Great. Good afternoon, everyone. Before we begin, I just need to read a quick disclaimer. For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. So my name is David Hayes, and I'm an analyst on the European Consumer Staples Research team. And I'd like to welcome the Imperial Brands Management team on stage today. We've got Lukas Paravicini, ChiefExecutive Officer, and Murray McGowan, Chief Financial Officer. Thanks for your time, gentlemen. Before we get into the thick of the questions, Lukas, perhaps I could just ask you for a brief overview of the business for those less familiar with the story.
Sure. Excellent. Thank you very much, David. Thank you very much for hosting us here, and a very warm welcome to all of you. Let me just summarize very briefly the compelling investment proposition that Imperial Brands is. It basically builds on three pillars. It is foremostly a sustainable value generation on our tobacco business. I think we have shown over the last five years that we are well capable of generating value out of our tobacco business without losing share. I think we have a great footprint in terms of our big markets, the U.S., Germany, which do half of our profit. Very affordable, very attractive, including Spain, which is our third largest market, and beyond that footprint, we also have Africa, which today represents 10% of our operating profit, growing nicely.
So we have a nice portfolio, not too exposed to emerging markets, highly affordable, highly attractive in terms of proposition. On top of that, as a second pillar, as a second opportunity to generate value, we have our very distinctive way how we want to build an NGP business, a next-generation product, or our reduced harm products. And again, we have built a tremendous foundation over the last five years. We have doubled our business. We have grown double-digit over the last three years. And we have grown share in all three categories: nicotine pouches, vape, and heated tobacco. Again, a great foundation for us to go forward, where we have committed over the next five years to grow double-digit in this big category.
And all this is underpinned with our consumer focus, our challenger mentality in terms of getting closer to our consumer, being a more simplified company, and being more data-led. And if you look back over the last three, four years, we have changed 82% of our top 300 people. They're new in position. Half of them come from fast-moving consumer goods. So we have a unique blend of people that understand our business, the tobacco business, but also bring that consumer insight, which is fundamental when you want to build an NGP category and extract value. So a very simple tobacco business, NGP underpinned by consumer centricity and our people, that delivers over the next five years net revenue growth of 1%-2% from tobacco, accelerated by our double-digit growth in NGP.
It will drive 3%-5% operating profit and cash that we guide the market around GBP 2 billion-3 billion every year. That delivers ultimately what is our major guidance is the high single-digit EPS. That allows us, in turn, to honor our shareholders by a progressive dividend, but foremostly by an evergreen share buyback over the next five years. Just to remember, over the last five years, we have delivered more than GBP 11 billion back to shareholders. That's, in essence, the investment proposition that Imperial has.
So the new team has been in place formally for just over two months now. From the outside in, the transition seems to have been managed pretty smoothly over the past year. What has been the biggest surprise for you over the past few months as you've both taken up the roles of CEO and CFO respectively? And what are you most excited about in terms of the journey from here?
Let me start, and then Murray, you follow. I think you're a dynamic duo. Honest. Like most investors, me as an ex-CFO and as a CEO, I hate surprises, so there was no surprise in the transition. It's also not a surprise because we've been in the business for four or five years, so we know the business well, and the transition has been very smooth, which is very good. I personally am very proud of what the team has achieved over the last five years, and I'm excited with the talent we have. I do believe beyond the strategic pillars of tobacco and NGP, the success is that we really understand our consumer more than anybody else and that we have a unique blend of people.
What we're looking forward to, what we want to do going forward, is really to unleash the potential by integrating people, process, technology, and data much better. I hope you'll see that in the next 24-36 months clearly come through.
Yeah. With my perspective, so I joined Imperial over five years ago and been running the strategy and corporate development for the last five years until I stepped into the CFO role. So similarly, no surprises, I'm pleased to say. I think I'm really excited. We created the original strategy that we just finished, the first five years just finished. Actually, the last 18 months, we're working closely with our entire exec team on defining the new strategy, which we shared with the markets, the capital markets earlier this year. So what am I most excited about? It's about executing that strategy. I think it's delivering the transformation as a business and executing that strategy to deliver that compelling financial case for our investors,
You've touched on that strategy. I mean, you've just recently closed out your first strategic cycle from 2021 through to 2025. You're now on your 2030 strategy. At the highest level, what's different about Imperial over the next five years versus the past five years in terms of where the growth comes from and also how you run the business?
