Billy Gifford
Chief Executive Officer at Altria Group
Thanks, Mac. Good morning, and thank you for joining us. Altria delivered outstanding results in the Third Quarter. The smokeable products segment delivered solid operating company's income growth behind the resilience of Marlboro. And in the oral tobacco products segment, our MST brands continue to drive profitability while on maintain momentum in the marketplace. We also continue to reward shareholders through a growing dividend and share repurchases and while making investments in pursuit of our vision. My remarks this morning will begin by highlighting the significant progress made to reduce underage tobacco use. Then I'll discuss the continued momentum our smoke-free products are making in the marketplace and a new initiative designed to modernize their processes, which we believe will accelerate progress for our vision.
I'll then turn it over to Sal, who will provide further details on our financial and business results. Recently, the FDA and CDC released their full report on tobacco product use among middle and high school students based on the 2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey, and the results are encouraging. Rates for legal tobacco products continue to decline and all five of the US Department of Health and Human Services Healthy People 2030 goals to reduce adolescent use of tobacco and nicotine products have been met or exceeded. This is tremendous progress for public health that we should all celebrate, and it shows that with the work of many stakeholders, we can keep tobacco and nicotine products from becoming an on-ramp for youth while still making available, FDA-authorized smoke-free products as an off-ramp from cigarettes for adult smokers.
Yet even in the face of meaningful progress on overall underage rates. The illicit market remains an issue. NYPS data demonstrates that more than 55% of the use who reported current use of e-cigarettes used a disposable product, the vast majority of which are illicit. As I'll discuss in a bit, strong action is needed to reset the regulatory system in a way that supports the needs of adult smokers with satisfying products and enforces the rules for all while continuing to keep an eye on underage use. Let's now turn to the e-vapor category, where we remain excited about NJOY and its potential as a competitive alternative with both smokers and vapors. This year, NJOY has focused on enhancing trial generation, distribution, visibility at retail and connections with consumers.
As a result of these efforts, we've seen encouraging repeat purchase data, growing customer loyalty and strong share momentum. In the third quarter, NJOY pulled back on certain retail promotional offers to better understand consumer retention and underlying demand. The initial retention results were promising. In the retail accounts, where NJOY conducted tests, the promotion drove increased volume by approximately 85% compared to the pre-promotion period, and NJOY retained more than half of that volume growth following the promotional period. We believe these results reflect consumer interest in NJOY, and their satisfaction after trying the brand and NJOY plans to continue testing trial-focused investments with a view toward long-term profitability. NJOY's brand equity investments supporting its more to simply NJOY campaign are also yielding positive results.
Today, NJOY's Network score which measures consumer loyalty and satisfaction is over 20 points higher than in 2023. We believe this improvement is attributable to product satisfaction, improved visibility and positioning at retail and the marketing activations the brand has deployed this year. Turning to marketplace performance. NJOY consumables shipment line volume grew more than 15% to 10.4 million units in the third quarter. Consumable shipment volume for the first nine months was approximately 34 million units. NJOY device shipment volume for the quarter nearly tripled versus the prior year to 1.1 million units and was 3.9 million units for the first nine months. NJOY's third quarter retail share of consumables was 6.2 share points, up 2.8 points versus the year ago period and 0.8 share points sequentially. While NJOY's results are encouraging, in the context of the broader e-vapor category, category growth continues to be driven by the proliferation of illicit disposable products.
At the end of the third quarter, we estimate the e-vapor category included approximately 19 million adult vapors, up $2.5 million versus a year ago. Over the last year, the number of vapors using illicit disposable products grew by approximately 45% to 12.4 million vapors, while pod vapors declined by more than 20% to $2.7 million. While we believe the growth in e-vapor is a proof of concept for tracharm reduction there are too few FDA-authorized products in the market, and FDA enforcement is inadequate. For our part, we continue actively engaging with regulators, federal and state lawmakers, our trade partners and other stakeholders to encourage action on these issues. At the federal level, we've seen some recent positive activity. This summer, the FDA jointly with US Customs and Border Protection, sees more than 50,000 unauthorized vapor products from China at the Chicago port of entry.
