E-Cigs A Rapidly Growing Problem For Big Tobacco

Business Insider’s MoneyGame Chart of the Day is titled “E-cigarette Strength An Incremental Secular Volume Headwind (2013 MSe ~0.5%).” If that makes sense to you, then you can probably skip the rest of this post, because it probably says everything you need to know. If, like us, that title gave you a splitting migraine, we’ve done the work of figuring out what the hell it means.

What it shows is a chart from Morgan Stanley that tallies how much of the total cigarette market, including both analogs and personal vaporizers, is taken by e-cigarettes. It shows that e-cigarettes, while an insignificant share of the market in 2007 and 2008, have been growing exponentially in the last couple years. At current rates, David Aldeman of Morgan Stanley estimated that e-cigarettes will take the place of 1.5 billion analogs this year, a huge increase from 600 million in 2012. This number is even more impressive when you take into account that it using “stick equivalents,” meaning that it is counting on a per-cigarette basis.  This most likely means it is not taking APVs and juice sales into account, and only including things like disposables. There is a large number of vapers who are probably not included in this chart.

The context of the article is that it’s a bad time to be in the business of selling traditional cigarettes: they’re more unpopular than ever, and people are using them less and less. However, it also shows a little black line on a graph that’s may look like a drop in the bucket today, but it’s poised for a massive shift in the future. That shift is going to come in the form of a lot more people stubbing out their analogs and vaping instead.

Chart: E-Cigarette Growth – Business Insider.

E-Cigs A Rapidly Growing Problem For Big Tobacco