British American Tobacco p.l.c. (BATS) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to welcome you to our 2026 interim results presentation. With me this morning is Javed Iqbal, interim CFO and Victoria Buxton, group head of investor relations. I will begin with our transformation highlights. Javed will then take you through our financial results in more detail. Finally, I will return to talk more about our performance outlook and why we are confident in the pathway ahead given the clear momentum we are building. We will then take your questions. With that, I'd like to draw your attention to the disclaimers on slide two and three. Let's begin by looking at our transformation momentum. Starting with some highlights from h one. Smokeless now represents 19.8% of group revenue, up 160 basis points versus last year. We added 4,100,000 smokeless consumers over the last twelve months, taking the total to 35,000,000. This progress is mainly driven by modern auto industry growth where the strength of the Vilo brand continues to resonate strongly with consumers. Our first half results were in line with expectations, supported by a strong multi category delivery in The US, excellent Villa momentum across all three regions, and the resilient combustibles performance in The US and The AME. Our disciplined focus on quality growth continues to improve returns through more targets investments with new category contribution up 55% at constant rates. As previously guided, we expect adjusted profit from operations to accelerate in H2, driven by improvements in EMEA and APMEA. Our second half weighting will also benefit from the phasing of future win savings. Finally, we continue to generate strong cash returns. We expect to be within our two to 2.5 times target leverage corridor by year end, while continuing to reward our sharehol...