British tobacco giant Imperial Brands on Tuesday reported a 3.9 per cent rise in adjusted operating profit for year ending September 30, beating average analyst forecasts of 3.5 per cent.
The figure excludes the impact of foreign exchange and Imperial's exit from Russia.
Imperial, which makes vaping brand blu and traditional cigarettes including Davidoff, Gauloises and Winston, forecast revenue and profit growth next year, but said it would be slower in the first half due to this year's price rises and investments in tobacco alternatives.
Combustible tobacco performance improved with 10 basis points aggregate market share growth in top-five priority markets and strong, broad-based pricing gains.
In the ‘next generation’ category net revenue went up by 26 per cent as momentum grows in all categories. In Europe, the category has grown by 40 per cent.
“Three years into Imperial’s transformation, our investments in consumer capabilities, changes to the way we work, and a new performance culture are translating into stronger, more sustainable operational and financial outcomes,” Stefan Bomhard, chief executive, said.
“In combustible tobacco, improving brand equity and investment in our salesforce capabilities has led to the third consecutive year of stable or growing aggregate market share in the five priority markets which account for 70 per cent of our operating profit. At the same time, we have offset structural volume declines with strong pricing in all key markets.
“In next generation products, our challenger approach, which combines partnership-based innovation with disciplined market entry, is delivering positive results.”
Bomhard added that the company expected profits to rise next year and beyond.
“Looking ahead, we expect the continuing benefits of our transformation to enable a further acceleration in our adjusted operating profit growth in the final two years of our five-year strategy.”
Imperial expects low single-digit 2024 revenue growth and adjusted operating profit near the middle of its mid-single digit range.
However, it said performance will be weighted to the second half of the year, with adjusted operating profit likely growing by low single digits in the first half.
Imperial also raised its annual dividend by 4 per cent.
Industry charity NewstrAid will be rounding off their 185th Birthday celebrations with their annual Carol Concert held at St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street on Monday 2 December, 6.45pm.
This festive event, which has been made possible thanks to support from more than twenty newspaper and magazine businesses, will include music from the St Bride’s choir and festive readings from industry colleagues.
We are so grateful to all the businesses who have sponsored this event and made it possible during our 185th Birthday year," said Neil Jagger, CEO for NewstrAid. "If it wasn’t for the support we have received from the Newspaper and Magazine industry throughout our history, the charity quite simply would not still be in existence.”
The carol concert is the last event to take place in celebration of NewstrAid’s anniversary with events during 2024, including a scavenger hunt, a special lunch for the charity’s volunteers and a Summer raffle. These celebrations have coincided with the charity having another exceptionally busy year with requests for support coming in at the same rate as they did in 2023, which was a record year for applications.
“St Bride’s church, with its long association with the newspaper trade, is a very fitting location for the final event of our 185th year. The money raised as a result of all our events continues to be as important as it was when the charity was founded nearly two centuries ago and we hope to see many friends and colleagues from the newspaper and magazine industry join us at St Bride’s to help us continue to support those from the trade who are facing hardship,” Jagger concluded
Republic Technologies, the company behind iconic tobacco accessories brands, such as Swan, OCB and Zig-Zag, has announced the five winners of its Summer of Swan in-depot competition.
The competition was open to retailers who purchased three cases of any Swan branded filters from qualifying wholesalers, with the top winners receiving £1,000 cash. Five winning retailers also claimed prizes of £100 each.
“It's imperative for us to show appreciation and give back to retailers who invest in our brands," said Gavin Anderson, Sales & Marketing Director at Republic Technologies. "Thank you to all of the retailers who entered, and congratulations to the lucky winners.”
One of the five lucky retailers to win £1,000 was Param Akilan (known as Akilan) who’s owned the Go Local Extra Store at Shiregreen, Sheffield, for the last 22 years.
He said: “I was very surprised when I heard I’d won. I always support raffles and things, but I’ve never won anything like this before. I’ve been buying Swan products for over 20 years and am really grateful for the money. I’m going to donate some of it to a local charity.”
Nitesh Patel, who owns the family run Loscoe Post Office & Stores in Loscoe High Street, Derbyshire, described his £1000 win as a ‘’very pleasant surprise’’.
