Imperial Brands PLC (IMB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Well, I mean, first, good morning to everyone, and welcome to our results presentation for fiscal year '24. And especially, I want to thank all of you coming here on this very snowy London day. So it's great to see you, but I also want to say a warm welcome to any of the people who are watching us online. And as usual, I would like to draw your attention to this disclaimer before I introduce the team and outline the agenda for today. I'm joined by Lukas Paravicini, our CFO, who you hopefully know by now, and by Peter Durman, our Head of Investor Relations. And I will start by highlighting some key points from today's strong results. Then Lukas will outline our financial performance and give our outlook for the coming fiscal year. And then I will update you on how we are delivering operationally and continuing on our strategic transformation. And finally, as usual, we're looking forward to take your questions here in the room, but also online. Now I mean, these results demonstrate further strong delivery in the acceleration phase of our 5-year plan. And let's start with the operational headlines. In Tobacco, we grew aggregate market share in our 5 priority markets again. And encouragingly, this has been supported by a turnaround in Germany where our actions that we've taken are now gaining traction. And across the group, strengthened brands and improved sales execution have helped us deliver strong pricing with price/mix up almost 8%. In next-generation products, we have delivered another year of strong and broad-based growth. Now revenue was up in NGP in all 3 regions and in all 3 categories. And in all 3 categories, market share was also up. And gross margin has increased as well. So as a result, losses in NGP have significantly reduced. And we continue to invest in new launches such as Zone in the United States. Now all of this, you should see as further evidence of our challenger approach, focus on the consumer and disciplined investments that are creating sustainable and growing business. Now these results also demonstrate out the benefit of our broader transformation to build a performance-based culture and harness new ways of working. And here, you can see how this operational performance is translating into improved financial delivery and enhanced shareholder returns. But this is exactly the same dashboard we've shown in previous results presentations over the last 3 years since we started this strategy. And once again, there is a tick in every box and all the lights are green. And you will recall our 5-year strategy was divided into an initial foundation building phase of 2 years, followed by a period of accelerated returns. Here, there are 2 metrics that really demonstrate this acceleration in detail. First, it is the 4.6% growth in net revenue. This has been driven by a strong performance in both Tobacco and NGP. Second is the 10.9% growth in earnings per share underpinned by rising profits growth and the powerful compounding effect of our ongoing share buyback. Now since starting the buyback in 2022, we have retired 11% of our share capital. And if you take the longer view, over the 5 years of the strategy, we're now on course to make cumulative capital returns through buybacks and dividends of GBP 10 billion. I will now hand it over to Lukas, who will take you through the financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Stefan, and a very good morning to all of you. Once again, I'm pleased to show you positive financials and another year of strong delivery. As Stefan said, we grew aggregate share in our 5 priority markets, while delivering strong pricing. We again had double-digit net revenue growth in NGP with improving margins. Our operational success has improved our group adjusted operating profit by 4.6%. This has been boosted by the share buyback to deliver a double-digit EPS growth. Leverage of 1.8x is slightly better than our forecasted range or target range. This has been driven by better-than-expected cash delivery and favorable FX translation on our balance sheet. These results are further evidence of consistent financial delivery against our plans and disciplined use of capital. We can see here the strength of the tobacco model, value model in action. Our strengthened brands and improved sales execution enabled strong pricing across our footprint, shown in orange on the chart. Price/mix has more than offset volume declines shown in blue, to deliver an acceleration in tobacco net revenue growth to 3.8%. Pricing in Europe has been strong, while volume declines have returned to historical rates. This has driven net revenue growth of 4.5%. As widely reported, the U.S. has been more challenging in terms of market volumes. That said, we more than offset these volume declines with pricing of 12%. In our AAACE region, the shipment timing challenges in the first half abated, and we had a stronger second half. Let's move now from volume and revenue to operating profit. Once again, all 3 parts of our businesses: Tobacco, NGP and Logista have contributed to overall growth. In Tobacco, the strong pricing I just described has dropped through to the bottom line. In NGP, we reduced our losses in line with plan and we are on the path to a sustainable and profitable business. Logista also contributed to our growth, helped by pricing in its Tobacco business. This strong adjusted operating profit, coupled with the share count reduction, has driven a double-digit increase in earnings per share. This is the first year that we have seen the full compounding effect of the buyback. We repurchased 6% of our share capital last year and 11% since we started the buyback. Our adjusted effective tax rate at 22.7% was slightly better than we originally expected. Turning to cash and capital allocation. Our free cash flow remained strong, generating GBP 2.4 billion last year. Operating cash conversion at 100% was at the top end of our guidance range. The way we deploy your cash continues to be governed by our 4 capital allocation priorities. Our first priority is organic investment in the business alongside small bolt-ons to develop our NGP capabilities. Second, leverage is around the lower end of our 2 to 2.5x range. Third, with our trading update, we announced dividends up 4.5%, in line with our progressive dividend policy. And fourth, we are committed to returning surplus capital to shareholders. Our confidence in our cash generation means that we have provided shareholders with the visibility of both buyback and dividend payment for fiscal year '25. This is a part of a move to equalize the quarterly dividend payment by bringing forward around 32p per share into fiscal year '25 from fiscal year '26. And we have increased the buyback by almost 14% to GBP 1.25 billion for fiscal year '25. As Stefan said, we are on track to return GBP 10 billion to shareholders since the start of the strategy. Interestingly, this represents 2/3 of our market value at the point when we launched the strategy in January 2021. Okay. As we enter the final year of our plan, we're taking nothing for granted. But we are confident we can continue to execute against the strategy and deliver in line with our commitments. The investments we have made mean we can again expect to grow Tobacco and NGP net revenue by low single digits. This will include another double-digit growth contribution from NGP. We expect to grow adjusted operating profit at a similar rate to fiscal year '24 in our mid-single-digit range. This will be driven by continued profit growth from our combustible business and a further reduction in operating losses in our NGP portfolio. Given the strong momentum in our NGP business, we will continue to invest to drive net revenue growth while balancing our objective to build a sustainable and profitable business. In line with previous years, because of the phasing of pricing and investment, performance will be weighted to the second half. As a result, first half group adjusted operating profit is expected to grow at low single digits. We expect another year of at least high single-digit EPS growth after slightly increased tax and finance costs. At current rates, we expect foreign exchange translation to be a 1% to 2% headwind to profit. As usual there is a slide in the appendices with guidance on specific items. All in all, our strategic transformation and disciplined capital allocation means we are well placed to generate long-term value for shareholders. Thank you very much. And I'll hand back now to Stefan.

