British American Tobacco p.l.c. (NYSE:BTI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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So there’s a lot of gamuts of different markets. And you see that the price elasticity, in average, is 0.4. So I think that we have a very strong business over there that has grown share and value share in the last three years. And the operating margins are going in the right direction. We are delivering 3.5% profit growth in 2022, and we are confident in the U.S. business.

Nik Oliver: Great. And then just the one final one for me, and then I’ll hand over. Just on the — obviously, the no new buyback this year was kind of quite topical with investors this morning. But I guess in the press release, you mentioned that would be reviewed during the year. Maybe today, just a few words on the thought process of one — not announcing one now and then what would need to change for that to happen later in the year?

Tadeu Marroco: Yes. Nick, we have been focused on cash generation at least for the last three, four years in a very intense way. That’s reflecting our conversion being consistently at 100%, and we managed to deleverage the company to the corridor of 3 to 2. But we are still in an uncomfortable position to be at the high end of this range. And the world has changed. We have a very high levels of cost of capital today after 7 interest hikes in the U.S. alone throughout 2022. Our cost of capital is much higher than before, and we are still seeing a lot of volatilities in that environment. So one thing that we would like to observe more clearly is where this will stabilize. For sure, when the Board takes a decision in terms of capital allocation, it’s always looking ahead.

And from the regulatory side, the litigation side, you note that we have provided for investigations that we have around DOJ or FAC and we still have to pay for those. We don’t know exactly when these get concluded. We expect to be in 2023, but it’s not completely up to us. And also, we have a CC88 . There is a mediation processing in place. I cannot comment further on that. But in the medium term, we have to prefer the company for that. So the reason why we want to accelerate to land in the mid of the range is to create this space so we can have a more resilient balance sheet and a much more financial agility moving forward, and this is a benefit for us in the medium and long term of the company.

Jack Bowles: I mean to speak clearly, since three years, we have done a lot of transformation. We have done a lot of acceleration in terms of our business. Now we have the possibility to decide. Last year, we did $2 billion of share buyback. The interest rates are going up. Deleveraging is important, taking care of our balance sheet. We want to be in that corridor of three to two and to accelerate faster to the mid of that corridor. That’s the pragmatic way of looking at it. And frankly, share buyback, we are convinced with share buyback. We did 2 billion last year, and we will review in the course of the year. And we’ll make the decisions as we see pragmatic to do so and continue on that journey. I like share buyback.

Nik Oliver: Great. Thanks so much, Jack and Tadeu. That was very clear. Thank you.

Operator: Next up, we have Richard Felton from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open, please go ahead.

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