I think, again, it is what I said before. It is a combination of a confident evolution in the sense that we will continue to generate value in tobacco. There's no rocket science here. It's very simple. It's hugely cash accretive. We'll continue to do that. And we're good at it now. We'll build the NGP business. There's no change there either. I think what we want to see a step up, though, is in our capability, in how we do things to get to those enabling to the strategy. And if I may sort of highlight two things, it's really becoming the leaders in the consumer intimacy in the industry. We know probably more than anybody else our consumers. And we will continue to double down on that.
As I said before, we have a great opportunity to integrate process, people, technology, and data and infuse more about artificial intelligence, having more of our people focusing on the consumer. That's probably where I'm most excited. Remember, in an organization where our market structure means that every GBP 100, every $100 we sell, 50 go straight into profit. It's not about efficiency alone. For me, that is a necessity. It's necessary, but not sufficient. When we talk about integration of people, process, technology, it's not just because we want to be more efficient, absolutely. We also want to be much better prepared to capture more of the revenue. That's really where I'm excited about in the future.
Perhaps we can spend a bit of time on the combustibles part of the business and the market. So globally, industry volume declines are still elevated in some markets, such as the UK and Australia. But you've seen some significant improvements in tobacco volumes over the past three years in general, from - 7% in 2023 to -4% last year to just better than - 2% this year. And if you look at the H2 dynamics this year, you're running at almost flat on volumes. How should we think about the longer-term tobacco volume trends from here? Is the pre-COVID algo of 3%-4% still the right framework to consider moving forward?
So I think two things. One, we don't guide the market on volume. What is really important in the tobacco industry is actually that you can price ahead of volume decreases. So what you're looking for is the company or Imperial Brands being capable to price. And this is where we are really good because we have a footprint where our top markets are the most affordable markets. So where the hours you need to work for a pack of cigarettes and how we measure the affordability is actually quite low. And that allows us to continue to price ahead of volume. So what is really important is the low single-digit net revenue that we can do. And I think we can continue to do that over many years. Now, yes, we had good volumes.
I mean, if you go back, you mentioned it, 7% decrease, 4%, now we are - 2%. It shows also that the environment, the sustainability of tobacco is probably much longer than most of the people think. We have guided the market. This notion that tobacco will disappear tomorrow is not realistic. And you see that in that environment. Now, I would be cautious, even though we don't guide on volumes, to take the latest number as the going forward number. I would always go back to the long-term historic trend, which is probably more the reasonable trend to take.
On the related note to pricing, which you mentioned, which geographies do you see the biggest opportunities to take further pricing? And how do you manage to extract value from the combustibles businesses while also maintaining the company's focus on at least delivering stable market share year on year within your top five markets?
I think fundamentally, the tobacco value creation model is still intact. So if you look across the vast majority of our markets, we've got that ability to offset volume decline through pricing to deliver low single-digit net revenue growth in combustibles in line with the guidance we've provided. If you look at our top five markets, which is where we talk about aggregate share, three of those markets remain very highly affordable markets. So U.S., Spain, Germany, your average worker can afford to buy over four packs of cigarettes or works highly affordable.
The model absolutely works in those markets. I think it's fair to say that U.K. and Australia are more challenged, primarily due to the high excise in those markets. But we manage them well for value. I think in Australia, they are approaching a plateau in terms of market size. We've certainly seen very accelerated levels of decline recently. W e will see that through the course of FY 2026. But we do believe that it'll hit a plateau after that point. I think in the U.K., we made more focused choice. So in the U.K., you've got both a factory-made cigarette and a fine-cut tobacco market. We've probably focused more on the factory-made cigarette segment of the market, which is where the real value is to be created. And then you look beyond those top five, we've got a compelling footprint.