All right, well, thank you, Lukas. Now in a moment, I will update you on how we are delivering against the 3 priorities and the 3 enablers, which together make up our strategic wheel. But first, I briefly want to discuss our progress against the 2 big ideas, which animate that strategy. Now the first flows from our purpose that you see here forging a path to a healthier future for moments of relaxation and pleasure. And it's -- the idea is that if we do our job well, then we will make a meaningful contribution through the global transition of adult smokers to potentially less harmful products. After several years of strong compounding growth we've increased the scale of our NGP business by almost 2/3 now. And as we explained in the recent ESG webinar, we now have science showing our new products are effective at attracting smokers away from cigarettes and keeping them away. We're also growing across all categories in NGP and across all regions. Now financially, this business is also more sustainable. And yet, even now, as a percentage of overall net revenue, our NGP business is still a single digit, in single-digit territory, significantly lower than some of our larger competitors. Now a simple fact to a certain extent, is humbling for us and yet also exciting and energizing because it is a reminder that the full benefits of our transformation are still to come and the reminder too of the progress we can make as we continue to play catch-up as a company. The second idea is the one you've heard me discuss many times at results presentations before, and it comes from the vision. This is the idea that as the smallest of the global players, we can only outperform if we act as a challenger. So how are we doing on that front? Well, in the next slide, I will update you on some of the inputs. The efforts we're making to build our consumer capabilities, our culture and our ways of working. But for the moment, let's consider again the outputs, our operational and financial delivery that Lukas just covered. Now smaller businesses can be more vulnerable to external shocks and competitive behavior. But as a challenger business, despite our relative smaller size, we can deliver consistent performance. In a volatile market environment, Imperial Brands has now reported 4 years of stable share, of revenue growth and cash delivery. All evidence, hopefully, to you that we have become a successful challenger in our industry. But I do think the full benefit of our challenger mindset are yet to be felt. And I think this slide helps explain why we believe that. A feature of all successful challenger businesses is that they're close to their consumers. Today, we are smarter and more ambitious in how we listen to our consumers. We've held last year, 220,000 interviews with our consumers. And the insights we generated are helping to drive innovation both in NGP and in combustible products. After 3 years of external recruitment and training of existing colleagues, our global consumer office is now at full strength with around 1,000 inside experts, innovators, marketeers and portfolio managers. And as I visit the business, I can see this group of people is now really starting to operate as a seamless team to achieve its full potential, which gives me great hope for the future progress of the company. Now a second feature of a strong challenger business is its performance culture. And as I've shared with you before, we've taken a very structured approach becoming a more accountable, more collaborative and inclusive organization. This is a multiyear program of activities underpinned by our 5 behaviors. But we have now reached a point where 3/4 of our senior leaders have completed connected leadership, a 7-day course which helps them become better coaches to their teams. Now this is the broadest and most intensive leadership program ever attempted by Imperial. And what's great is that the activities like these are starting to have a positive and measurable impact on our people's experience at work. Because if you look at our most recent global survey conducted in September, I was pleased to see that 90% of people said that they felt they were treated with respect by their leader. And more broadly, we held our engagement score at 74%, again above the global benchmark. Now this is a strong figure for business of our global scale, going through massive change. And over the past year, our transformation has, for sure, continued at pace. And we've reached also an important milestone last month when the U.K. went live with our 5-year project to create a unified enterprise resource planning system. Now in reality, this is more than an ERP system. It will simplify our operations through standardized processes, harmonized data and by unifying the systems that connect us globally. And this brings me to my final point about being a challenger business. Successful challengers need good data to enable their people to make fast, insightful decisions. And in this area, we still have work to do. But the good news is we have a plan, we are now even more confident it will work, and we can see the benefits it will bring. We also continue to make good progress with our ESG agenda or what we call internally the people and planet agenda. In our recent ESG webinar, we updated you on our progress and the replay is available on our website. But I want to pull some headlights out here. In consumer health, as I just mentioned now, under our current strategy, we've grown our NGP revenue by 64% since 2020. In Climate, we've reduced our direct carbon emissions by 69% since 2017, and absolute waste is down by 32% since the same benchmark year. But while we're pleased with our progress so far, we're also realistic. Our ambition is to make a material difference to consumer health and to achieve 0 carbon and 0 waste as they are our long-term goals. And we also know this will not be easy to achieve. Now let me turn to our strategic priorities. Starting with our commitment to drive value from our priority combustible markets. Over the past 4 years, we've achieved our objective of stabilizing aggregated market share across our 5 largest markets so we're no longer the #1 share donors that we were before. We can now report 4 years of stable or growing share after a long period of steady declines. And let me remind you, once again, our objective is to maintain aggregate share. We never expect all 5 markets to grow simultaneously. Now let me take you through the performance in each one of our priority markets, starting with the United States. Now U.S. is a real great example of our challenger mindset in action. We are the clear #3 in the market. Yet by getting close to the consumer, identifying new opportunities and executing with discipline, we've steadily created value and grown share. In fiscal year '24, despite the volume pressures that Lukas mentioned earlier, strong price mix means we have once again grown both revenue and profits. We also delivered further growth in cigarette market share up 15 basis points, the sixth consecutive year of market share growth in the U.S. In mass market cigars, the events that impacted last year's performance are now behind us. While market size of MMC remains under pressure, we have delivered an improved performance with our flagship brand Backwoods gaining market share. And our other 4 priority markets continue to perform well as well. This year, we are particularly encouraged by our market share