- Price hikes offset volume declines
- Further progress on debt reduction
With ‘Big Oil’ cast as the new pantomime villain, the recent COP 26 summit must have provided a bit of breathing space for Imperial Brands (IMB) and its peers. It may be fanciful to suggest that tobacco companies were once deemed every bit as important as hydrocarbon producers, at least by a sizeable proportion of the population, but those days are long gone anyway, as both sectors are being forced to evolve in response to changing regulatory demands.