Can a leading consumer brand leave its legacy business behind and still thrive?
Philip Morris International has long been on a reinvention journey to transform into a smoke-free business and move away from cigarettes. Last year marked the 10th anniversary of the launch of one of its leading smoke-free products and a decade of smoke-free progress. To put this into perspective: PMI’s smoke-free business represents approximately 41% as of Q2 2025 of the company’s total net revenues, up from essentially zero a decade ago.
Innovation across nearly every aspect of the business is at the core of what has enabled PMI to make this radical shift. However, in the past 10 years, it’s not only PMI’s business that has experienced significant change. In Japan — the first market where PMI’s leading smoke-free product was launched in 2014 — newly released public health data by the National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHNS)1 shows a 46% decrease in cigarette-smoking prevalence since 2014, dropping from 19.6% of all adults to 10.6% in 2022. This decline correlates with the introduction of heated tobacco products and their subsequent adoption by millions of adults who smoke in Japan. The country continues to have the highest number of heated tobacco product users, and smoking prevalence has not increased since they were introduced.
Looking to the future, PMI aims to earn over two-thirds of its net revenues from its smoke-free business by 2030.
This ambition to play a part in positively impacting global public health doesn’t stop with ending cigarette use; it also extends to combating climate change, with a company goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.
Keep scrolling to hear from three PMI executives about how they are helping to take the business in a new direction.