performance in Germany. As many of you will know, this has been the tougher market to turn around of the top 5. However, after a sustained period of share losses where we have now delivered for the first time market share gains in Germany under our strategy. And I was just in the market during a couple of months ago, and I could see how our sales force initiatives are starting to build stronger relationships with our key customers. But I want to be clear at the same time, we recognize there is still much more to be done before we can finally declare victory. In the U.K. we chose to increase prices twice in the year, with the clear expectation that this would have an impact on share. But we're confident this was the correct decision for long-term value creation. And an important point is our cumulative U.K. market share is still up over the past 4 years of our plan. And moving to Spain. In Spain, we delivered market share growth for the sixth year in a row through innovative brand extensions. This share improvement was accompanied by price increases for the third consecutive year following a period of price stability. And in Australia, the high excise environment has driven an increase in the illicit trade, and this means the size of the legal market is under pressure. But that said, our team in Australia has done a great job in optimizing value from the portfolio that we have and again, they delivered market share gains. Now in a similar way, how we have focused investments on our 5 priority markets, we have an equally rigorous approach across our broader portfolio of markets. Our African cluster accounts for around 10% of group operating profit and here, we grew net revenue in the past year by 5%. We've used our unique portfolio of local jewels and international brands to meet the diverse preferences of our consumers on the continent. Meanwhile, in Central and Eastern Europe, it is emerging as an important market cluster for our new heated tobacco proposition, helping drive growth in this cluster. Which brings me to NGP. Our challenger approach to NGP is now building a track record of strong growth across all 3 categories: vaping, heated products, and oral nicotine pouches. Looking at all European markets, NGP now makes up more than 8% of our net revenue, up from just 3% 4 years ago. In 8 of these markets, NGP now accounts for 20% or more of total revenue. In Greece, one of our star performers, which I visited last month, we have the #1 vaping brand and a strong presence in heated products. And we've also delivered strong NGP growth in our larger markets such as the United Kingdom, Germany and the U.S. And as we said, within our footprint, we are building scale, and this has enhanced gross margin by more than 500 basis points and as a result, reduced operating losses substantially. Our vaping business has grown strongly again this year, with revenue up by 14%, driven by an acceleration of new product delivery. Here, you can see the agility and the speed of our partnership approach to innovation and the benefit this brings for our consumers, our innovation partners, and our science and innovation team working together. Our challenger approach is not about being a fast follower, but it is about getting close to consumers and providing a differentiated offer at pace. Now this means we can sometimes take the lead. I mean, the example is here, we were the first tobacco player to offer a disposable product with 1,000 puffs in a single device. Since then, we've launched a new rechargeable format, blu bar kit. And it provides the same form, function and flavors as our disposable blu bar and we're getting great consumer feedback. Now turning to heated. Fiscal year '24 was about consolidating our position in existing markets. Pulze 2.0 is present in 8 European markets, which present more than 60% of the addressable European market. Our goals this year was to even more tightly focused on our target consumers who value the differentiated offer of our Pulze and iD sticks. As these consumers who enjoy consecutive sessions of smoking, and appreciate the convenience of this all-in-one device. We also expanded the rollout of iSenzia, our flavored nontobacco heat sticks. These helped to drive market share growth across our footprint and delivered very strong revenue growth. Now in modern oral nicotine, we grew our category share and increased net revenue by more than 60%. This was driven by innovation and flavor launches in Europe to meet the evolving consumer needs. And our results also benefited from the launch in February of 2024 of Zone in the fast-growing U.S. market. And in line with our disciplined approach to NGP, this product was initially trialed in 12 metropolitan areas. And our Zone pouches are differentiated by being more moist than others on the market and this provides for a consumer a much better mouth feel. And the early results are promising. 26-week data shows we have gained 1.6% market share nationally increasing to a 4.3% share in our trial footprint. And the short-term data that we have shows an encouraging trajectory. As a result, we have begun to roll out to new areas, and we'll update you on the progress at future meetings. Now looking ahead, we will remain focused on delivering the final year of our current 5-year strategy. Fiscal year '25 for us is about continuing to drive forward our tried and tested approach, honed over the past 4 years. In combustibles, we will maintain our focus on our 5 priority markets, seeking to maintain our aggregate market share. In NGP, we'll continue to deliver strong growth. And in the coming year, you will see a further reduction in operating losses in NGP. However, we will continue to balance short-term margin improvements with targeted investments to support long-term sustainable growth. And cash delivery, no surprise to you, will continue to be a key priority. And of course, we'll continue to drive our transformation to become a stronger challenger business. While our first priority is to deliver for you the best positive results over the next 12 months, we're also working very hard on the next phase of our strategy. And we look forward to updating you on our plans for the next 5 years up to 2030 at the Capital Markets Day in London next March. And I hope you will again join us in person for that session. So to conclude, I believe these results provide further data points evidenced our -- evidencing our growing track record. That should give you the confidence in further upside potential and in the overall investment case in Imperial. We've built a stronger tobacco business. We have developed a sustainable NGP business operating at scale. And I hope we've shown you we are becoming a consumer-centric business, improving our culture at the same time and embracing new ways of working. And all these support our medium-term financial delivery. And our growing ongoing shareholder returns underlined this year by a 4.5% increase in the dividend and a 14% increase in the buyback. Annually, our dividend and buyback together now represent 14% of our current valuation. So if you are invested, we thank you for your support. And if you're still sitting on the fence, hope we will see you committed to the journey relatively soon. Because I think it is a journey with very attractive returns, and it is a journey to a healthier future. So thank you for joining us today. Lukas and me would be delighted to take your questions now. Thank you.

