British American Tobacco (BAT) has so far used about \u00a31.1 billion – or close on R24 billion – to buy back its own shares under its multi-year repurchase programme, returning capital to shareholders.<\/p>\n
This figure is as of Wednesday, when the company announced it had acquired 111,147 shares at prices ranging between \u00a343.55 and \u00a343.01.<\/p>\n
As of February, BAT has a market capitalisation of $127.72 billion (R2 trillion), making it the world\u2019s 164th most valuable listed company, according to companiesmarketcap.com.<\/p>\n
British American Tobacco reported a significant surge in profit and strong financial performance for the year to December, driven by its US business and “New Categories” growth.<\/p>\n
However, it is closing its only South African plant<\/a> due to the proliferation of illegal cigarettes.\u00a0<\/p>\n BAT is one of the largest tobacco companies globally, with a portfolio of more than 200 brands including Lucky Strike, HB, Pall Mall, Viceroy and Javaanse Jongens.<\/p>\n The cigarette company\u2019s share buy-back campaign is based on resilient cash flows and reduces the number of shares in circulation.<\/p>\n As a result, buy-backs increase each remaining shareholder\u2019s proportional ownership of the company, which can lift earnings per share even if overall profit growth remains unchanged.<\/p>\n Because the repurchases take place on the open market, they can also provide a more tax-efficient way of returning cash to shareholders compared with dividends.<\/p>\n BAT\u2019s repurchases<\/a> form part of the programme originally announced for \u00a3700 million in 2024 and \u00a3900 million in 2025, later increased by \u00a3200 million, taking the 2025 component to \u00a31.1 billion.<\/p>\n Chief executive Tadeu Marroco reaffirmed the group\u2019s commitment to shareholder returns during the February presentation of the company\u2019s full-year results to December.<\/p>\n Marroco said BAT remained focused on delivering cash returns through dividends and share buy-backs.<\/p>\n IOL BUSINESS<\/p>\n Get your news on the go. Download\u00a0the latest IOL App for\u00a0Android<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0IOS<\/a>\u00a0now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British American Tobacco (BAT) has so far used about \u00a31.1 billion – or close on R24 billion –…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[20745],"tags":[20774,20030,23384,23382,23383,21677,4454,3702,23380,23381],"class_list":["post-118326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-british-american-tobacco","tag-bat","tag-british-american-tobacco","tag-companiesmarketcap-com","tag-hb","tag-javaanse-jongens","tag-lucky-strike","tag-pall-mall","tag-shares","tag-tadeu-marroco","tag-viceroy"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117219506554624262","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}