Good morning, everybody. I think we will make a start. I've got the pleasure of welcoming Emmanuel Babeau, CFO of Philip Morris International, to the stage this morning. We've been chatting with Emmanuel. He's been here from the start, and this is my first time interviewing him or having a chat with him.
Everything's going to be fine.
Everything's going to be fine, yeah. I think you would like to make some opening remarks, Emmanuel.
Yeah, sure. Thank you, Damien, for asking us. Good morning, everybody. It's, as always, a great pleasure to be in Paris at the beginning of June and being Parisian, but no longer living in Paris. I particularly enjoy that. I call your attention on the forward-looking and cautionary statements, as always. As a summary and introduction, what I will say is that we are on track for another year of strong growth at the level of revenue, operating income, and adjusted EPS before forex. That is, of course, first and foremost boosted by the very strong growth that we experience on our smoke-free portfolio. All our brands are performing extremely well and strongly. We have, of course, the continuation of the growth of IQOS. You've seen that in Q1, we were close to a 10% adjusted in-market sales progression with Japan that is close to 10% growth.
Europe, a bit above 7%, despite the fact that Europe is still impacted by the flavor ban, and that will have an impact of around 1 billion stick in 2025. We expect Europe to continue to recover gradually as we progress to 2025. We see also for IQOS many other growth countries, region growth relays, I would say. It comes from the Gulf countries to Indonesia to Mexico. Global travel retail is very good as well. A number of countries where we see a lot of nice dynamism for IQOS. ZYN, of course, has been also performing very strongly in Q1, and we expect a very strong performance from ZYN in 2025. You've seen the growth in Q1 in the U.S., above 50%. What we are seeing is a combination of, first, of course, the continuation of strong traction from consumer demand.
This has been, of course, slowed down by some out-of-stock situation, as you know. Starting at the end of Q1, we started to accelerate significantly the production of ZYN. Therefore, we expect that gradually in the coming months, we are going to ease this out-of-stock situation to get to what we call the normal situation, so no longer material out-of-stock situation in the course of the third quarter. We believe that is going to trigger, I would say, a further acceleration of the consumer offtake, which starts to be visible. It is going to take some time, but it starts to be visible in the Nielsen data for as much as they are reliable. We are around 15%. In the last data, we are now above 20%, and it is growing. We have this positive phenomenon.
On top of that, of course, we'll have the restocking in 2025 because remember, 2024 has been a year with significant out-of-stock situation. A number of distributor retailers will restock. We have the accumulation of these two elements, and we expect a year of strong growth for ZYN in the U.S. ZYN has also tremendous potential outside the U.S. We see clearly beside the Nordics market, which has been a traditional market for nicotine pouches, good performance in countries such as Austria, Poland, the U.K., Switzerland. There is clearly here potential for ZYN in Europe. Outside Europe, we see countries such as South Africa, Pakistan, Philippines, and travel retail. Global travel retail is also a very good market for ZYN. Not exhaustive here, but clearly plenty of great opportunity. Actually, ZYN in Q1 outside U.S. and Nordics were growing triple digit.
Then, you know, concluding the family of our smoke-free product, we have VEEV, our vaping product. As you know, it is not our first priority. We are developing it more tactically, but there is a lot of traction behind VEEV. We have a very good product, and we've reached already number one position in five markets in the EU, and among them, significant markets such as Italy, Czech Republic, or Romania and Greece. We see here a clear play where we develop VEEV when we are able to develop this business in a profitable manner. That brings me to what I think should be today your understanding of what is the future about smoke-free product, which is what we call the multi-category play, which we really see as the future and a very strong driver. What does it mean?
It means that at the end of the day, we see increasingly our smoke-free product consumer wanting to have a repertoire of brands and wanting to be able to sometime, even if very often, they will have a core consumption, but to be able to also have different experiences, different pleasure in the way they consume nicotine. You could have someone who most of the time will be using IQOS, but when the person is going to be between two meetings, he may go with VEEV, with puff on demand, or when he will be working very hard in the office, he has no time for a break, he will be taking a ZYN.
