Company Interview Excerpt GARETH DAVIS - IMPERIAL TOBACCO GROUP PLC (IMT.L) Full article published: 4/16/2001     For Subscribers Get this article online now! Order just this article Get Financial Filings and Annual Reports for Companies featured on TWST from EasyReports.net TWST: Let's start with a quick corporate overview of Imperial Tobacco Group, please. Its name more or less defines its business, but perhaps you could give us a summary? Mr. Davis: Imperial Tobacco's one of the world's integrated tobacco companies; by that I mean we are not just a cigarette company, we also manufacture other tobacco products such as roll-your-own and pipe tobacco, cigars and cigarette papers. We have a long and illustrious history, we're one of the oldest tobacco companies in the world, parts of our business date back to the 1700s, but the more modern Imperial Tobacco was formed in 1901 to fend off American competition. For most of the 20th Century our tobacco business was largely in the UK, and it was only in the very latter part ' the 1990s ' that we started to develop as an international tobacco business. That was achieved by international organic growth and acquisitions which were largely internationally skewed. The effect has been to significantly raise the proportion of our profit that comes from international activities. If I go back to the late 1980s/early 1990s about 5% of profit came from international activities, and at our latest full year results, over 40% was from international activity, and our aim is to keep that growing. TWST: A recap briefly of the descriptive statistics of the tobacco markets: can you give me an idea of the size and the growth rates? Mr. Davis: If you look at the world market, you're looking at a massive total of over five trillion sticks, but a huge proportion of that is in China, which is covered by the Chinese monopoly. In general terms, I would have to describe the world market as static, with mature Western markets either stable or in decline and some of the emerging markets in growth. Tickers included in this excerpt: IMT.L Have TWST notes emailed to you free: Email address: For more information call (212) 952 7400. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.

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