Thank you, Stefan. So we'd now like to take your questions. As usual, we'll take questions from the room first, and then we'll take questions from the telephone from those who've joined by the telephone. [Operator Instructions] But we'll take questions from the room first. And so please wait for the microphone and state your name and organization before posing your question. So we'll go to Richard first.

Richard Felton from Goldman Sachs. Two questions for me, please. First of all, congratulations on improving the operational performance of the business. But as you reflect on the drivers of the improvement of mid-single-digit organic EBIT growth how do you see those? Because the sustainability and the durability of those drivers between the performance culture between the productivity savings, et cetera, et cetera. I'd be very interested to hear your views on the sustainability of those drivers? And then the second question is focusing on NGP. So obviously, a nice acceleration in the second half of the year. Can you maybe comment on what drove that acceleration, particularly in HT and whether we should think about the second half performance as a good indicator of run rate into FY '25?

Okay, sure. Richard, let me deal with the first question, Lukas will answer the second question. Sustainability of performance overall with the different performance drivers. Now it's very difficult to -- especially as you mentioned, performance culture as an example, very difficult to isolate the impact of the individual ones. But I think what you've seen with the fiscal year '24 results, building on '23, '22, they are all making a contribution. And so what I'm quite excited about the delivery of 4.6% net revenue growth and 4.6% operating profit growth is underpinned by several elements driving performance. So I do feel and the team, I think, feels very good that our performance delivery is quite broad-based. And I think that will also carry the business going forward. We can't see that any of them will suddenly ran out of steam. Yes?

I think in general, to the underlying levers that we have always mentioned that drive this business is your operational gearing, number one. So pricing ahead of volumes. You've seen that in the second half. You have had very good pricing also in the second half, which, by the way, will carry on into fiscal year '25 to a large extent. So that's to your second question. So operational gearing is very important to us, and that is the 1 lever. The other lever, as we always said, is NGP. We have continued to reduce our losses. This year, we reduced it by 50%. Again, there's a -- we always have a bit of more slightly towards the second half. Hence, you have a second half impact on that. But very proud to see how we grow out of these losses with a double-digit growth and reducing significant losses. And we have our self-help. We continue, to Stefan's point, to launch better processes, more shared services, et cetera, will give and support that journey going forward. And then finally, more specific to the second half in Imperial this year, which, as you said, in the first half, we had a disruption, especially in AAACE in terms of Middle East shipments, et cetera, that has much -- has abated in the second half. So that has really helped in the second half as well. And that will carry us forward into the next fiscal year.

We'll go to, Faham next. Did you have a question, Faham?

Faham Baig from UBS. Two questions from me as well. Stefan, I think you've mentioned that the strategy doesn't require share growth in the top 5 priority markets, but you've delivered 48 basis points over the last 4 years, and you point to FY '25 also seeing aggregate share growth. What -- which markets give you confidence to deliver aggregate market share growth? And maybe you can spend a bit of time on Germany and the acceleration in share performance there, which is quite unique when you look at the other tobacco markets -- tobacco companies in that market, and how sustainable you believe that is? And the second question is on Zone in the U.S. You highlighted some initial success and the presence in 42,000 stores, our U.S. tobacco footprint is much larger. What stores -- what number of stores are you targeting for Zone to reach by the end of FY '25? And maybe whilst you're at it, could you please remind us of the PMTA status of this product and whether it was in the market prior to 2022?

