sorry, continue.

Javed Iqbal (Interim Finance Director)

No, please go to the second question.

Gaurav Jain (Head of EU SMID, EU packaging, and Global Tobacco and Cannabis)

Sure. The second question is, you know, this, you know, the e-cigarette growth, which is happening in the U.S., and a lot of, you know, market is moving towards disposables, as you're highlighting. In your view, like, including disposables and legal everything, how much has the e-cigarette market in the U.S. grown, 1H 2023 over 1H 2022?

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

Well, it's very difficult to have a full assessment or valuation in the U.S. because you know that most of these products are sold in non-track channels. They are independent stores, mainly vapour stores, for example. They are e-commerce, that you still can buy these products in the U.S. via e-commerce. It's very difficult to have a view on that. If you think, for example, that the valuation of the vapour market in the U.S. is around $5 billion, or is, yeah, slightly even higher than that, the vast majority, like I said, more than 50%, should be now clearly occupied by these products.

Gaurav Jain (Head of EU SMID, EU packaging, and Global Tobacco and Cannabis)

Sure. Thank you. The third, you know, and a small question on this ITC Hotels spin-off, which has been announced, and you will own about 18% or 19% of that spin-off company.

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

Mm-hmm.

Gaurav Jain (Head of EU SMID, EU packaging, and Global Tobacco and Cannabis)

Will you be looking to monetize that stake, or you will remain invested in that company?

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

Yeah, Gaurav, look, we were made aware, actually yesterday, or about the decision of the ITC Board to propose this structure of, you know, releasing, keeping 40% of shareholders of the hotels, and giving the other 6% for the current shareholders. We will know more details about that in the Board meeting that will be held in mid-August. Then we're gonna make a decision around that. As we move along, we'll make a call in terms of what we, you know, decide to do, specifically after making the decision, in terms of this shareholding that you are referring to.

Gaurav Jain (Head of EU SMID, EU packaging, and Global Tobacco and Cannabis)

Sure. Thank you so much.

Operator (participant)

Nik Oliver of UBS, please go ahead.

Nik Oliver (Managing Director and Head of European Consumer Research)

Hey, thank you, Tadeu. Two for me. Just one on the U.S. You talked about the sequential improvement, which is nice to see. As we look forward, do you still think, you know, down 4%-5% is the right algorithm for the U.S. market in total? Secondly, more Group level. We're used to kind of modeling, you know, BAT, a high single-digit constant FX company. Obviously, more recently, it's been lower, given investments in NGPs and, you know, Ukraine, et cetera. As we go forward, should high single-digit constant FX, EPS, still be the right algorithm?

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

Okay, look, on the U.S., the question, the first question was.

Javed Iqbal (Interim Finance Director)

Is the industry volume?

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

Yeah, the industry volume, how it evolve. Look, the U.S., for sure, that the macros, like I said, is cyclical by nature, no. The good thing about the U.S. is that the elasticity is still very benign at 0.4, and you would imagine that once the economy starts recovering, this element of macro that we have pointed out during our presentation is basically gone. This will bring us back to the likes of 5%. Now, if it's more, 4%-5%, 5%-6%, this will depend a lot in terms of the poly users moving forward.

I would say that at this point in time, there is nothing major to suggest that we cannot hold at that level of 5% on a normal circumstance without economic pressures, given the fact that the elasticity is still very benign, like I said, which means that there is still a lot of pricing power in the U.S. The secular plus the elasticity will probably lead you to this level, that will be around that more or less, depending on the poly usage phenomenon that we see moving forward. In terms of the future of financial algorithm, future for the Group. We are, what we are facing is very challenging times, because we, and this was one of the reasons why we highlight this in the presentation today.

The net finance costs we have today is much lower than what we are seeing in the market. We have all these maturities coming in the next coming years, and this will mean higher net finance costs. This is as simple as that. Which means that the kickers on the EPS will not be counted on net finance cost. If anything, it will probably be a drag. I have to take those things into consideration when you start talking about, you know, short-term, high single digit type of figure. The other thing in the short term that we need to bear in mind is that despite the fact that the macroeconomic pressures has phased down substantially, there is still a big impact coming next year at the back of leaf.