When we play the team together, what we are seeing, and we are already with three brands playing together in 16 markets, we are actually seeing that they are not cannibalizing each other, but they are actually strengthening mutually because we introduce this consumer to the family, and they will build loyalty to our brand. That is the strength, of course, of having a great brand in smoke-free, and that will further accelerate our progression. What is also super important to note is that our smoke-free portfolio is coming with superior financial metrics. You know that the revenue per unit is higher. The gross margin rate is higher as well. You have been seeing a fantastic improvement. That was already a great improvement in 2024 globally. In the first quarter of 2025, 670 basis point organic margin improvement for gross margin on smoke-free product. You have, of course, ZYN.
That is the best-in-class margin for us in the U.S., coming with a strong year contribution. IQOS as well is improving its margin because we are increasing price, because we are reducing cost, but also because we are more efficient on the device, which is globally improving the margin. That means that today, in Q1, we had a gross margin rate of around 70%, and smoke-free products are around 5 percentage points higher than combustible products. When we grow fast and we grow very fast on smoke-free, you've seen Q1 volume above 14%, revenue above 20% organically, gross profit more than 33% growth, and we are improving the margin very nicely. It is, of course, very positive to the mix. Next to this very strong performance on the smoke-free portfolio, we have our combustible business that is doing well.
It is true that over the last 15 months, we have even been experiencing growth in volume. Do not take that as a new normal. We believe that the market for combustible outside the U.S. and China continues to be experiencing a trend of low single-digit decline. That is what we expect for 2025, by the way. We managed to increase price. We managed to work on our cost. We have a lower level of headwind on input cost. We improved the margin on CC in 2024, and we also improved it in the first quarter of 2025, and that bodes very well for the rest of the year. When you combine this very strong growth, very positive mix coming from smoke-free, good resilience on combustible where we are able to grow revenue, improve margin, that is allowing us to confirm the guidance for strong growth in 2025.
We are targeting an organic growth of revenue from 6% to 8%, an organic OI growth operating income from 10.5% to 12.5%, and we are targeting a growth of adjusted EPS before forex also of 10.5% to 12.5%. This is before forex. One of our big, big ambitions is to grow in dollar term the profit of the company. Last year in 2024, the forex was negative, but despite that, we grew in dollar term more than 9% the adjusted EPS. This year, at the prevailing rate on the 23rd of April, the forex is positive, and the guidance we gave at that time was a positive $0.10 impact on the currency, and that would mean at that effects 12% to 14% growth in dollar term of the adjusted EPS. Damien, that's what I wanted to say in the introduction. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Emmanuel. I think if we start back with your sort of, you're clearly the leader in smoke-free products. You've got the ambition of having 2/3 of revenue by 2030 coming from these products. Versus where you were when you set the target, what's the degree of conviction that you've got in achieving that ambition?
I think that there is plenty of things clearly pointing to the fact that it is a nice ambition to have and a reasonable one. Look at the growth in 2024, 17% organic growth for revenue in our smoke-free business. Q1 was north of 20%, and there is, of course, a very strong differential with combustible. That is what is driving this ambition of going towards the two-thirds. Now, we know that we have the U.S. where with IQOS, we're going to further accelerate on smoke-free, and we are, of course, extremely impatient to deliver that. There are also a number of markets which are close today to smoke-free products, and some of them are very big.
If you look at markets such as Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, India, Vietnam, these are markets where when they're going to open, and we believe that common sense will prevail, we're going to further accelerate, if you want, the potential for smoke-free. That is how we see our journey towards this more than two-thirds in 2030 today.
Okay, thank you. I think you've talked about, or started to increasingly talk about the multi-category approach that you have. I think Philip Morris is well known for IQOS and more recently ZYN through the acquisition through Swedish Match. You've also sort of started to talk about VEEV in vape a bit more. Can you just give an example of how it works on the ground with all three together? Are there any good examples where you've got multi-category working well in some markets?
