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

Emmanuel Babeau: Yes, Matt. So, there will be a progressive difficult for me – I mean, there will be events in Q3 and Q4 of launch of ILUMA in a number of countries. It’s difficult for me to tell you whether it even spread, because I would’ve probably to do that depending on the size of each market, but it’s going to be relatively well spread. Let’s be clear. We have already two third of the IQOS volume that are exposed or benefit from ILUMA’s presence. So, it’s not marginal, but a big part of it has already been done. And as we said, at the beginning of ILUMA, we were not fully optimized on the product, on the productivity. It doesn’t mean that everything will be done at the end of the year, but we expect to certainly see an acceleration of productivity, reduction in the weight in the second part of the year, and that will have a positive impact on margin evolution, absolutely in line with what I explained a number of headwinds that are receding in line with expectation.

But that’s really what you can expect for ILUMA in the second part of the year.

Matt Smith: That you for that. And if I could ask just a follow-up question on the combustible performance. It’s been stronger in terms of both volume and organic revenue contribution, and you made a couple of comments about the demand environment holding up better than your expectation relative to the elevated pricing. Can you talk about the factors that are allowing the consumers to hold up elasticity better than your expectations? Do you expect that to continue now that you’re going to lap some pricing action?

Emmanuel Babeau: Look, so far, I think that we’ve seen that pricing, it doesn’t mean that the consumer is going away. I’m not able to tell you how it’s going to further evolve in the future. I think what we see globally on the combustible market is first of all, a few markets where, because of the demographic, we see the consumption of combustible going up. I could certainly mention India, probably Egypt, Turkey, probably Vietnam, even if it’s not a big market for us, where we see combustible business going up. The resilience is also coming from a number of markets where there is a ban on smoke-free products. So, of course, that is to some extent protecting the combustible business. As you know, that’s clearly not something that we like. We think that it’s a big mistake, but that is probably providing some resilience to the category overall. So, that would be my analogy on combustible.

Matt Smith: Thank you for that, Emmanuel. I’ll pass it on.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Owen Bennett with Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Owen Bennett: Afternoon, Emmanuel. Hope you are well. So, related to heated competitive dynamics, so all three of your major tobacco peers now appear to be in a better spot, at least versus the past with regard to product offerings at least, and money they’re investing into this. I was just wondering if you could comment on IQOS trends in some of the more competitive heated markets where all three of your major peers now have a presence. So, like (indiscernible) for example. So, how is IQOS share holding or ILUMA having less traction in these markets than others? Are you seeing trial of other brands and consumers coming back to IQOS? Thank you.

Emmanuel Babeau: Sure, Owen. Actually, you may have seen that our share of the category has remained stable in Q2 at around 75%. So, it shows that indeed there is increased competition, but the quality of IQOS and notably ILUMA, but not just ILUMA, the overall IQOS proposition, is allowing us to, even if we’re more premium, to maintain our share of the category, which is very good news. Here, I’m talking about volume. You can imagine in term of value, that is even higher. Now, let’s be clear. Since the beginning, we knew, and I can say we were hoping for the whole industry to embrace heat-not-burn as the category of the future for inhalable nicotine product. And it’s great to see a growing commitment from all the player behind that.