PM presented at the Morgan Stanley consumer conference this morning.
Due exclusively to the recent weakening dollar against both the Yen and the Euro, PM dropped their 2021 guidance by 3 cents. They now expect adjusted full year EPS of $5.98 to $6.03.
As usual, they will announce their complete 2022 guidance in February when they report full year 2021 results. However, due to the weakening dollar, they also pre-announced this morning that at current exchange rates, currency would be a negative 40 cents per share in 2022. That would therefore reduce profits by about 7% before any offsetting growth that occurs in 2022. That confirms my previous post, expecting low reported profit growth in 2022 largely due to that negative currency impact once again.
PM did, however, also state that HEETS sales remain strong despite the semiconductor shortage. And while the first half of 2022 will be challenging due to the device sale limitations caused by the semiconductor shortage, PM still expects to meet their 2021-2023 growth targets on a currency neutral basis.
In other news, the FTC decision to ban importation of IQOS into the US due to BAT's patent claims was upheld on Monday, and MO will now have to pull all IQOS devices and HEETS from the market until that is resolved.