In August, the FDA issued a proposed rule requiring all imported vapor products to include a PMTA submission tracking number. Closing this loophole is something for which we have long advocated. We provided our comments in support of this role and encouraged additional actions such as extending it to cover nicotine pouch products. And last week, the federal task force announced a joint seizure of unauthorized e-vapor products valued at $76 million. A strong course correction is needed to protect the harm reduction opportunity for the 30 million adult smokers in US. And moving forward, we hope to see more meaningful enforcement action. Before moving on, I want to mention our ongoing litigation before the US International Trade Commission. As you know, JUUL has asserted patent infringement claims against NJOY. And NJOY has done the same against JUUL with both parties seeking import bans. In August, the administrative law judge in JUUL's case against NJOY, issued an initial determination, supporting JUUL's allocations and recommending an exclusion order.
Last week, in response to NJOY's petition the ITC granted review of the initial determination with respect to aspects of two of the four patents JUUL asserted against NJOY. The ITC is scheduled to issue a final determination in JUUL's case against NJOY by late December. Also last week, the same judge in JUUL's case against NJOY extended the deadline for her initial determination and NJOY's case against JUUL to December 6, 2024. As a result of the extension, the ITC is scheduled issue a final determination in the case by early April. As a reminder, NJOY has developed strategies that we believe would allow ACE to remain on the market or limit sales disruption in the event of certain adverse litigation outcomes. We continue to believe in the strength of NJOY's claims, and are vigorously defending against all JUUL's allegations.
Moving now to the oral tobacco product category. In the third quarter, oral nicotine pouches grew 11.4 share points and now represent nearly 44% of the category. For nicotine pouches were the primary contributor to the estimated 7.5% increase and old tobacco industry volume over the past six months. Helix continued to participate in the category growth as on reported shipment volume grew by 46% nearly 42 million cans during the third quarter. On strong sales growth has increasingly been driven by repeat purchasers. Repeat purchases of the brand have increased by 40% to approximately 700,000 consumers versus the prior year and contributed more than 80% of on!'s volume in the third quarter. Helix plans to continue this moment by executing plans that build brand awareness and generate trial and adoption among consumers.
ON! also continued its momentum at retail, growing its share of the oil tobacco product category to 8.9% in the third quarter, an increase of two share points versus the prior year and 0.8 share points sequentially. We believe on!'s ability to grow volume and share demonstrates the strength of its product portfolio and increasing brand equity. Unfortunately, and similar to e-vapor, we've identified more than 1,000 illicit nicotine pouch SKUs at retail and online. Many of these are synthetic nicotine pouch products, which are an emerging issue. According to federal law, it is illegal to sell or distribute a synthetic nicotine product in the United States that has not received a marketed branded order from the FDA by July 2022.
To date, the FDA has not authorized any synthetic health products. Despite the clarity of the statute, -- the FDA's refusal to enforce the law is causing confusion among legitimate manufacturers. And we call on the agency by its enforcement posture on synthetic products. The momentum behind NJOY and on! is exciting. Going forward, we plan to build our smoke-free progress and maintain our focus on the opportunity to advance our vision and enterprise goals. To that end, we're launching a multi-phase optimize and accelerate initiative designed to modernize the way we work and become a faster, more efficient organization. We believe that by doing so, we will accelerate progress toward our vision. We plan to centralize work, streamlining standardized processes, further leverage artificial intelligence and automation, outsource certain transactional tasks.
By optimizing processes and better using technology and external partners, we expect to free up significant employee time and financial resources A key component of this initiative will be the establishment of an accelerated business solutions organization. This will be a centralized organization responsible for driving efficiency and process improvement across our companies in partnership with external service providers. We expect the initial phases of the initiative will deliver at least $600 million in cumulative cost savings over the next five years, which we plan to reinvest in our businesses in support of our vision and enterprise goals. We estimate total pre-tax charges for the initial phases of approximately $100 million to $125 million. Although, we are still evaluating certain aspects of the initial phases of the initiative, we expect to record the majority of the costs as special items excluded from adjusted EPS by the end of the first half of 2025.
With the initial cost being recorded beginning in the fourth quarter of 2024. By evolving our ways of working, implementing new technology and better leveraging external partners, we can drive further progress toward our vision and position ourselves for long-term sustainable growth in this dynamic environment. We continue to believe Altria is uniquely positioned to responsibly lead the transition of adult smokers to a smoke-free future. The tobacco harm reduction opportunity remains in front of us. And we believe we have the right strategies to make it a reality. Those strategies, together with the strength of our smoke-free portfolio and talented employees give me confidence that we can achieve our vision.
I'll now turn it over to Sal to provide additional detail on our business and financial results.
