British American Tobacco Backs 2024 Guidance

By Elena Vardon

British American Tobacco backed its outlook for the year as it reported performance for the first half of the year in line with its expectations.

The FTSE 100 tobacco group on Tuesday maintained its 2024 guidance of low-single-digit organic revenue growth. It also expects low-single-digit growth in adjusted profit from operation, with a 2% hit from transactional foreign exchange impact.

Analysts estimate it will make 27.60 billion pounds ($35.35 billion) in total organic revenue and adjusted operating profit of GBP12.48 billion for the year, according to the latest company-compiled consensus which dates from late January.

The cigarette maker--which houses the Kent, Dunhill and Lucky Strike brands--reiterated that it expects its performance to be weighed to the second half due to planned investment phasing and slow recovery in the U.S. Smokers switching to cheaper, nonpremium brands and a rise in illegal disposable vapes hindered the performance of its largest market and led to a large writedown of some of its brands, the group flagged in December.

Due to these continuing pressures, it expects its first-half revenue and adjusted profit from operations to be down by low-single digits on an organic and constant currency basis, it said.

"Looking forward, we expect growing momentum in the second half, enabled by the investments we are making today," Chief Executive Tadeu Marroco said.

Write to Elena Vardon at elena.vardon@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 04, 2024 02:48 ET (06:48 GMT)

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