Observer Report
London
Chief Executive of British American Tobacco p.l.c., Jack Bowles, and members of the management team, hosted a capital markets update in London via webcast.
The webcast provided updates on BAT’s three clear priorities to drive value from traditional combustible products, to ensure a step change in New Categories performance and to Simplify the business.
In 2019, BAT made good progress on these priorities and delivered against our financial guidance with a strong operational performance and cash generation driving deleveraging of the balance sheet.
During 2019, BAT recruited over 300 new specialist management hires, and women now represent 37% of the management population. This has injected new capabilities and diverse skill sets including digital, product development, science and design. With these strong foundations we remain confident in our ability to deliver.
Jack Bowles, Chief Executive, British American Tobacco said: “I am pleased that our organisation fully embraced the priorities I set out in early 2019 and has started to deliver against them. We are now challenging ourselves with a clear purpose to build A Better Tomorrow by reducing the health impact of our business through offering a greater choice of enjoyable and less risky products for our consumers.
Today we underscore our commitment to our new sustainability agenda by announcing stretching new targets across the ESG landscape.
Our ambition is to have 50 million non-combustible product consumers by 2030 and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, while bringing forward our existing 2030 environmental targets to 2025.
