“The increasing overall profitability of our smoke-free business coupled with cost efficiency measures and combustible resilience, places us well on track for another year of double-digit adjusted operating income and earning per share growth in currency neutral terms and even stronger dollar growth at prevailing exchange rates.”

In context

“ast-growing nicotine pouch category U.S. shipments grew by plus 37% to 205 million cans. Ahead of expectation. International can volumes increased by plus 27% or by over plus 100% excluding Nordic countries. In e-vapor, strong VEEV momentum saw total shipment more than doubling on a year-to-date basis. VIVE is now the number one closed spot brand in eight markets, with notably strong performances in Germany, Romania, and Greece. Combustibles delivered a good Q3 with better than expected volumes in both Turkey and Egypt, combining with further strong pricing to deliver a robust top and bottom line performance. Our Q3 performance reflects our position as the global category leader with the ability to drive strong growth and prioritize resources to invest significantly in our leading brands. The increasing overall profitability of our smoke-free business coupled with cost efficiency measures and combustible resilience, places us well on track for another year of double-digit adjusted operating income and earning per share growth in currency neutral terms and even stronger dollar growth at prevailing exchange rates. Turning to the headline financial for Q3. Positive shipment volume, strong smoke-free category mix and pricing resulted in organic top-line growth of plus 5.9% or approximately plus 7.3% excluding the Indonesia technical impact explained earlier this year. Within the high end of our plus 6% to plus 8% mid-term growth algorithm. Adjusted OI grew by plus 7.5% organically and plus 12.4% in dollar term to $4.7 billion with increasing profitability across smoke-free and combustibles, enabling good adjusted OI margin expansion of plus 120 basis points. Adjusted diluted EPS of 2.24 reflect adjusted net income of $3.5 billion and growth of plus 17.3% including a currency tailwind of $0.08 which includes around €0.03 of favorable transactional impact in the quarter. This better than expected deliv”