“On a global basis, our leadership in combustible is a critical enabler to maximize switching to smoke-free product, and we target a stable category share over time.”

In context

“ery positive profit contribution as I covered earlier. This reflects resilient volume despite very strong Q2 pricing of plus 8.7% including our proactive action to maximize growth. It is worth noting the large majority of our pricing is derived from regular pricing action unrelated to significant currency devaluation. Factoring the strong H1 and favorable outlook, we now forecast an increased fully combustible price variance of plus 7% to plus 8%. Our cigarette category share was stable in H1 and down 0.2 in Q2, or stable excluding market mix impact. Lower share in Egypt and Indonesia was offset by positive contribution from Turkey, India and the Europe region, again despite strong pricing. Our global brand grew category share in the quarter with Marlboro gaining plus 0.3 points to 10.1%. On a global basis, our leadership in combustible is a critical enabler to maximize switching to smoke-free product, and we target a stable category share over time. As mentioned previously, we evaluate our strategy on a market-by-market basis and have the flexibility to adapt our approach where smoke-free products have already reached critical mass. Taking a more holistic view on the business. Our transformation and smoke-free journey are backed by a strategy that seeks to embed sustainability in all that we do. We are making strong progress towards our product transformation targets. Our smoke-free products are now available in 90 markets, placing us on-track for our aspiration of 100 by 2025. We are also moving nicely towards our objective for low and middle income countries to comprise over 50% of smoke-free product market. The rapid growth of our estimated SFP user base, which now stands at around 36.5 million adult users, as previously described”