Imperial Tobacco
Revenue £26.6bn Dividend 128.1p
When you are in a consumer market in long-term decline, there are a number of strategies you can adopt. You can try to shift consumers to a smaller number of brands, on which you get more bang for your marketing spend. You can run the business as efficiently as possible, using the cashflow to fund generous dividend payments, which will keep the activist investors from your door. And you can attempt to buy market share, when it becomes available.
Imperial Tobacco is doing all of these. The figures for the year to the end of September outline a 4 per cent decline in the number of cigarettes and equivalents sold, if you disregard the effects of deliberate destocking that