Sure. The first example that is certainly the one that illustrates the interesting of the play, but it's very specific, is global travel retail. Typically, you will have a duty-free space. Consumer is coming. It's an Italian traveler. He wants to buy his IQOS for when he's returning to Italy because, of course, he's going to get a good price for it. He has a long-haul flight. He knows that it's going to be 10 hours in the plane, and he enters the duty-free shop. Of course, we have team here to introduce ZYN and say, you know, you're an IQOS user. You're not going to be able to use it during the flight. Have you been trying ZYN? You build the understanding, the knowledge. You ask about, okay, which kind of strength of nicotine do you enjoy? Which kind of flavor?
You can offer a ZYN that is going to correspond to that. You introduce him to a new category. You know, very often you say, oh, by the way, you know, it's not for now, but you know, if you are also sometime using vape, have you tried VEEV? You can have that. The fact that people are very often coming from one strong brand that they trust, that they enjoy, is of course creating a great entry to the other because they know that these are great brands, great quality, reliable, and they know that this universe of brand, this portfolio of brand is delivering great pleasurable moments. There is clearly a very big strength for me in having this, what I call the dream team together and playing the three brands together.
Outside global travel retail, we could mention today Poland, Greece, Romania, where we see an acceleration, I mean, for instance, on VEEV, but also on ZYN that is directly coming from this multi-category play. Sixteen markets, as I said, where we have today the three brands, twenty where we have only two. The idea is everywhere we can, it's going to be to play. Of course, each brand will have a different share in each country depending on the specific of the country, but there is a very, very strong play coming from playing it as a team.
Given the sort of the long-term ambition for the nicotine space, everybody's sort of interested in which particular category is going to be the biggest. Do you have a particular view, or is it too early to say?
Yeah, I think it's very difficult to say today. I think each category has a role to play. You still have 1 billion smokers on the planet, and nothing can replicate the smoking experience better than IQOS. It's absolutely great in terms of feeling, in terms of mimicking, repeating the experience of smoking, the very rich flavor of tobacco. I believe that this heat-n ot-b urn category in general, and of course, IQOS owning around 75% of the category as the arch leader, has tremendous potential because this is a category that is going to clearly resonate with the billion smokers, and of course, with different products, different positioning in order to reach the maximum number of people. Vaping has a role to play without any doubt. As you know, Damien, we are calling for a much more responsible regulation of this category.
One of the difficulties that I think smoke-free products are still facing in a number of countries is coming from the fact that vaping has been during a long period of time the wild, wild west, and a lot of people going for unacceptable commercial and marketing behavior, clearly targeting underage people with high nicotine content, stupid flavor. If you go to lollipop flavors or bubblegum, I mean, do we seriously believe that we are targeting legal age consumers? The answer is no. Where can you sell? Also on taxation, because today, you know, very often people say, yeah, you know, you enjoy on IQOS a significant discount in terms of excise duty versus combustible. Yes, of course, because it's much less risky than combustible.
Actually, IQOS for a very, very similar impact in terms of exposure to toxicant versus a good vaping product, because all vaping products are not good, is much more taxed today. I think that, you know, there should be also some reflection on, okay, what is the right positioning for tax? Vaping has a role to play. I would say for me, it's perf on demand, and it's for people who say, you know, I don't necessarily love tobacco, and liquid with nicotine is fine by me. Then you have nicotine pouch, which I believe has the potential to be a game changer, to be very clear, because this is a product that is, of course, going to offer to people who enjoy nicotine a way to consume nicotine with a lot of freedom.
You can consume ZYN wherever you are, which is regaining the ground lost for the last 40 years on combustible cigarette. You can also enjoy your ZYN being active. That's not, you know, by coincidence that truck driver, military forces, I mean, office people, you can enjoy it indoor, and you can be active doing something else, sportsman as well. That's a product that is just opening new moments, and I would say uncharted territory in terms of consumption. What we find for ZYN in the U.S., which I think is really interesting, is that a lot of people consume ZYN as a lifestyle product. It's an energizer. It's a stimulant. Sometimes they see that as a supplement.
