Vuse Market Share Grows While Juul Drops

R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co. has continued to expand Vuse’s market share gap with Juul, according to the latest Nielsen convenience store report.

Vuse’s market share rose from 41.5 percent in the previous report to 42.2 percent compared with Juul declining to 26.1 percent.

The latest Nielsen analysis covers the four-week period ending March 25, according to media reports.

According to Barclays, Nielsen largely covers the big chains. For the smaller chains, the group extrapolates trends, which is why trend changes don’t appear immediately in Nielsen.

Consumer demand for tobacco products has ebbed and flowed over the past 12 months, mostly from the impact of inflation and recent upticks in traditional cigarette prices.

No. 3 Njoy was unchanged at 2.7 percent while Fontem Ventures’ blu eCigs were unchanged at 1.4 percent.

On March 6, Altria Group Inc. delivered another shake-up to the tobacco industry by confirming it would pay $2.75 billion in cash to take full ownership of Njoy.

Altria cleared the way for the Njoy purchase by exiting its minority stake in No. 2 e-cigarette company Juul while acquiring global licensing rights.

Juul’s four-week dollar sales in the latest report have dropped from a 50.2 percent increase in the Aug. 10, 2019, report to a 23.9 percent decline in the latest report.

By comparison, Reynolds’ Vuse was up 31.1 percent in the latest report while Njoy was down 10.9 percent, blu eCigs were down 37.4 percent and Japan Tobacco’s Logic was up 5.2 percent.

As recently as May 2019, Juul held a 74.6 percent U.S. e-cigarette market share.