PMI speeds-up reduced-risk schedules

Philip Morris International is accelerating its launch plans for reduced-risk products, which, it believes, represent its greatest growth opportunity.

It intends to start what it describes as several commercial pilot city tests during the second half of next year; while the first national launch of its Platform 1 product is now scheduled for 2015, well ahead of the previous target of 2016–2017.

The accelerated launch schedules formed part of a presentation given by CEO André Calantzopoulos when he addressed investors yesterday at the Morgan Stanley Global Consumer Conference in New York.

“In support of its accelerated schedule for reduced-risk product launches, PMI will increase its reduced-risk product-related expenditures in R&D, operations and the commercial organization by more than $100 million in 2014,” according to a presentation-highlights note posted on the company’s website.

Next year is viewed by the company as an investment year, which will see raised expenditures in markets where its share performance has trailed expectations and potential, and investment in its reduced-risk products.

Calantzopoulos said, too, that PMI would enter the e-cigarette sector during the second half of next year.

Meanwhile, PMI forecasts that total international tobacco cigarette industry volume will, by the end of this year, have declined by about 3 percent in 2013.

Next year, it forecasts, volume will decrease by about 2–3 percent overall, with falls of 7–8 percent in the EU and of 9–11 percent in Russia.

Total volumes are unlikely to recover until 2015, it says.