Africa is a great example where 10% of our annual operating profit comes from African markets. And we've got some great markets there that are performing very well from a volume perspective and from a net revenue growth perspective. So exciting for future potential for us.
And then just zooming into the U.S. combustibles market, I mean, we've seen signs of moderate improvements in volume dynamics in recent months. The industry now running at about a 7.5% decline over the last three months by way of example. At the same time, competitiveness within the discount segments continues. And we've seen your share gains naturally moderate as you've extracted more value from that market. How do you see the U.S. combustibles market sort of going forward from here? What do you think has driven the modest improvement so far this year in the industry? Is it related to the increased enforcement in the illicit vapes market?
Yeah. I mean, let me start by saying that our U.S. market is a great market. I think we've just grown last year 4.6% net revenue, underpinned by strong pricing, which shows the model works, and also enhanced by significant growth in our nicotine pouches, which we launched 18 months ago. So a good market. And the good market is also because the U.S. remains highly affordable, highly attractive. And we have a good offering at all price positions. We have Winston at the top, which we hold share. We have Maverick in the middle. We have also mass-market cigars, Backwoods, which is an iconic brand, well-curated, which grows nicely. And we have a good brand at the deep discount segment.
And so, yes, you have seen, obviously, after we've been very agile two, three years ago, capturing a market share in that deep discount, other companies now coming in there, which we expected. And you see more activities, more promotional activities. But don't forget, the deep discount is still a segment that is growing. We have Crowns, which is still the fastest-moving brand in that deep discount. And so we are comfortable with where the market is going. You might not see market share gains. But remember, the market share gain for us was more important five years ago to show that we were not the biggest owner of market share. To be honest, whether I do minus one basis points, plus one basis points, minus five basis points, doesn't really change the picture.
What we're trying to do is invest in our brand so we can grow our net revenue and generate value for shareholders. In regards to your illicit questions, we do see in the past significant step up in the FDA and in general. The rhetoric was always there. But we also see now action coming, much more enforcement at the ports, etc. We've seen some impact. You referred to the volumes coming down. We've always been quite honest saying that we'll probably see more improvement than deterioration. And this is what happened. I would expect more to come. I would be cautious to believe you could get away with this problem because where there is an illicit market, there will always be players. So I think there's a limit to what people can do. But I'm very happy to see that action is now forward. It is showing sort of the results.
You gave some interesting detail on the African business at your full-year results with the combustibles business benefiting from almost 4% volume growth and the region contributing 10% to operating profit, as you mentioned, Murray. Can you talk us through the biggest markets there and the go-forward expectations for that business? And are you expecting to bring it into your priority markets over time?
Yeah. I think, as you said, it's important Africa is a cluster market, sort of an individual market. And it has performed very well. So 10% of operating profit for the group comes from the cluster. I think, importantly for African markets, we take the same playbook of activities that we apply in our top five markets. And we apply it to Africa, whether it be investment into our sales team, whether it be investment into our brands, or investment into innovation to better meet consumer needs. I would say across the portfolio of markets, there can be volatility from one year to the next for individual markets. So we look at the cluster as a whole where we see stability and good long-term growth potential.
I think, to call out a couple of the markets, particularly last year, we saw particularly strong growth in Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso, where we've really invested in brand-building equity and see that coming through in terms of consumer performance. Really pleased how the performance is developing there, and then separately, Morocco, we've done a lot of work around really understanding consumer taste profiles, so we launched Gauloises Rich Gold this year, so going after their consumer taste segment that was always underserved with our existing portfolio and addressing a gap for our consumers. Really pleased with the performance in that market, but it's the consistent playbook that we use in those markets, and as a cluster collectively, we are excited about the growth potential.
Perhaps we can just shift the focus now to NGPs. So you delivered another year of double-digit growth in 2025 and have guided to double-digit growth again for 2026, which is consistent with your mid-term algo. You've had this impressive growth with Zone and the U.S. last year. But the other two geographies delivered less than the double-digit algo. Can you walk us through your outlook for the U.S. on modern oral growth next year, particularly as distribution gains slow and peers increasingly bring in, I would say, I wouldn't say better products, but other products? And also, can you talk us through the broader building blocks you see for delivering on that double-digit growth expectation for next year?
