Is South Africa’s Illicit Trade Exit and Ongoing Buybacks Altering The Investment Case For British American Tobacco (LSE:BATS)?

British American Tobacco recently continued its share buyback programme and warned that criminal syndicates now control much of South Africa’s illicit tobacco market, prompting plans to cease local production as legal cigarettes lose ground to contraband. This combination of capital returns and severe operational disruption in South Africa highlights how regulatory enforcement and illicit trade can materially reshape the group’s geographic footprint and risk profile. We’ll now examine how…Read More