“I’ve never won anything on this scale before. You never really expect to win promotions of this kind but with Christmas coming up, the timing couldn’t be better.”
The three other recipients of £1,000 were:
-Sivananthy Yoganathan from Harrow View Convenience Store, London
-Sutharshan Jeganathan from Discount Food & Wine, Nottingham
-Dhrutiben Patel from Rodley Convenience Store, Leeds.
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A shopper gazes at empty shelves that contained bottled water in a supermarket in Falls Church, VA, as a severe snowstorm hits the Washington D.C. area February 5, 2010.
Big-name retailers such as Walmart are increasingly using analytics to blunt the impact of one of the most unpredictable performance variables of shopping: weather.
Weather data, once used strictly for inventory planning, is now helping retailers localise advertising and decide when to discount seasonal items such as sweaters.
Walmart, whose inventory planning with artificial-intelligence software incorporates weather analysis, reduced sunscreen prices a couple weeks earlier than usual this year in parts of the US. Weather data forecasting a wetter-than-usual autumn in some US regions was a factor in its decision, whereas several years ago, it likely would not have been, said Kirby Doyle, a skin-care category replenishment adviser to the world's biggest retailer.
"In the beginning, (weather data) was just a forecast model for high-level planning," said Doyle, who works for Beiersdorf, which makes personal-care products. "Now we’re infusing it into pre-season planning and throughout the season to diagnose the impact of weather, and for things like scheduling promotions.”
A niche group of weather consultants — from Germany's Meteonomiqs to US firms Planalytics and Weather Trends International — is using breakthroughs such as cloud computing to process once-unimaginable amounts of data.
Demand for such data is growing amid heightened weather volatility due to climate change. The National Retail Federation in the US, which is chaired by a Walmart executive, issued a report with Planalytics in July, recommending retailers pay more attention to weather analysis.
New weather-data tools, centred on pricing, may soon be hitting the market. Planalytics and BearingPoint, a management consultancy, are partnering to build software retailers can integrate into their analytical models for setting prices.
“Weather is something you can’t control,” BearingPoint managing consultant Ryan Orabone said at an industry workshop last month to unveil the new initiative. “But you can control the analytics. And pricing, you absolutely control.”
It is natural for a warm October, like this year's in the US, to cause retailers to sweat ahead of the holidays. "It needs to get cold for our business to really perform well in Q4,” Tractor Supply CEO Hal Lawton said last month on a quarterly call.
The company, which uses weather analytics, sells cold-weather products like heating pellets and outerwear.
Weather analytics can help companies like Tractor Supply decide whether to discount winter items, said Planalytics CEO Fred Fox, whose clients include Dick's Sporting Goods and Ross Stores.
If November temperatures in the US drop below 2023 levels - which forecasts suggest is likely - a discount now could mean a missed opportunity later, Fox said.
As intuitive as that may seem to a retailer, they do not always get it right.
In August, Lowe's chief financial officer Brandon Sink cited cold, wet weather in May as the reason for weaker sales in the prior quarter.
But that description is inaccurate, said Bill Kirk, founder of Weather Trends, whose clients include Target, Gap, and Tractor Supply.
May was indeed wet, Kirk's data shows, but not cold. It was the hottest May in six years for the US, he said, and third-hottest in four decades. "Welcome to the world of retail excuses not based on facts," he said.
Rising temps, rising demand
About every three weeks in the US, a natural disaster causes $1 billion or more in damages, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, up from once every three months in the 1980s.
Planalytics, which uses computer models to help retailers understand how weather affects sales, is on pace to provide clients with twice as many models in 2024 as it did last year, said Evan Gold, the company’s executive vice president of partnerships. Since 2019, that figure has shot up ninefold.
Retailers typically see weather's impact in foot traffic and sales, said Stefan Bornemann, head of Meteonomiqs, whose clients include retailers using the e-commerce platform Shopify. "The impact could get bigger, given more severe weather patterns,” he said.
Kirk has analysed how sales for a given product rise or fall with each degree of temperature change. Sales of horse blankets rise 7 per cent per degree colder and Starbucks coffee sales climb 2 per cent, he said.
Some clients use Kirk's data for so-called dynamic pricing, the practice of adjusting prices to demand. If a sales season looks particularly weak, clients may implement small markdowns early, rather than be forced to impose larger ones later to clear excess inventory, Kirk said.
