With the caveat I raised before (global cigarette consumption is currently falling)
While this is true, it has not been a cause of profit declines at PM, especially in the past five years.
No, of course not. PM can make up falling global cigarette volumes by increasing market share. It can make up its own falling cigarette volumes by increasing pricing, and this has been the main way its been doing so. Stronger developing world currency could potentially help. . .though it hasn't been lately.
My point was there
are no specific, unique, or new "challenges" that PM has faced in the
past five years that caused their earnings growth to stagnate other than
negative currency.
Fair enough, though this begs the question of well PM "might" have done if global stick volumes were still increasing. Adverse legal climate, marketing restrictions, etc. . .none of these things are really "new", but they are partly responsible for decreasing global volume.
Yes,
but the article doesn't even address PM's actual currency problem,
because it confines itself to a dollar index that excludes most emerging
market currencies. As large as the drop in the Euro and the Yen has
been, the drop in many emerging market currencies that PM deals in has
been dramatically worse.
It doesn't touch on every single currency, but I think it gives the general gist of things. EG, I think Euro is PM's single biggest currency, and the article does touch on that. At least it goes over currency effect.. .most of the so called "analysis" glosses right over that.
FWIW, biggest cigarette markets on the planet, in terms of volume are: #1 China, #2 Russia, #3 USA #4. Indonesia #5 Japan, #6 Turkey #7 Philippines, #8 India #9 Germany #10 Egypt.
Interestingly #1 China, consumes about 80% more cigarettes than #s 2-9 PUT TOGETHER. Which is why, China is the #1 target for all of the global tobacco companies. Russia, by the way, has one of the highest per capita cigarette consumptions in the world. USA, unsurprisingly, is pretty far down the list. . .its not even in the top 50 countries.