Because some of the leaf costs that we see this year, most of it impact the P&L of next year as because of the nature of it. It goes from your balance sheet and then start hitting your P&L months later. We will have to face this pressure. As I said, also in my presentation, we don't think that the fix in the U.S., that we want to do in combustible, will be a quick one. This will take some time, and we'll do it properly, because we want to create a more resilient portfolio that for the sake of generate sustainable value over time. Saying all that, we cannot, you know, ignore the fact that we have a massive cash generative company. BAT is doing extremely well in new categories.

We are reducing the loss on a very accelerated pace, hence our comments about this will not be linear, because this will depend a lot in terms of our plans for our geo expansion, markets that can open, new platforms that we launch. One thing is very clear, the direction of travel is very clear. This will be accretive for the results of the Group, has been since 2021, there is nothing to prevent us to continue being that way moving forward. Our combustible business outside the U.S. is performing extremely well. With all the difficulties in the U.S., our price mix is still 6%. There is a very, very, very strong company in our hands, moving forward.

The point that we try to make today for all of you, is how resilient is this company. We are having, you know, difficult times in the combustible business, in the U.S. specifically, and this is more than offset by the performance that we are having now in the other categories other than combustible, as well in the other geographies. When those, all those things get aligned, we'll be in a much stronger position. I hope that I give you a kind of a perspective. I don't want to make commitments of this in the short term, and we understand where we are in the short term, but the future is important to give some prospect for you moving forward.

Nik Oliver (Managing Director and Head of European Consumer Research)

Oh, no, that, really clear. Thank you, Tadeu. That was great.

Operator (participant)

Jacob de Klerk from Redburn, please go ahead.

Jacob de Klerk (Equity Analyst)

Hi, Tadeu, thanks for taking my question and the additional details. I just have a couple of questions on your new category performance. The overall traditional oral category, not just BAT's, portfolio of brands in the U.S., seems to be affected by the growth in Modern Oral nicotine pouches. Is this a fair assessment to make on the overall oral market in the U.S., and do you see this trend continuing? Then just secondly, all three new categories are growing revenue strongly. Can you maybe give us a sense of the performance? Is this mainly coming from new market rollouts, like success of Modern Oral in Pakistan, or are existing markets driving most of it, like Vapour in the U.S.?

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

Yeah, Modern Oral in the U.S. is performing in line with other traditional oral markets that we see across the world, the likes of Sweden and Norway. We are seeing Modern Oral gaining traction in terms of total oral consumption. The difference is that in the U.S., the average daily consumption is really low. It's between one to two pouches, as opposed to, you know, six, seven pouches that you see in the Nordics, for example. This has to do with the product itself. The product has a level of moisture that is not really satisfying consumers as we can see outside.

One of the difficulties that we have as BAT in our own offer in the U.S., is the fact that we couldn't bring this product that we have in Europe, this excellent and leading product that we have in Europe, to the U.S. yet. We have applied for PMTA. We are waiting for the outcome of the of the PMTA, in order to be able to launch this product in the market. I think that once these type of products reach the U.S., we will see a bigger traction, let's put it that way, in that particular market. It's definitely one area of focus for us, and we feel very confident with our offer outside when we can be able to use it in the U.S. itself. That's one.

Starting with Modern Oral, to answer your question, this is a fantastic performance. We have a fantastic product in our hands. We have just reached the all-time high leadership in the share in Sweden, and Sweden has dominated by our competitor for more than 100 years, as you know, is a very traditional oral market. Velo took leadership of the whole, not Modern Oral, the whole oral tobacco segment in Sweden, in terms of share. This has been reflected wherever we are in terms of leadership. We are leading in several markets. The other thing that we are seeing is that even markets where there is no oral traditional, this product is gaining traction.

Here in the U.K., for example, and that was no tradition at all, the incidence of Modern Oral is already getting close to 2%, was 1.5%, is getting traction now. We are seeing this phenomenon happening in other markets. For example, in Poland, we started with this product, like, two years ago, and now we have volumes that are really, you know, getting to a significant level. The beauty about these products is that the margins, as you probably saw in my presentation, are even higher than cigarettes.