Okay, sure. Sorry, I count 4 questions here, Faham. And please remind me if I miss one. On market share across our top 5 markets. The strategic ambition is, as you rightly say, it's about holding share. After a period of time where we were the #1 share donor. We have achieved this in full out of 4 years and that would be the ambition for year 5 of our strategy. But it's a highly competitive marketplace in all of these 5 markets. What I think I would read away from -- as an investor and analyst of this, market share is an expression about how many consumers are choosing our brands. So what I would look, I wouldn't get too hung up on 1 market. It just tells us that our brands today are more healthy than they were 4 years ago because more consumers are choosing them in a highly competitive marketplace. That's the way we look at it. That should give you the confidence that the pricing that Lukas talked about in his part is underpinned. So because you can take a lot of pricing and lose market share. What you see here, we've taken prices and we've held market share, actually, we've taken -- we have actually gained market share. That should fill you with confidence that we're building the right business overall, we're reinvesting in our brands, we're understanding our consumers better, yes? So that's overall top 5 markets should give you confidence in the underlying sustainability of what are 70% of our profits on the tobacco side. On your second question about Germany, yes, logically, I do remember being the German as running as a CEO, it was always a hard one sit in this meeting to have me report another 80% -- 80 basis points. So it's exciting to sit in front of you, as I told you so many times, yes, the playbook would work in Germany as well, it would just take longer. And reality is exactly the same playbook that we've deployed in the other markets. I think the highlights would say, for fiscal year '24 as we went from minus 80 basis points to plus 2. How the expansion of our sales force. So the quantity of people that we deploy to talk with our German customers has significantly increased. You see the benefit of that now, now that they're all fully trained. They're all fully on the street. The other thing you see here is the agility of our teams now to actually go after the opportunities in the right channels, in the right regions of the country. And also what we've done with now regional sales plans about what brands are most important in what part of the country. So I'm really excited because you now can finally see the progress we're making. Now as I said earlier, we don't take it for granted. It's a highly competitive market, as you rightly picked up, it is a very attractive market. The margins of the German market are very attractive. So we don't take it for granted, but we'll finally be able after many years of losing share in Germany to repel that we've actually held our shares stable. Yes? On your third question, Zone rollout in the U.S. for sure, fiscal year '25 will benefit in NGP from a further rollout because you're very right to pick up. We started in February of this year, it's a long time ago, but it's a bit more than 6 months, and our distribution has come from when we started around 12,000 stores to 42,000 stores when we exited the year. Now the U.S. has a lot more than 42,000 attractive stores for modern oral nicotine. We are now expanding these to 42,000 stores were primarily in the 12 metropolitan areas. There were some national distribution like 7-Eleven but what you will see is in fiscal year '25 go much more for a lot other metropolitan areas that are highly relevant for modern oral nicotine. So that should be replicating the success we had in these 12 metropolitan areas at closer to a national level is one of the priorities for fiscal year '25. And on your fourth question, PMTA, on Zone, our -- absolutely our PMTA for Zone as you know, you might remember, we acquired this portfolio of brands, was one of the bolt-on acquisitions that Lukas referred in his presentation. The PMTA was well submitted before the deadline, it has been accepted by the FDA. And we're now there with everybody else who's selling modern oral nicotine in the U.S. for waiting for the feedback from the FDA.