Some of them even tell us, you know what, I used to take a lot of energy drink, and today I take less energy drink, but I take ZYN, you know, as a stimulant. When I take my ZYN, I feel sharper, less stressed, more focused, better at what I'm doing, which is due to the impact of nicotine on the brand. I think also ZYN, because you are no longer inhaling anything, is also allowing to maybe better understand what nicotine is about. The drama of nicotine has been the entangling with combustible cigarette for one century. People associate nicotine with the bad coming from the smoke that is carcinogenic and creating the disease attached with smoking. Nicotine is not without risk. It's a stimulant like caffeine. It, of course, can have like a stimulant.
You know, if you have cardiovascular condition, you should not be consuming nicotine, but it's not carcinogenic. It's not function impairing. It's not intoxicating. At the end of the day, the reason why people get addicted to it, it's because it increases the level of dopamine in your brain. That's why people feel less stressed, less anxious, and just more focused, sharper in their mind. You have studies today, not done by PMI, so we can mention it in Sweden, showing, for instance, that if you've been consuming nicotine in your life, you have a lower risk to have Parkinson's disease. You have studies in the U.S. on the benefit for cognitive processes of nicotine and can it slow down the development of Alzheimer's as an example. There is also some positives that need to be understood on nicotine.
I think that ZYN maybe is allowing to have a more pacified debate on that because it's no longer an inhalable product. I think all categories will have a big role to play, and it's impossible to say that they will be a winner. I think all of them are going to win at the end of the day.
Just on that point around the sort of the benefits of nicotine, do you think we will ever get to a place where you can make those positive claims about the brands, or is that too far in the future?
You know, we're a consumer good company. We are not here to make, you know, today a kind of claim of take that and you will have this kind of benefit. You know, we hear a lot of, you know, expected or believed benefits that, of course, we're not making any claim on them from many different horizons. I think we just want to make sure that nicotine is not demonized, because if it is the case, that means that you have people who prefer to keep people smoking than explaining what nicotine is about and having the right tobacco harm reduction policy to bring people who are smoking towards other nicotine products that are much better than smoking.
For me, it's not about having any kind of healthy or positive claim, but it's ensuring that we have the right debate and the right action to drive the right behavior for the positive impact on public health.
Fair. If we sort of move into some of the new product brands that you've got, IQOS has clearly been a great success. Japan was one of the first markets it's launched into. It's now sort of over 50% share. I think you've talked about what heated tobacco does on one level, but what is it about the Japanese market that has allowed you and IQOS to sort of take such market share, do you think?
I think that, first of all, Japan is where we started first, more than 10 years ago now. There was this conjunction of people open to technology, innovation in Japan, which was very important, and the fact that quickly the consumer realized that with this product, they have a lower impact on their environment and they can use it with less lower level of secondhand impact. I'm sure that this has been playing. I think it has been the fantastic job done by the team where in Japan, and I don't know whether some of you have been traveling to Japan recently, but IQOS is a lifestyle brand. We are developing IQOS, of course, for the benefit of the smokers. They know that they have this better alternative and they see their impact on their daily life.
It is not coming as a kind of, yeah, you know, it's just a product I'm using and I have my pleasure and that's it. It is really entering into, that's part of my life. It is related with sometimes my passions, what I love. We connect the brand with cuisine, with decoration, with design, with fashion. I think it is really entering a lifestyle. I think that's a big reason for the strong success of the brand. I think it is also because we kept innovating on the product. Several generations of devices. We've been innovating a lot on the consumable as well. Gradually we convinced even the most entrenched smokers that IQOS is for them as well. I was in Japan not that long ago and we had some customer interview.