So yes, we'll do that. Murray will take you through a bit more on the details here. Let me just step back again because this is obviously our second pillar, which we would like to see growing a meaningful business, as you said. There is a big ambition we have. It's underpinned by that double-digit growth. And it's probably good just to remind ourselves that we have a challenger mentality around that. So our strategy around NGP is quite specific to Imperial. For one, we follow the consumer. Hence, we have an offering in all categories. Because there is a different consumer in the Nordics who will use nicotine pouches to vape in the U.K. or heated tobacco in Italy, for example. So we will follow the consumer. And we study the consumer intensively to provide innovative products. And we can build brands based on their understanding and needs.
We are also very choiceful, so we are the fourth largest. We are not here to build the category that is done by our competitors. They do that very well. It is also their role, and it requires a lot of money, and so we will go into markets when the nicotine or the NGP category is established, and we have a route to market. That allows us to be much more efficient with our resources and build a meaningful business around our Imperial strategy. That is different, allows us to build a meaningful business, but is very mindful in the resources we use. Perhaps you want to give a bit more details on this.
Yeah. If you look across our different geographies, though, I think Lukas alluded to, I mean, Europe, we primarily focus on vape within Spain, France, U.K., particularly. We've got heated tobacco, which is really Italy, Central, Eastern Europe. And we just launched modern oral into the U.K. And we've got a good established modern oral business in the Nordics, which we're very pleased with the performance of. If I go away from Europe, if I look into the U.S., clearly, Zone is the one we're excited about. We think we've got a differentiated product. We launched just over 18 months ago. We're now in over 100,000 stores in the U.S. We're around 2.8% share in that period, and actually 4% within our footprint. So really pleased with the performance of that product and how it's appealing to our target consumers.
Within ACE, I think the last year, if we look in ACE, we did pull out vaping from some of our Central, Eastern European markets given regulatory change. But we're excited about the potential with heated tobacco in those markets. So overall, pleased with the building block. We guided the capital market today around the growth expectations. It does vary across categories. I think with vaping as a more mature category, we said around 3% growth outlook. Modern Oral, we expect around 10%. Heated tobacco, around 13%. But we think we've got a good platform to drive that growth and deliver well in the double-digit growth commitment that we made with the next NGP.
So you've recently launched Modern Oral in the U.K. with your Zone brand. What are your expectations for the business there in terms of the number of outlets you're targeting by the end of the year? Expectations for the brand? And what's your overall view of the market that led you to enter there in the first place?
We're very excited, and I think it is a good example of how we apply our strategy, so we've seen that the category is evolving. It is growing. We have decided to go in there because we also have a good route to market. It's obviously a big market for us, and we do that not following any product or any other products, but actually launching our distinctive product, our Zone product, which is more the Nordic pouch, has an innovation in which we call the perfect pouch. It has a different fiber material inside. It is much more smooth in the mouth. It gets a better mouthfeel. It gets much better flavor and nicotine release, so it's an innovative, attractive product, which we have now launched, and clearly, we can leverage our route to market.
So our expectation is to quite rapidly distribute those products through all the outlets we are present. But I would be also cautious. This is a third category. So you have combustibles, obviously, and you have vape. Nicotine pouches will grow, but it will be a smaller category than vape. So as much as we're excited, and we'll put a lot of effort behind it, and you'll see significant growth over time. I wouldn't expect too much in the first year.
So shifting to the vaping category, I mean, it continues to be one that is, excuse me, impacted by regulation asymmetry. Can you walk us through the latest you've seen in the U.S.? I recognize the vaping business there is small. But are you seeing sustained increases in enforcement against illicit products, which you mentioned briefly earlier? And then in Europe, what are some of the disposable bans, particularly in the U.K., had in terms of impact to the market and to your business as you've redeveloped your offering there? And more generally, I mean, where do you expect the vaping category to sit for longer- term? And do you think that these issues can ultimately be resolved effectively?