We'll take Rashad here, thanks.

Rashad Kawan from Morgan Stanley. Two for me, please. One -- first one on tobacco pricing. Obviously, I would say Europe and AAACE in particular, the moderation in volume declines was pleasant to see. I guess the question then becomes how much more can you push pricing going forward? Is high single-digit pricing sustainable? Is it slightly lower now that volumes are coming back to more normalized levels? And then the second question, Stefan, I mean, year 4 or 5 now done in terms of the strategy laid out plans for the fifth year. I mean as you look back now, I mean you've been -- you guys have been remarkably consistent around delivery versus the strategy. I mean what would you say has been the 1 or 2 things that have been the most surprising to you over the last 4 years?

Okay.

I'll take pricing quickly. So yes, we are -- as Stefan said, the good thing here is that our pricing is underpinned by the investment we do in our brands and also our work we do with the sales force and sales force execution to position our products. Well, you're absolutely right. For us, pricing is not an absolute term, an absolute goal. For us, pricing is a function of volume decrease, market share and inflation. With inflation still there, but the rate of increase having come down significantly, you should expect across the board, some easing of headwinds, including the U.S., by the way, with improving macroeconomics, hopefully better enforcement of illicit or against illicit vape. All these things will tend to ease headwinds and tend to ease the need for us to price in the U.S. or any region, by the way. Now having said that, the U.S. is still a very attractive profitable business also from a value point of view and pricing. So even should the volume decrease still stay for another couple of years at that a more elevated level, we do not see this going to be an issue at all.

And I had a bit more time to think about your second question. I give you 3 surprises or observations 4 years into the strategy. I mean number one for me, what was truly exciting to see how our brands into the combustibles side have reacted to proper consumer research, reinvestment back in the brands because they had been losing share for quite a number of years. So as an ex marketeer by training, I wasn't really sure how quickly they would react to reinvestments, proper brand essences behind it. So it was a positive surprise because there could have been more Germanies around in reality, yes? So seeing that the program worked relatively quickly was quite encouraging. Number two, I still remember when we had our Capital Markets Day in January '21 and I think there was a healthy dose of skepticism around NGP was a kind of we as a company being the smallest could actually compete here, yes? And the reality 4 years on, when you look at the performance, it's now 2/3 larger after what has been a complete reboot of the business. And to be able to say to you today, we're growing net revenue in every single 1 of the 3 regions, and we're growing net revenue in all 3 categories, and we're growing market share in all 3 categories. I think is for me one of the post surprises because this was clearly the part where people were the most skeptical given how far we're coming from behind. To be clear, there's a lot more room to go, but I think being here today feels pleasing. And the final point I'll talk about the people because logically, look, the organization was eager for change. But you never know how eager it is to take that desire for change into real change. And the ability to, number one, also attract people from the outside into Imperial and into the industry into what at that point in time was quite a mixed performance business and mix that together with a rejuvenated colleague group in Imperial who wanted to drive forward that actually is for most for me how fast that happened and how successful we've been on that one that would be the third surprise.

Great. We'll take a question from Gaurav just there.

So 3 questions from me. One is, can you just talk about the capacity of Zone and how you think about not only next year, but the next few years, your CapEx numbers didn't change. But is there a need to own your own manufacturing in Zone? So that's one. Second, just continuing on the PMTA of Zone. So there is a distinction between PMTA process for tobacco products and for synthetic nicotine products in that if you had some -- manufacturers had submitted applications with September 20, they can continue to sell pending authorization or denial from the FDA. But if it is a synthetic nicotine product, then if the FDA hadn't responded by July 22, you have to stop selling. So you could argue that -- and Altria was saying that in their call that they would want FDA to clarify and take away the enforcement discretion on synthetic nicotine. So can you just talk about that? And then finally, on your overall revenue growth, which is low single digits which I'm assuming means 1% to 2%. So if NGPs are growing, let's say, next year as well at the rate at which you grew this year, then that itself is 1% incremental to revenue growth. So then you're talking very low growth for the cigarette for the rest of the combustible business. So are you being too pessimistic? Or is there some risk next year that there is a disposable e-cigarette ban so that can impact your business? So can you just clarify on that?

