2 days ago
BAT Malaysia's solid 2Q FY2025 earnings spurs its long-awaited share price recovery
BRITISH American Tobacco (M) Bhd rebounded today (July 29) from a slew of poor earnings doldrums after Malaysia's only listed tobacco player chalked up a 40.4% surge in net profit to RM50.95 mil for its 2Q FY2025 ended June 30, 2025 (2Q FY2024: RM36.28 mil).
At the close of today's mid-day trading, the counter emerged Bursa Malaysia's top gainer after surging 33 sen or 7.22% to close at RM4.90 with 790,400 shares traded, thus valuing the group at RM1.4 bil.
Earlier in the morning, BAT Malaysia's share price had touched an intra-day high of RM5.05 prior to succumbing to profit taking. The DBL KLCI was up 0.67 points or 0.04% at the mid-day break despite earlier hitting an intra-day high of 1,537.62.
Despite its improved net earnings, it has to be borne in mind that BAT Malaysia's 2Q FY2025 revenue retreated 2.45% to RM624.75 mil from RM640.46 mil.
The latest quarterly profit pushed up BAT Malaysia's net earnings for the 1H FY2025 period by 12% to RM74.22 mil (1H FY2024: RM66.27 mil) but its revenue shrunk 10% to RM946.74 mil (1H FY2024: RM1.05 bil).
The group declared a second interim ordinary dividend of 12 sen/share (2Q FY2024: 12 sen/share) amounting to RM34.3 mil which is payable on Sept 4. This brings the total dividend payout as of 1H FY2025 to 19.5 sen/share (1H FY2024: 22 ssen/share).
Year-to-date (YTD), share of BAT Malaysia has fallen 34.3% (from RM7.46 on Jan 2) amid weak sales performance.
'Our 2Q FY2025 results demonstrate the resilience of our combustibles portfolio even in a highly competitive market environment, thus signalling that we're heading in the right strategic direction,' commented BAT Malaysia's managing director Nedal Salem.
'Dunhill continues to stand out as the leading brand in Malaysia, gaining further momentum this quarter.
'This leadership reflects not only the strength of our portfolio but also our unwavering commitment to stand out in quality, continuous innovation and brand heritage built over 60 years.'
In a related development, Nedal farther revealed that Malaysia's tobacco black market also saw a decline of 0.4 percentage point at 54.4% in 2Q FY2025 from the previous quarter.
'This was largely contributed by the work done by the Royal Malaysians Customs Department, of which we continue to applaud their efforts in combating illicit trade in Malaysia,' he added. – July 29, 2025
