Imperial’s volume down

Imperial Brand’s total tobacco volume during the six months to the end of March, at 126.3 billion stick-equivalents, was down by 5.7 percent on that of the six months to the end of March 2016. Stick-equivalent volume is said to include cigarette, fine-cut tobacco, cigar and snus volumes.

During the same period, the company’s Growth Brand volume was increased by 3.2 percent, from 70.7 billion to 73.0 billion.

Imperial’s tobacco net revenue during the six months to the end of March, at £3,716 million, was increased by 9.3 percent on that of the six months to the end of March 2016, £3,399 million.

Tobacco adjusted operating profit increased by 5.7 percent to £1,667 million, while logistics adjusted operating profit increased by 20.6 percent to £82 million, and total adjusted operating profit increased by 6.3 percent to £1,740 million.

Adjusted earnings per share increased by 7.9 percent to 1121.9p, while the dividend per share was up by 10.0 percent to 51.7p.

Commenting on the interim results, chief executive, Alison Cooper, said Imperial was delivering encouraging improvements in share trends in many of its priority markets after significantly stepping up investment behind its “strategy and quality growth”.

“The volume and share gains we achieved with our Growth Brands in the period were particularly pleasing,” she said.

“Our performance is underpinned by the rollout of our Market Repeatable Model, which provides an effective and consistent approach for delivering sustainable quality growth in markets.

“We are deploying this model in e-vapour and believe it can also be successfully applied to drive growth in other consumer adjacencies.

“As expected, first half revenue and profit were impacted by the considerable increase in investment. “In a challenging industry environment, we are delivering against our strategy and remain on track to meet full year earnings expectations at constant currency.

“Cash conversion remains strong and we are delivering another dividend increase of 10 percent.”