Yes, perfect. I'll take the first, and Lukas will take your third question. Your first question on Zone capacity, we're quite confident that we have the right capacity as you -- we were from the day 1, we said let's rather invest into extra capacity just in case, and that has served us well. And the important point also to know is that we have a lot of in-house capabilities around modern oral nicotine having our own factories in Europe on this one. So working with our co-packer in the U.S. who was the company that we purchased the portfolio of brands from has served us well in this context. So we feel very comfortable with the capacity situation that we have around our business worldwide or modern oral nicotine, whether that is in the U.S. or whether that is in Europe. On your question on the PMTA process and so on, we feel very comfortable with our approach. I mean fundamentally, we have always followed the rules as they were laid out by the FDA in this context and as you know, this was a key part of the purchase when we came to the marketplace, yes?

Good. Thanks for, yes, the revenue question. So you're absolutely right. We always forecast a low single-digit revenue growth because that's how our model works. We look at what is our volume decreases and then we tailor the pricing according to that because that's how -- what we need to make sure that we get the operational gearing going. So that is the base of our model, that works, that results in the operating profit we need and more importantly, the cash we require. It's very pleasing to see, though, is that we see more and more of that net revenue growth being added by NGP. We have given guidance of another double digit. That will be the third in a row where we do an NGP growth, which will more and more build up on top of that net revenue. Now I also want to point out, if you look at this year, you had a very good performance on net revenue also helped because we have had a strong pricing. And at the same time, volumes have normalized in some of the markets faster ahead of what we expect. And then hence, you have that combination of strong pricing that rolls over and that volume that comes down faster. So you have to look at those things and you might get those benefits in 1 year. And we go back to the planning of that low single digit, that be a bit more than 1%, but it's around that number.

We'll take from Damian here.

Damian McNeela from Deutsche Bank. I'll try 3 as well, please. Just on NGP gross margins, they were up 565 basis points, if I heard correctly. I was just wondering if you could quantify or sort of qualify which -- where the growth was strongest in each of the 3 categories, please? And then Stefan, you mentioned that there's been a sort of a high degree of recruitment into Imperial across all aspects of the business, but particularly around NGP capabilities. Just wondering what your pipeline looks like for the next sort of 12 to 24 months, and if there's anything in particular to call out? And then just finally, CMD next March in London. I assume that you're planning on thinking about that imminently. Are there any teasers you can give us today, please?

Yes, okay. Damian, happy to answer your 3 questions. NGP gross margins. I think as you rightly referred to, I mean, we grew gross margin by more than 500 basis points. So that was a very significant driver of the improved profitability and the reduction of losses on NGP. So you see the double positive effect, larger volumes, larger net revenue, and every case we sell is more profitable than it was a year ago, benefiting from the scale. If you look at the 3 categories, they all moved forward. That's, I think, an important piece. We've seen a gross margin improvement across all 3 categories, yes? We don't break out the individual ones, yes, but I think what you can clearly see is logically, we are benefiting across all 3 of them from the scale effects that we're seeing in the business, yes? That gives us the confidence that we are building a sustainable and profitable business because otherwise, we wouldn't build it. On your second question, NGP capabilities, what's in the pipeline for the year to come. Now one thing I think I would say is an important distinction. We've said from day 1 of our NGP strategy that we would take a partnering approach. We've always said, we believe as the smallest of the big 4 global players, we will rely more heavily on strategic partners than some other players. And I think it has served us well. I mean the example I gave you was the blu bar 1000. We were the first one of the established players in the marketplace that was done in collaboration with one of our partners. And it just was -- 2 months ago was a whole week with our Chinese partners, and they showed me their pipeline with our R&D team, and I can't say what's coming. But I think what you can see now, our pipeline because with more partners, we're clear about briefing them based on the 220,000 consumer interviews now, they're not all NGP interviews, but a substantial amount of them are interviews with NGP consumers. They give us a better insight in what consumers need and allows us to work better with our partners, yes? So expect that there will continue to be a good pipeline across the categories. And on your final question on the Capital Markets Day. Yes, I mean, hopefully, you all pleased that you have a date now which is less than 6 months away from now. But I want to be clear, as we're sitting today in the room, our priority #1 is to finish our current strategic plan, and that's fiscal year '25, yes? As a teaser, look, we're still working on it as the good news that we are working on it, the principles, if there's any teaser I can give you, think about the principles that guided this company in the last 4 years. We are starting with the consumers that would be very unusual if we suddenly go for something else. I think you hopefully see we're very data-driven in our approach. That's unlikely going to change. You will see that concept of a challenger company has served us well. I think it's a concept that we probably will take forward. And as we're sitting today in the room, we also know that our capital allocation policy is a key element of our strategy, not enough to -- so also I think that would be a key part of it going forward. So look, as you would expect, I can't say I need to move at this point in time, but that hopefully is enough of a teaser for you to come and join us in March.

