“Also, as in prior years, we expect a substantial acceleration in user growth in the fourth quarter.”

In context

“This accelerated growth reflect progressive increase in distribution and a further broad step up in nationwide store velocity as the category gains strong traction with adult nicotine users for its convenience and pleasurable experience. Now focusing on IQOS starting with user groups. We estimate there were 27.4 million IQOS users as of September 30th, this represent an increase of 3.7 million user versus one year-ago and 0.2 million compared to Q2 2023. As shown on the right-hand side of the slide, the third-quarter of each year typically experiences slower user growth due to the seasonal influences in the calculation. Both new user registration and devices to legal age smokers continue to advance strongly and at levels broadly in line with Q2 when users grew by 1.4 million sequentially. Also, as in prior years, we expect a substantial acceleration in user growth in the fourth quarter. Moving now to IQOS in the Europe region, where our third quarter HTU share increased by plus 1.3 points to 8.6% of total cigarette and HTU industry volume. Continued share gains include the growing take-up of ILUMA, which is available to over 80% of IQOS users in the region. In addition to Q3 launches in Denmark and the UK, ILUMA was launched in Poland, which, like Japan, is a market with high competitive activity. We look forward to driving its performance here over the coming quarters. While sequential share is, as usual, optically affected by the seasonality of the cigarette category, adjusted IMS volumes continue to exhibit robust sequential growth and reached a record high on the four quarter moving average. This reflects strong year-on-year growth of plus 16% in Q3, despite limited”