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* Tobacco free nicotine pouch ZYN main profit growth driver
* Q3 op profit rises 27% yr/yr to SEK 2.02 bln
* Record sales for a Q3
(Adds detail, background)
STOCKHOLM, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Swedish Match
reported on Tuesday a bigger rise than expected in quarterly
profits on the back of higher sales smokeless products in
Scandinavia and the United States, sending its shares sharply
higher.
Swedish Match's biggest businesses are its moist snuff
"snus" in Scandinavia and cigars in the United States though the
relatively new tobacco-free nicotine product ZYN - which comes
in a pouch and that just like snus is put under the upper lip -
is growing fast.
CEO Lars Dahlgren said he estimated that COVID-19
pandemic-related effects had a notably positive impact on
consumer demand in the quarter and that ZYN in the Unites States
continued to be the key contributor to profit growth.
Operating profit at the rival to British American Tobacco
and Altria jumped 27% from a year earlier to
2.02 billion crowns ($231 million) on sales growth of 15% to
4.40 billion - higher than forecast and a record for a
July-September period.
Analysts polled by Refinitiv had on average forecast a 1.73
billion crown profit and Swedish Match shares rose 7% by 0810
GMT for a year-to-date gain of 50%.
"We also noted a significant upturn in operating profit for
our U.S. cigar business, as well as for our Scandinavian
smokefree business – even when excluding COVID-19 related
positive mix effects from increased domestic volumes in Norway
that substituted deliveries to border trade and travel retail
outlets," Dahlgren said.
($1 = 8.7369 Swedish crowns)
(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom; editing by Niklas Pollard)