Lots of questions in one. You step back. From a regulation perspective, I think as an industry, we're used to seeing regulation. If you go back for decades, as an industry, we've faced regulations. So I think we are well positioned to adapt to when we see change. If you look at the U.S. vapor market, we have seen a step up in terms of activity on the border. And we've seen some step up in certain states around enforcement against the illicit vape market. And particularly if you look at the example of, I think, Louisiana and Alabama, where they've really gone aggressively after that illicit vape market, you see rates of decline in the combustibles market, which are less severe than you see on average for the market as a whole. So we welcome that enforcement. We look forward to more.
But as of yet, en masse, we've not had a significant shift in the impact. I think if you go to, you picked up in the example of the U.K. and France both introduced disposable bans this year. I'm really pleased with the way the business dealt with that. So we are very focused on the consumers. We had a really strong disposable product. And we know that one of the key things that attracted our consumer was the flavor delivery that we achieved through that. So we developed a rechargeable pod system, rechargeable Blu Pod System that we've rolled out into France and into the U.K. That's gone very well with consumers that delivers on that consumer need of wanting flavor delivery. And pleasingly for me, I think we're now. We've grown share in the U.K. and in France through that change.
We're now a double-digit share, over 10% share in the U.K. and France and in Spain within the vaping category. I think there is potentially more on the horizon. We know the European Parliament's discussions about the European Tobacco Products Directive. We're waiting to see what comes from that. Likely that any impact from that would be towards the end of our current five-year plan. As I say, we're used to managing regulation. I'm not concerned at this stage.
Okay. And then just the last pillar of NGP, heated tobacco. From a category perspective, how are you thinking about your position going forward? Do you expect to enter any new markets over the near to medium term, or are you happy with your current setup and offering?
I mean, listen, the heated tobacco is one of the three categories we were in. As I mentioned before, we follow the consumer. There is a consumer base in some of the product markets we are. We have a recently launched new product, which is called Pulze 3.0, which has done very well. We've grown significant market in Italy, which we are very happy about. We're in Eastern European countries, and we're very pleased with that footprint and the product we have launched, and clearly, as we have said before, if there is another market evolving, you might see us going into another market as soon as it is there, and we see other potential markets coming there, so like any other category, we'll be consumer-centric. We'll innovate on those products, and we'll go into those markets as soon as they pop up. Very happy with that evolution.
Then just tying up the discussion on NGPs, how do you define successful scale in NGPs? Is it about profit breakeven, category share, or mix? And what are the key milestones you want investors to watch between now and 2030? And then perhaps just to lay in another question to that, I mean, if we look at the business, how might the portfolio mix of NGPs look different five years from now?
Good. Again, quite a few things in one. Firstly, we are hugely excited with the NGP opportunity and our way of doing or going after that opportunity. I'm not going to repeat what I said. It is our ambition is a meaningful business. A meaningful business means it makes profit. There's no meaningful business in my mind which loses money in 2030, and so meaningful business means an underpin of double-digit growth and getting out of losses through scale. What we have guided the market recently is also about the gross margin the industry can do and how we get closer to these industry margins by those markets or in those markets where we have reached scale and we have given those markets and we will give more details on that, so we will continue to build that business because we understand the consumer. We can innovate better.
We can build brands around that. I would expect the investors to continue to see us growing double-digit, continue our pathway to profitability, especially increasing more markets getting to the scale where gross margin is close to the industry standards.
Just spending a bit of time on regulation. I mean, regulation in both combustibles and NGPs is a moving target. How are you building regulatory and execution flexibility into the plan? And what are the big regulatory scenarios you stress test the 2030 targets against?
Yeah. So as I said before, I think we're very used to working in a regulated environment and regulation evolving over time, regulation evolving over time. I think as we talked about during our capital markets day, our Next Generation Products business model is designed to be agile and adaptable. And we do spend a lot of time understanding what's potentially on the horizon and then adapting our innovation to be able to adapt to that. And I gave the example before of the change from disposables over to rechargeable pod system, which we were very on the front foot about understanding what was coming, able to innovate against that, really understanding consumer needs, and delivered well against it. We do have the European Tobacco Products Directive in discussion. Again, I think that will be towards the tail end of this plan.