Great, in the front row, Rae, please.

Rae Maile, Panmure Liberum. Just following on from that then, Stefan, as you start a new 5-year plan, are you as committed to seeing out all of those 5 years as you were 5 years ago?

Yes. Look, you hopefully see me here sitting very excited, Rae, because I think it's rewarding to see the work coming through and really making a difference to the company. And as I said before, Lukas and me really feel and the rest of the team really feels there is a significant upside potential in this company. There's clearly lots of self-help opportunities still there. I think in NGP we now have proof that we can operate in this one. And I think also, as I'm sure we both agree there's still a lot more to go on the combustible side. So it truly feels an exciting time. The business feels in a different place whereas 4 years ago. But at the same time, we also believe there's more to come in the future.

Great. I think that's in the room. We had to have something on the online. So I'm going to hand over to you, Sharon, our operator, to take any questions online.

[Operator Instructions] And your question comes from the line of Philip Spain from JPMorgan.

I had 2, please. First one is just on some of the recent data on the U.S. cigarette market has indicated that maybe the rate of decline is lessening a bit in terms of cigarette volumes. Is that something you're seeing in the market as well? And do you expect that improvement to continue through fiscal '25? And then my second question was just on some of the upcoming disposable vape bans that are taking place in some European markets next year. Do you see that as an opportunity for you? Or is it more of a threat to your -- the vapor side of the business?

Thanks, Philip. So we obviously see the same data as you in terms of the U.S. And I think what we've always been indicating is that the driver for this elevated volume decrease were twofold. One was the difficulty in the macroeconomics or the inflation still hitting, especially the lower-income segment in the U.S., but also then the switch over to illicit vape. We've always indicated that those headwinds would ease with improvement of the macroeconomics and improvement of the enforcement. So it's early stages. You might see some of these improvements come. The rate of improvements in the year to come, really is hard to forecast for us. So I wouldn't want to lean out here and, say, give a number, but we would expect that we hope this better enforcement, better improvement of our economics to continue. Having said that, our forecast is rather conservative. We build on what we see today. So we don't need a volume increase for fiscal year '25 to deliver.

Yes. And Philip, it's a good bridge over as Lukas touched on the impact of illicits in the U.S. to your question about disposable -- the ban, the potential ban of disposable vaping products in some European markets. The reality is, look, we even with the existence of a lot of the illicit disposables in the European market, we've done very well in fiscal year '24. So that should give us the confidence, whatever the market circumstances, we can deliver our NGP strategy. But you're right, should -- today, there is a significant chunk of the vaping market in Europe that is being satisfied by illicit vapes fundamentally because they are too high nicotine or overfilled or products that have never been passed any registration. So should the regulators in certain European markets truly remove these products from the shelves, there would be up a larger legal market that we, for sure, could participate in. But I'm using the line that Lukas said about prudency. Our plans don't anticipate at this point in time. If it happens, that would be great because I think it would be the right thing for consumers to protect their interests and making sure that the products end up in the right hands of the right consumers, but that's not in our plan at this point in time.

Thank you. There are currently no further phone questions. I will hand back to Peter.

Great. Thanks, Sharon. Any further questions in the room at all? Well, good. Okay. I'll hand back to Stefan.

Sure. I mean, look, hopefully, what you can see from today's presentation is that a really pleasing performance around our 5 combustible markets where finally the German market turning in the right direction, very pleasing for me as well. And at the same time, I think you see the real nice progress we'll make in NGP. This is now the second year in a row of 25% growth, the business is now 2/3 larger than it was when we started as a strategy. And one of you asked the question about capabilities more difficult to bring a life to, but if the organization today is more capable of fulfilling that challenger mindset. So please, if you don't mind, it is my opportunity for the marketing pitch then logically, look, we see a lot of upside potential in this company going forward. That would be a challenging market. It will be highly competitive. But I believe we're in a much better place today in competing and winning and succeeding in that marketplace than we were before. And finally, we're really looking forward to see you all in March of next year to take you through the next 5 years of our strategy. So thank you very much for coming this morning. Thank you.

Thank you.