The vaping division of tobacco giant British American Tobacco (BAT) under which the Vuse brand falls, is now expected to be profitable by 2024, which is earlier than previously predicted.
The total revenue for BAT is set to amount to £27.7 billion for 2022, which is a 7.7% from 2021. And this increase in revenue is being attributed to the company’s “new categories” division which includes vapes, tobacco heating products and nicotine pouches, and has generated £2.9 billion of this revenue, at 40.9%.
Due to this, CEO Jack Bowles is predicting that this sector is now expected to turn a profit a year earlier. “”Our new category business delivered strong volume, revenue and market share growth and has become a significant contributor to the group’s financial delivery,” he said. “In 2022, we invested more than £2 billion in new categories to drive long-term sustainable growth, while making excellent progress in reducing operating losses by 62%.”
In 2022 3.2 million new consumers turned to BAT’s nicotine alternatives
In 2022 BAT had estimated that approximately 3.2 million new consumers had started using its non-combustible nicotine products in the first nine months of the year. This brought the total number of users to about 21.5 million people.
To this effect, the tobacco giant had forecasted single digit adjusted diluted earnings per share growth on a constant currency basis for the year ending December 31st, reported Reuters. The manufacturer was also expecting “strong adjusted operating margin improvement despite increasing inflation in our supply chain.” BAT added that sales of its combustible cigarette brands were flat in the third quarter