Philip Morris International Inc. (NYSE: PM) early Thursday posted weaker than expected first quarter earnings results, but its full-year forecast largely matched Wall Street’s outlook.

Written by StockNews.com

The New York City-based tobacco giant reported:

• Q1 adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.98, which was $0.05 below the $1.03 that analysts expected.
• Revenues fell 0.3% from last year to $6.06 billion, also missing the Wall Street consensus view of $6.47 billion...
• Total cigarette and heated tobacco unit shipment volume in the first quarter was 178.0 billion, down by 9.4% from last year.
• Cigarette shipment volume of 173.6 billion units plunged 11.5%.
• Heated tobacco unit (e-cigarettes) shipment volume surged to 4.4 billion units from just 453 million units in the year-ago period.

Looking ahead, Philip Morris International forecast:

• full-year 2017 EPS of $4.84 to 4.99, in-line with Wall Street’s view of $4.89.

André Calantzopoulos, Chief Executive Officer, commented via press release:

“Our results were in line with our previously communicated expectation of a relatively weak first quarter, due to lower cigarette volume — primarily related to low-price brands in specific markets where the impact on our profitability was limited — and certain timing factors.

We are fully on track to deliver our full-year EPS guidance, driven by robust pricing and accelerating IQOS volume growth. We anticipate a combined cigarette and heated tobacco unit volume decline of 3% to 4% for the full year.

It is extremely encouraging that already today, despite persistent capacity constraints, 1.8 million consumers have effectively stopped smoking and have switched to our heat-not-burn alternative, IQOS.”

Philip Morris International Inc. shares fell $1.93 (-1.69%) to $111.98 in premarket trading Thursday. Year-to-date, PM had gained 25.65% prior to today’s report, versus a 4.89% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.

PM currently has a StockNews.com POWR Rating of A (Strong Buy), and is ranked #1 of 10 stocks in the Tobacco category.