It's a product that has not even tobacco on it, so the risk profile is really low, and it can be a way to implement tobacco harm reduction as we see in Sweden. Sweden used to have an incidence of combustible of 30% in the 1970s. Today, like I said in my presentation, is about to be the first EU smoke-free market at the back of promoting traditional oral, with the incidence of cancer reducing dramatically in this period of time. The margins that we make in oral are higher than the ones we make in cigarettes. This is a win-win for everyone, and that's exactly the model, the powerful model that we have.

Modern Oral is a combination of us expanding geographically, and is still doing quite well in the markets that we established. Vapour, we have a, you know, roll out our Vuse Go, our modern disposable. We decide to enter in this subcategory because we clearly see a lot of smokers migrating towards this type of product. Vapour is the level of conversion of cigarette smokers to vapour is similar to THP, and if anything, in the markets where vape and THP are present, we see a higher retention in vapour than we see in THP, in markets where both of them are present. It's a category gaining more and more traction. I'm very pleased with the performance that we are making in terms of the margins.

The margin performance come at the back of, for sure, the scale of it, but also the fact that we are now, with a leading brand, able to renegotiate trade margins and reducing it, for example, and also taking price. The revenue improvement that you see is a consequence of expansion, but also us working on the margin side of vapour that is now getting close to 6%. You have places already, like France, where if you take the gross margin equivalent per mil of cigarettes, we make more money selling Vuse than we do selling our own products of cigarettes in France. In the U.S., we have margins already equivalent to Pall Mall in cigarettes. We are really, really happy with the performance we are making there.

THP is the category where we are highlighting of one area of a focus for us in terms of the need to strengthen our offers. I think that the glo HYPER X2 going in the right direction. Is it a game changer? It's not a game changer. Is an improvement, 'cause address some of the issues or pain points that we had with our offer, having a more sleek and tiny and, you know, and a very light device. There is some more exciting ideas coming along in the next few months ahead. Okay?

Jacob de Klerk (Equity Analyst)

Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Jonathan Leinster from Société Générale, please go ahead.

Jonathan Leinster (Equity Analyst)

Oh, hi. Good morning, gentlemen. Yeah, a couple, few questions, if I may. First of all, given the recent nationalization of some of the companies that were planning to transfer assets in Russia, has that changed your plans in any way with regards to your potential transfer in Russia?

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

Okay. Okay, I'm gonna answer, Jonathan, this one. Look, we are determined to leave the country. We have said that last year. As you can imagine, it's a very, very complex situation to deal with, and we are following all international and local laws, and this means all the procedures that the authorities locally in Russia has defined, and with a close look to sanctions, for sure. I cannot comment much on that at this moment in time. It would be inappropriate for me to make further comments on that.

Jonathan Leinster (Equity Analyst)

Okay, thanks. Secondly, on the U.S. cigarette side, I mean, price mix has clearly decelerated a bit. Is that primarily driven by differences in pricing structure, or is that driven by the sort of mix shift towards Lucky Strike or a combination of the two?

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

Yeah, we are putting in place commercial plans in the U.S. We are using our Revenue Growth Management, too, as an area of, you know, insights for us, so we can be very granular in terms of how we make our brand more competitive in different geographies within the U.S. Not, you know, we can go all, It's down as to councils or, you know, key accounts and all that. And this is, the pricing element that you see is a reflection of those commercial plans in place. We also are taking some initiatives in term of laddering some of our brands to make it more resilient in terms of this economic cycles. These all reflect in the top line that you are seeing.

Jonathan Leinster (Equity Analyst)

Has the sort of growth of Lucky Strike as a sort of pseudo discount, does that?

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

Yeah.

Jonathan Leinster (Equity Analyst)

Have quite a big impact on it?

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

I would say it is an element to that, for sure. Lucky Strike, we are very pleased with the performance of Lucky Strike, one of the most successful launch in the U.S. ever. Has just reached above 3% of total market share in the U.S. For sure, that the mix in Luck, you know, It will be very different from the ones of Newport and Natural American Spirit. I would say that most of the impact on the prices coming from the commercial plans that we are putting to improve our competitiveness on the more important premium segments, that's where we were suffering most.