I think we've done a good job in demonstrating ability to adapt to these changes well in advance so that when they do come along, we can react well and benefit from those changes.
Yeah. And then just on, I mean, moving on from that onto European regulation. I mean, we've seen the proposed tax directive coming out earlier this year. What are your thoughts on proposals from here? What impact do you expect it to have on the industry, including new categories when implemented?
Yeah. I think likewise, the European tax directive. I think there's a challenge here that I think this initial set of proposals now issued later than originally expected. The challenge is you need to have 27 member states all agree on those proposals. And reactions to that first set of proposals is very clear that they're quite far apart in terms of what's to come. We do welcome reasonable taxation structures that support adult cessation from smoking products over time. That's fact-based, but does still support choice for adults. We'll wait and see where those proposals land over time. But as I said, I think we're very good at adapting to these things when they come along. And in reality, I suspect we won't really see the final outcome implementation of those until probably the tail end of our current five-year plan.
Just moving on to capital allocation. And also perhaps just to start with the cost savings program. At your CMD, you laid out the expectations to deliver around about GBP 330 million in annualized savings by the end of 2030. You mentioned several initiatives there, delivering sort of an agile data-led enterprise alongside manufacturing excellence, etc. What are the key risks in delivering against the savings program? I mean, how can you mitigate any risk of business disruption as you implement the programs? And can you give us some concrete examples of how those changes will alter decision-making on the ground and ultimately show up in the margins or market share?
Yeah. Good. So let me just address that. I think it's good that it comes under the title of capital allocation because our first commitment is to invest. Our first priority is to invest in our business. As I said, as we said at the CMD in March, we are going to invest GBP 600 million cash into the business to make it a more agile, data-led, consumer-centric organization. And I think I mentioned before that it is important that we focus not just on the efficiency, but also on the effectiveness. I'm not going to repeat that. But it is not just an efficiency gain. So the GBP 320 million you mentioned is a necessity, but it's hopefully not the only thing that we get out of that because we will drive more on the revenue side.
It is important that we also understand that in our eyes, we need to perform. That's no doubt. But we also need to transform. It is our opportunity to leave a company behind that is ready to transform, to build, and grow well beyond 2030. This is what we really want to do. And the way we look at it is, and this goes also a little bit to your question about risk. What we are trying to do is really going from an amalgamation of individual companies that were acquired over the years to a real united challenger organization. We can do that by leapfrogging. If you look at our peers, and not just in the industry of tobacco, they have gone way further. So we don't have to do this over five or ten years.
We can do this much faster by learning from the best, by using partners that can help us do that, and by actually leapfrogging in technology. So what you will see is over the next two, three years, us moving much faster than that because we learn from others and we use others. And what are we talking here about? So on one side, on the efficiency side, we just announced the necessary difficult decision to abandon or move away from our Langenhagen factory in Germany. It's the largest factory in Europe. It's the most expensive factory in Europe. That is one way of generating efficiency. But we also run our factory more efficient. In the U.S., for example, our manufacturing excellence programs have delivered for the first time.
Our conversion costs have actually gone down at the 1,000 per stick metric, which means that actually our costs go faster down than the volume goes down, which is great. But we're also trying to generate more value. So we launched a program in Italy where we use an agentic sales coach, so an agentic AI sales coach, which allows our salespeople to go to a store and with the algorithm of artificial intelligence to come up with proposals that are much better and allow us to gain more revenue. You imagine if that algorithm is developed properly using artificial intelligence, what the leverage is if we can apply this to five markets, which do 72% of our profit. That's the way you should think around us transforming the business going forward.
As I said, the risk will be limited because we use partners who have done this in the past or we use technology which is out there in a very defined way.
