British American Tobacco's (BATS) global scale and brand strength, combined with its pricing power and addictive nature of its products, give the company a wide economic moat, in our opinion. While escalating excise taxes, proliferating smoking bans, and illicit cigarettes may put headwinds on British American's volumes, we think that the firm's geographic breadth will enable the firm to steadily improve its earnings.
Although British American lacks an iconic international brand like Philip Morris International's Marlboro, its Global Drive Brands (including Dunhill, Kent, Pall Mall, and Lucky Strike) are well known and have been gaining share over the past several years.
The strength of these brands gives British American pricing power in many key markets and helps position the firm for growth. Approximately 75% of the company's cigarettes are sold in developing markets. We believe that many of these emerging markets have meaningful growth opportunities as per capita cigarette consumption grows in the coming years and as consumers switch to more premium cigarettes. The company's volume is roughly evenly divided among premium, midprice, and low-price brands. This breadth of products should help dampen the blow of any economic slowdown should consumers temporarily trade down to lower-priced cigarettes.
Excise tax increases and further regulations are constant risks for tobacco manufacturers. Nonetheless, we believe that British American Tobacco is well poised to maintain its pricing power, to preserve healthy operating margins, and to continue paying a meaningful dividend for years to come. We anticipate that British American will continue to pay out roughly two thirds of its adjusted net income as dividends. Given that the company plans to buy back around £1.5 billion of its stock in 2013, and the company's addictive products possess admirable pricing power, we anticipate the average dividend per share will steadily increase by about 6%-8% per year for the foreseeable future.
