“With our dividend payout now close to our objective of around 75% of adjusted diluted EPS, this provides capacity for strong returns to shareholders.”

In context

“to deliver 15% adjusted diluted EPS growth in dollar terms, the strongest growth since 2011, excluding the pandemic recovery year of 2021. This reflects currency-neutral growth of 14%, well above our expectations at the start of the year, and the second year of mid-teens progress. Indeed, we have successfully achieved our three-year CAGR targets for organic OI and currency-neutral EPS in two years. With another strong performance expected in 2026 despite some transitory headwinds, we are today renewing these growth targets for the next three years, further validating our best-in-class growth profile within consumer packaged goods. Importantly, this is accompanied by strong and increasing cash generation, and we target the leverage ratio of close to 2x by 2026 at prevailing exchange rates. With our dividend payout now close to our objective of around 75% of adjusted diluted EPS, this provides capacity for strong returns to shareholders. Before I turn it over to Emmanuel, I would like to highlight the achievement of several important milestones as we entered the second decade of our smoke-free journey. Our total net revenues reached over $40 billion in 2025, with 41.5% or close to $17 billion generated by our smoke-free business. Even more impressive is the smoke-free gross contribution, which has essentially doubled in five years to 43% of total PMI. Our adjusted operating margin also returned to above 40% this year as our transformation expands profitably. Our business is increasingly smoke-free, with 27 markets exceeding the 50% net revenue milestone, including South Korea, Poland, Italy, Romania, and, of course, the US, which is also one of eight markets exceeding 75%. In 2025, the Europe region also surpassed 50%, ma”