You've also put in place an evergreen buyback program through 2030 at your CMD and also reiterated a desire to stay at the lower end of your leverage targets of two to two and a half times, and also this is while expecting annual free cash flow of GBP 2.2 bilion-GBP 3 billion annually over the next five years. As you continue to generate cash and leverage is currently at two times at the low end of your target, do you anticipate capital return slightly in excess of free cash flow generation over time?
Yeah. That could be the case. We've committed to return surplus capital to investors. In line with our strategy, our commitment externally is to deliver 3%-5% AOP growth each year, which means our EBITDA will grow. So therefore, the higher EBITDA, even maintaining our 2x-2.5x net debt to EBITDA leverage, we can raise more debt within that. Our ultimate commitment is to return surplus capital to shareholders after we've invested in our business. That would include spend on M&A or spend on transformation whilst maintaining our gearing and paying our dividend. We always retain some sense of a headroom within the business to manage any litigation risk or tax risk we might face. But we've made that clear commitment that we're out of an evergreen share buyback.
So, each and every year for the next five years to create a meaningful level of share buyback. We'll be guiding the specific quantum of that share buyback each and every year.
Yeah. So just type capital allocation. So overall, how do you balance capital return priorities, buybacks, progressive dividend with the investment you still need to make in NGP technology and capabilities?
I think we've got a really clear and well-understood capital allocation policy that served us very well for the last five years, and we recommitted to it as part of our Capital Markets Day. Our first priority is to invest in our business. For us, that means we're investing GBP 300 million-350 million in capital each year. While our strategy is an organic strategy, we will consider other bolt-on acquisitions where we see opportunities to accelerate our growth. A great example would be the U.S. modern oral business. Second, we keep our leverage in that 2 and 2.5x net debt to EBITDA range. For us, being at the lower end of that range really underpins our investment-grade credit rating, which I think is an important feature of our business and gives us good access to capital.
Third, we've committed to a progressive dividend, so broadly growing each year in line with underlying earnings, and then fourth is returning surplus capital back to our shareholders, and as I said, each year we'll evaluate what the right level is to the board, but it will be a meaningful amount each and every year. I would say that we haven't committed to a progressive capital, sorry, share buyback, so each year we'll confirm it, but it doesn't necessarily mean it'll increase every year.
Great. So we've got a couple of minutes left. I just want to see if there are any questions from the audience. Just hold on for the mic. There's the mic.
Just back to your NGP business. You were talking about, I think, at the results, the potential gross margin. Have you got any markets where you are close to that potential? If you can kind of give us, because we obviously see only profitability on an overall group basis for NGPs. I'm just interested in any more color you have on buyback.
Yes. Yes, we do. And if you were to go back to the material that we have published on the website, if not, John Cross can give you the details. We have quite detailed plans in terms of which, and I'm just sort of trying to talk to you and share that with.
Of course.
There's more, huh? 35. There you go. And so we have given a slide where we actually show on one side the industry benchmark and which markets we are getting to that benchmark in terms of the growth. So you would have the U.K., Spain, and Germany, and Greece in vape, which are closer to the 50% gross margin. You would have Czech, Italy, and Greece when it comes to heated tobacco, which is getting to the 45%. And you would have the Nordics and Austria in the nicotine pouches, which, because they are so mature, they are at the 70%. So we do give those data points.
Great. So we're almost out of time. So just final question. So what do you think the market is currently mispricing about Imperial? And then to lead on from that, what are the one to two things that could most credibly derail your 2030 plan?
I think the market underestimates the way we could continue to generate value, and I think going back to our value proposition, it's a simple model. We generate cash out of our combustible business that will generate our opportunity to return excess capital to shareholders while we build a meaningful NGP business. I think I take the comfort in the ELT, our executive leadership team, having been now in this industry for four years. They know the industry. They have been part of the plans we have crafted for the next five years. Their strength and their depth, the rigor with which we have done the plans, gives us confidence that there is really not much that could derail us other than the crisis that for sure at some stage will come, but we have shown resilience in the past to deliver that as well.
Lukas, Murray, thank you very much for your time.
David, thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. Thank you.