For the first time, there was a number of people significantly above 50, still very young, but above 50. They were saying, during a long period of time, I thought, you know, IQOS was for the young adults. It was not for me. Now, you know, I feel proximity with the brand and I believe, yeah, it's for me as well and I understand the benefit of it. I think this is the kind of thing that is happening in Japan and explains the success.
If we then look at one of the markets where you're kind of only really just touching the surface in the U.S., can you sort of give us an update on where you are currently with the regulatory process? Also, you've recently expanded into a second city running the trials. Are there any insights that you've sort of gained from Texas or Florida yet that give you conviction?
Look, so far. To test. Of course, let's be cautious. Everything we've been seeing both in Austin and in Florida, where we're doing the second pilot in Fort Lauderdale, is the confirmation of the fact that you still have almost 30 million smokers in the U.S. They are not all in rural traditional areas. You have a lot of people living in the big cities, open to innovation. By the way, the U.S. consumers love new things. They love new trends. Who loves things that are different, new, sophisticated. I think the two tests are confirming that IQOS resonates with these people. They love the ritual. They love the look and feel. They rapidly see the difference versus smoking and what they can feel with IQOS, you know, in terms of no longer smelling tobacco.
You know that to feel the impact on the way you breathe, it's very short. I mean, in a few weeks, you're going to feel the big difference between smoking and IQOS. Therefore, when you put all that together, yeah, you have the ingredient of a brand that is creating trend that is, again, beginning of a connection with lifestyle. This population of people who are from various communities in the U.S., okay, clearly there is not one community that we believe will be more quickly adopting. We clearly see that strong resonance in the cities, people with certain purchasing power, of course. Again, I think that this test for new things, innovation, and the capacity that we will have in most states in the U.S. to communicate, we believe are the ingredients for success for IQOS in the U.S.
Okay. Sticking with the U.S., ZYN has been a huge source of excitement for lots of people. You're starting to see capacity sort of recover, and you recently upgraded that outlook for this year. Can you sort of just talk about where you are in the journey of getting capacity back to where you'd like it to be and perhaps the new capacity that's coming on stream next year?
Sure. Quite a while ago, we said that we would be having around 900 million can capacity for the year. I think if anything, we have some good news of anticipation of putting in place some new capacity at the end of Q1. We did not revise the expectation for the year, but that means that we believe that we have for the whole 2025 what we need to deliver our guidance. Of course, in terms of putting an end to the out-of-stock situation, it takes some time. Remember, we start to ship first our product to wholesaler and distributor, and then themselves, they're going to ship the ZYN can to more than 200,000 sales points. That takes time to really feed the whole pipe. That is a gradual process that will take a few months.
We said that in Q3, we should be back to normal, and we expect to see already some of that materializing in Q2, but it is going to be very, very gradual. People should expect therefore for 2025 to have, again, the combination of consumer offtake growth, and we will have on top of that the restocking, which will make 2025 a relatively special year, I would say.
Yeah. In terms of, there's quite a lot of competition coming into the category in the U.S. How do you see the category evolving from a competitive point of view?
You're right, I mean, there is a lot of competition, but I think you should expect that talking about the competition category that, sorry, has already a multi-billion dollar value, growing still around 30%. Everybody wants to take a piece of the cake, as you would imagine. That is driving a lot of behaviors. I'm not here to, you know, say which brands are, I would say, legal or according to regulation on the market. I think a lot of people are trying to play with the regulation. We are still today the only brand with PMTAs for all our range, actually. Of course, many other people are here. What we can see is that in order to try to grab part of the cake, everybody is incredibly aggressive on price. Discounting across the board is the name of the game for everyone.
Because of scarcity for us, we've seen actually our average retail sales point above what we think is the normal because you had some distributor who took benefit of the out-of-stock situation. Let's say a can of ZYN in the U.S. today should be on average around $6 in the U.S. Most of the competition is around $4, if not below. All the big names that you have in mind, you're going to find them at $3, $4, $6. You buy them in promotion at $2 for a can. You have many competitors doing that, to be very clear. That is what is happening today.
