Smokers in the developed world are out in the cold. Regulators have moved smoking from bars into streets; advertising has moved from screens to, at best, still pictures. Two years ago, Australia introduced “plain” packaging – adorned with such gruesome warnings that the adjective hardly fits.
Yet the stocks have done well. Since late 2008, the top five names in the sector have returned between 144 per cent (Imperial) and 347 per cent (Altria). Most tobacco companies have beaten the 130 per cent return of the MSCI World index. Such resilience may be ending.
This week China, home to 300m smokers and accounting for a third of the world’s tobacco use, according to Euromonitor, announced a ban in Beijing’s indoor public spaces, to commence in June.