Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE:PM) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So, it’s not going to immediately have a huge impact. It’s going to be a ramp up, as we explained, but there will be a number of countries where ILUMA will be fully delivering. Look at Japan. That’s quite interesting what happened in Japan. In fact, we’ve seen kind of another acceleration on market share and volume one year after the launch of ILUMA. So, it’s not as if the old positive impact was happening in the first weeks. I would say takes some time to create the awareness, the understanding, and the positive appreciation. And then we’re going to have ZYN and nicotine pouches. ZYN, first of all, starting in the US, but a number of exciting launch outside the US as well. So, that is boding well for 2024, but of course, it’s premature to talk about ’24, and we’ll give guidance in due course.

Bonnie Herzog: Okay. That all makes sense and helpful. And then I just for my second question, I was hoping for some more color on Japan, and it looks like your shipment volume was really strong in the quarter and then your market shares increased nicely. So, could you talk through key drivers of this? And then I believe BAT is cutting their prices on glo Hyper starting in August. So, could you talk through the current competitive environment and then maybe how you expect it might change in light of these actions, as well as how you may need to respond, if at all. Thank you.

Emmanuel Babeau: Sure, Bonnie. So, Japan, of course, is a matter of great satisfaction. I was alluding to it, the fact that one year after the launch of ILUMA, we see a further acceleration of our market share. We are now above 26%. And as I said, that shows that the brand keeps doing inroads, converting more people, making a big difference versus competition. And we are – actually, we’ve seen our capture share of the growth of the category that continue to grow increasing. We have a two-tier strategy between TEREA and SENTIA that is proving to be very efficient. So, we have the premium range, TEREA, with a lot of innovation, great flavor experience. And then we have SENTIA, which is of course at the lower level in term of positioning.

But with this two, I would say range, we managed to really reach the broadest possible member of ILUMA user, and that’s clearly showing some great success. We are back in Japan to see freight progressively. So, that was expected. Last year, the shipments were lower than the consumer uptake. And this year, that is of course not – we’re going back to the normal situation. That was absolutely planned. And we see indeed competition while trying to fight. This is a category that keeps having a lot of traction and gaining share. They are fighting to keep growing when ILUMA is clearly doing well. And so far, they believe that their way forward is to come with cheaper consumable. That’s of course their decision. I won’t comment on that. It’s clear that despite that, we managed to grow the share.

But it’s good to see that there is a clear growing commitment from the whole industry behind the category in Japan.

Bonnie Herzog: All right. Thank you again.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Matt Smith with Stifel. Your line is open.

Matt Smith: Hi, thank you for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the pacing of the rollout of ILUMA to 50 markets from the 23 markets where it’s available today. Do you expect that to be fairly evenly spread across the second half? And could you talk about the rollout or the expansion, the impact on your operating margin in the second half, as well as your gross margin?