That means that we've been creating, because maybe apart from Rogue, that is a bit closer to us, but you know, we are the only one with our price positioning and the rest of the competition is very low. We clearly have been setting the bar high. We are the leader in terms of market share. We are the leader in terms of image, premiumness. Of course, there is a whole pop culture that is developing around ZYN. At the same time, receiving the PMTAs by the FDA for the full ZYN range, which, as you have been noting, not only includes mint, menthol product, but also lemon, citrus, cinnamon, and coffee. When on vaping, the FDA has not been giving, apart from one reference, any flavor product.
It is a recognition by the FDA that they believe that we are marketing our product in a very responsible manner. I think the strength of the can is also important, three and six milligrams. You know, you could expect maybe the FDA to look at what is the maximum nicotine content that is acceptable. I think it is still a landscape that has to evolve, but we are between our leadership, the PMTA that we have, quite ahead of the competition.
I think you mentioned it in your comments that sort of you think that the category or the pouches can be a game changer. There's been some debate about how easy the consumer transitions into pouches where there isn't a traditional use of oral nicotine. What's the experience of ZYN in those markets where there hasn't been a?
Look, I think you're right. It is obvious that Nordics, U.S., you have this tradition of oral product and that makes the growth of the nicotine pouch category faster at the beginning. Let's be clear, we are today in a world that is still largely global. People see the trend developing. ZYN, which was outside U.S. and Nordics, not really a brand. I mean, we've seen when we have launched in the U.K. that there was already a pretty nice franchise being the brand, which is just coming from the U.S., to be very clear, due to the connection. I believe that, you know, the legal age adult until, you know, 39, which maybe are the ones who are going to look at this product first, I think they're going to learn fast. They're going to see rapidly friends, you know, coming from other countries using it.
Yeah, it's going to take a bit more time, but the product is so convenient, so different, and again, probably quite different or additional in what it brings to the consumer that I don't think that we're going to need years and years to see some nice growth and the category becoming also a material one in many countries.
If we switch to the sort of the combustible side of the business now, I think you mentioned in your opening remarks that you've had some decent volume growth over the last couple of quarters, but we shouldn't expect that to continue. Can you just sort of provide a little bit of color around what's contributed to that growth recently and why we shouldn't be expecting that to continue?
Sure. The fact that during 15 months we've been growing volume in the combustible is due to several factors. First of all, you had a number of countries with positive demographics. Sometimes, you know, seen from Western countries, it's difficult to see that, but you have actually legal age 29 population growing pretty fast. You have potentially new nicotine users. In many of these countries, you have a ban on smoke-free products. This young legal age adult, their only option is to go for smoking, and that is triggering, I mean, that's what we see in Türkiye, in India, in Vietnam. That is triggering a growth in the smoking consumption. That's one element, and that can be significant on volume. Second, you had a market that has been disrupted, and we very nicely benefited from that.
I'm thinking about Egypt, notably, where the big local producer, because the economic turmoil has been limited in its capacity to produce. We have been increasing in a big market in terms of combustible, our market share, and we're going to go down to a normal situation gradually because the local player is gradually also going back to normal in terms of capacity of production. The geopolitical situation has also been playing because when you have war, conflict, issues between countries, you have the borders being closed, and you see then the illicit trade decreasing, and this is, of course, favorable for the legal real product trade, and we've been benefiting from that. I think this one as well, you know, it's a one-off effect. It's not contributing every year. You have a positive contribution, and then, of course, you lose that.
I think gradually we're going to be back to the normal trend again of the combustible business, which is low single digit, and we actually believe that is going to be the case for us in 2025.
I think you sort of made a very strong reduction in gearing last year, or I know you did. You said not to expect the sort of the same level of sort of degearing this year. Can you just sort of talk about the pace of degearing towards 2026 and then capital allocation plans after that when you get to sort of your targets?