Jonathan Leinster (Equity Analyst)

Right. Just on the vaping side, again, price mix, very strong in the period. Is that reflected, as we hear it, is that a reflection again, of actual underlying strong price, particularly with the Europe and some of the other regions? Is it just the difference with the sort of mix, with the sort of introduction of the disposables? Has that caused the sort of price mix to apparently shift up rapidly with the introduction of those disposable vapes?

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

Jonathan, all the decisions in pricing vapour in the U.S., taking into consideration a number of things. The Revenue Growth Manager is also being applied in vapour. For example, we consider the price of modest, which is not cheap in the U.S., by the way. We consider the price of cigarettes, we consider our main competitor pricing as well, in the track channels. The fact that we have a pod that has more than double the liquid of our main second competitor in the U.S. is another factor. We put all those things in consideration, and the elasticities, and understand the consumers. We have been working in different types of product architecture in terms of packs with one pods, two pods, four pods, more recently, even above that, like six pods.

Then we, with all that, we have a, you know, the consolidated view of the price mix you are seeing in our results. There is no one single element to point out, it's a combination of all those different elements.

Jonathan Leinster (Equity Analyst)

I.

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

We'll be keeping, you know, we'll be keeping this, for sure, you know, in, under review, and taking immediate actions to that.

Javed Iqbal (Interim Finance Director)

And if I.

Jonathan Leinster (Equity Analyst)

Actually, I was really very into outside the U.S., the USA, really.

Javed Iqbal (Interim Finance Director)

So.

Jonathan Leinster (Equity Analyst)

I mean, that's where you've launched the disposable vapes. I was just wondering whether that, of course, is sort of quite a shift in mix and a higher value in the sort of areas where disposable vapes have been launched, obviously outside the USA.

Javed Iqbal (Interim Finance Director)

That's what I was trying to add, that the Vuse performance as a brand is a strong brand performance, and that is why the growth of the revenue in pricing is driven by both the elements, which is the Vuse closed system and the Vuse Go, which is the disposable part of the brand. The overall brand, pricing is being driven positively and mainly driven by both the elements.

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

Outside the U.S.

Javed Iqbal (Interim Finance Director)

Attribute outside the U.S. That's why I wanted to tackle the point of outside the U.S., that outside the U.S., we still see a strong growth in pricing, which is mainly driven by the strong brand momentum in both the things, in the closed systems and also in the introduction and expansion of Vuse Go.

Jonathan Leinster (Equity Analyst)

Okay, thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. For this, I'd like to hand the call back over to Victoria for any web questions.

Victoria Buxton (Group Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. We'll now go back to the web, where we've received a question. I think this is for you, Javed. Your combustible volumes were down 5.7% versus the industry down 3.2%. Why has BAT underperformed the industry?

Javed Iqbal (Interim Finance Director)

I think, this one is very simple, two points. One, is the biggest impact is coming from the highly driven, excise-driven price increases in Pakistan, so excise-driven volume decline in Pakistan, and then also the overall industry decline in U.S. If I just take Pakistan, for example, if you deduct Pakistan out of industry and BAT volumes, we are looking at a volume decline of 2%, where BAT actually starts doing better. Given our very strong presence in Pakistan, that is why you see a strong decline. These are the two elements, rest is, very minor changes. These are the two things, excise-driven volume in Pakistan, and also overall industry decline in U.S.

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

I think that is important, just to add to what Javed is saying, that we don't adjust the volumes to the markets where we are, we are phasing out. The likes of, for example, Egypt, which is still part of that. If you, if you consider that, for example, will be together with Russia, which, we, you know, we don't manage basically, and, this would be 1% out of the 5.7%. What is left is basically what Javed has explained in those two markets. Yeah.

Victoria Buxton (Group Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Well, we don't appear to have any further questions on the web. If there are any outstanding questions, please don't hesitate to contact the IR team. With that, I'm now gonna hand back to Tadeu for closing comments.

Tadeu Marroco (CEO)

Okay. Thank you for joining us today and for your participation in our Q&A session. As you can see, we have delivered a resilient performance in the first half. I'm delighted that we are on track for our full year guidance, and I hope all you can see the renewed sense of energy across the organization, which I feel around me every day. While there is much more to do, I'm confident that together, we will accelerate our transformation and deliver long-term multi-stakeholder value. We look forward to update you again in December at our pre-close trading update. Thank you very much!