The days of retailers using weather as an excuse for a poor earnings season should be over, he added.
“Wall Street hates that excuse,” Kirk said. “What you’re saying to your investors is, ’We can’t control our business.’”
Supermarket Sainsbury’s has become the first grocer to extend its Aldi price-match campaign to its 800 local convenience store outlets.
In a bold move by its boss to win back market share from the German discounter, Britain’s second-largest supermarket chain today (4) has added price matches on 200 daily staples — including milk, chicken, bread and vegetable oil — in its local convenience stores.
Simon Roberts, chief executive, told The Times that he had decided to roll out the campaign because customers had told him that they “really love the convenience of Sainsbury’s Local, but would really like to see value on the products we buy most often.
“What we’re seeing from customers is that they want to be sure they’re getting the best value.
“UK grocery is one of the most, if not the most competitive markets in the world,” Roberts said. “What we’ve seen is lots of new, smaller supermarkets grow in the UK, and so we have to be competitive on everyday products that customers buy, in order for them to be confident in our value.”
He added that matching with Aldi prices “gives customers real confidence”, particularly when shoppers’ budgets are squeezed.
The Aldi price-match scheme will replace Sainsbury’s “pocket friendly prices” campaign, which launched last year to help customers find cheaper items in its Local shops more easily.
Sainsbury’s is targeting between 20 and 25 new Local stores each year, as part of its ongoing expansion plan, which includes opening more larger-format supermarkets. It will open a new convenience shop at Edinburgh Airport in December, in a unit previously occupied by Marks & Spencer. It will be Sainsbury’s first airport store.
“Whether on the way to work, or travelling from a station, local stores play such an important role in people’s lives," Roberts said.
Waitrose is to open 100 new convenience shops over the next five years as part of a £1 billion investment, while Marks & Spencer unveiled plans to open ten new convenience stores this year and renew up to 50. Morrisons plans to open 400 more of its Morrisons Daily convenience stores, with a wider goal of hitting 2,000 smaller stores in 2025.
A convenience store owner in Glasgow has retired and handed over the keys after serving the community for 44 years.
The retiring shopkeeper couple, Abdul Haq and his wife Hameedah, have run Disqu Blu convenience store in Glasgow since 1980.
Speaking to a local media, Haq explained how for past 44 years, he have been working from 6am each morning, seven days a week, - equating to nearly 200,000 hours in the shop.
He said his favourite part of the job has always been the interactions with customers who he will miss chatting to.
“I always speak to all my customers,” he said. “I’m that kind of person. I love people, and I enjoy speaking to everyone that comes in. I’ve got customers who have moved away, but when they come back to Glasgow they always pop in to see me. I love that kind of thing. It’s very personal.
“The people around here are lovely. I’ll miss them very much.”
“It was always going to be time to retire at some stage,” he said. “I probably should have retired years ago! But I just love being here. I’ve met so many nice people. I’ve got a lot of good memories from this place.”
The couple has run Disqu Blu since 1980. Though Haq will no longer be working in the shop - which was originally a tobacconist stocking Disque Bleu cigarettes, hence the distinctive name - he won’t be settling down into a dressing gown and slippers anytime soon.
“I’m not going to sit in the house all day,” he said. “I think I’ll do some charity work. I want to learn Arabic as well. I can read it but I can’t really speak it. So I’ll learn that, then I can travel around the Middle East. And I’d like to see more of Scotland. I’ve never been around the country much, working in here all the time, but I’d love to explore more of it.”
Haq's daughter Farah was only a year old when her parents took the shop.
“It’s more than just a business,” she said. “They’ve been here so long that customers have grown old with them, and become family and friends. We’ll miss it, because it’s been such a big part of all our lives. We’ve all grown up in here and done our bit in the shop, so it’s been very much a family business.
“It’s an emotional time. But I think it's the right moment for them to retire now. It’s a whole new chapter.
"I’ve really lucked out with my parents. They’re amazing role models. They’re so hardworking, and they’ve really given back to the local community. I look up to them a lot. Everyone knows them around here, they all call my dad Chiefy and my mum Mrs Chiefy. It’s a real community feel, which you don’t really get these days with supermarkets.”