Sure. As you know, Damien, we have the objective to be around two times at the end of 2026 of net debt to EBITDA. We are on track for this objective. We signal that in 2025, after a very strong deleveraging, you're right, in 2024, I mean, today, but it depends, it's very volatile because it depends on the currency. We're not necessarily expecting the same kind of speed of deleveraging, but we expect some deleveraging, and we believe that we are on track towards this around two times for 2026. What we said is that once we are there, or that we see that we are clearly going to get there, the topic of the buyback will be rediscussed with the board, but only once we are there.
I think that before this question of the buyback, if the Forex stays where it is today, which means that not only are we growing fast before Forex, but Forex is even a ding, you know, potentially some extra growth, I think the question will be the speed of the growth of the dividend. You know that we have a policy on dividend, which is very clear. It's progressive. There is only one way for the dividend that is up. It is true that in the past years, because we're investing and because Forex was most of the time negative, we've been growing dividend, but at a more reduced pace. It was 3.8%, I think about that in the last increase of dividend. I think the board will say, okay, what does it mean, you know, for the dividend progression to have such a strong growth on the adjusted EPS.
Yeah. I mean, my last topic of conversation probably could take the entire duration. Conscious we've only got a few minutes left, but on regulation, clearly there's a heterogeneous approach to regulation, and you've touched on some of those markets where sort of next gen are banned. I mean, where do you see good progress in terms of regulation, and where is it you sort of think other things could be improved?
Look, let's start with the positive. You have many countries and many important countries that are firmly engaged on tobacco harm reduction. I mean, the U.S., okay, FDA has been too slow and is too slow in granting the PMTA, but they have a very clear and neat strategy to go for tobacco harm reduction, say, yes, we need to promote this product, and they have this mechanism between PMTA and MRTP, but they have, of course, some frame in which they want to put that. Now, if they can accelerate to clarify the landscape, that would be good, but they have a plan. Many European markets have a plan. I mean, if you look at Italy, Greece, Czech Republic, I mean, you're going to find many countries who put tobacco harm reduction sometime in the law as a big objective for their public health policy.
Outside Europe, you're going to find Philippines, you're going to find markets such as New Zealand, among many others, once again, who are also firmly engaged on that front. There is a lot of things going in the right direction. Now, unfortunately, it's true that it's not the case everywhere, and you still have a number of NGOs, organizations such as WHO that are more obsessed by sometime underage protection than by pushing smokers to go to smoke-free products. We believe that it is perfectly doable to do both, to protect and really have a very strong policy to avoid underage consumption, but clearly oriented the one billion smokers towards a better product.
I think today this obscurantism, the fact that they do not want to look at science, the fact that they are more in dogma than in really looking at science, on fact, and being pragmatic is terrible for hundreds of millions of smokers. Hopefully things are going to continue to progress, but certainly, and I mentioned all the bans that we are still facing in a number of countries, it is not going as fast as we would like and as it could.
On that, sort of the U.S. has sort of been a hot topic of debate in terms of changing sort of government changes at the FDA. Have you seen anything that gives you sort of encouragement from what either the new government or the incoming sort of head of the CTP has said?
You said it, Damien. There is a new head of the CTP. His name is Bret Koplow . He's not a newcomer, 20 years at the FDA, from what I've been told. He's not starting from a blank page where he would have to redefine everything. I think he has been participating in the work already. For the time being, he's acting as director. I think, you know, he will need to be confirmed. If you read some of the things that he may have been saying and so on, it gives a feeling that it's about pushing tobacco harm reduction, ensuring that smokers understand the benefit of a better product versus combustible, and also, of course, fighting very, very fiercely against underage. I mean, he needs to come with certainly his view and a roadmap.
The good thing is that it's not someone coming and who will need months to understand what the tobacco space is about and what should be the policy.
Yeah. I think with that sort of hopefully positive outlook for regulation in general, but the U.S. in particular, we'll leave it there. Thank you very much, everybody.
Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Damien. Thank you very much.