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I don’t smoke or vape, so I have limited knowledge of this space… but it’s pretty crazy how the government laid down the hammer on Altria and Juul a few years ago because a handful of people got popcorn lung from smoking illegal cartridges. Now there are so many unregulated knockoffs being sold and a million different flavors. I’m tempted to buy some shares of MO today. They’re a cash cow and huge dividend, but it seems like they’re slowly bleeding out.
I used to work for them not too long ago. They know cigarettes are a dying business and Juul was a major fucked up. Now they are buying companies to help expand and be less dependent on Marlboro. But MO is a dividend monster and many people will still invest in the company. I enjoyed my time there.
MO was one of the first individual stocks I ever owned. Stock went from $30 to $50 in a year about 10 years ago. So I’ve always had a soft spot for them, but haven’t gotten back into the stock. With a recession looming and them paying over 9% dividend, it’s getting really tempting to own it again. Seems like they’d be a good defensive play. Was surprised to see them say that consumers are switching to generic cigarettes? Didn’t know that was a thing.
Juul had a wide array of flavors(mango) being the most popular one and there marketing was pretty much not your grandpa’s Marlboro. parents and teachers reported to fda, that basically all kids are using them. Insta had videos of kids taking puffs out of multiple pens at once The popcorn thing was from hash vapes. Nicotine is one of the most addictive substance known to man. Sure the withdrawal isn’t as bad as OxyContin, but quit rate is very low. Kids get addicted easily, and issue is very the harms come from chronic use It’s a vasoconstrictor and damages your epithelium layer in your blood capillaries. Chronic use will cause cardiovascular issues and men will notice early onset of erectile dysfunction. And if the delivery vehicle is vapor, overtime alveoli either are compromised or get cancer(less rate than cigarettes but still anything other than air impairs lung function).
Serious question. Will mango pods ever come back? You may or may not be aware that 5% mango pods are going for like $100 per pod now. Mostly Ukraine pods at this point. If there answer is no, is there any chance on earth that Juul would open source their recipes, or at least the recipes that they won’t make anymore? Not necessarily the patent, just the flavor recipe? I am so tempted to start a GoFundMe just to raise funds to get that mango recipe.
They are a dividend king. Always remember Altria is a Law Firm that sells cigarettes. They are suing all of the illegal knockoffs and they buy and destroy competition. JUUL was destroyed by their stupidity.(I also worked there when they were buying JUUL and wrote a paper on how it was a stupid idea. I gave financial data, marketing data, and long term potential. The CEO at the time told me he didn't care and only wanted to listen to the MBA people.) Now Altria bought NJoy and will probably run them into the ground. The estimated demise of the Altria's cigarette piece is somewhere around 2050-2065. (This is the math done for future crops) By that time most of the cigarette companies will have merged.
It feels like the government wanted to make an example out of Altria and knew it was an easy company to get a lot of money out of. Conspiracy people think part of it was to make China happy, since that’s where a lot of the unregulated vaping stuff is coming from. Either way, government claimed they went after Juul/Altria to protect the kids.. but sure does seem like vaping is more popular than ever. Teens are vaping everywhere, they always have a vape in their hand in photos.
The government went after JUUL because they didn't have a good regulatory team or clinical research team. That was a risk I cited in my paper. They were easy to go after because they did all of their filings late. When Altria bought a third of JUUL, a ton of the regulatory team moved to JUUL to get them ready. The vaping market is much smaller than you think so that conspiracy theory is stupid.