Altria has announced plans to acquire e-cigarette and vaping giant NJOY for $2.75 billion in cash just days after selling its stake in Juul Labs, another vaping company that is currently mired in legal challenges.
“We believe we can responsibly accelerate U.S. adult smoker and competitive adult vaper adoption of NJOY ACE in ways that NJOY could not as a standalone company,” said CEO Billy Gifford in a press release. “We believe the strengths of our commercial resources can benefit adult tobacco consumers and expand competition."
While Juul offers a similar set of so-called smoke-free products, it faces a number of legal challenges that Gifford noted could persist for the foreseeable future.
“Juul faces significant regulatory and legal challenges and uncertainties, many of which could exist for many years,” he said.
Some legal challenges remain, however. The deal stipulates that $500 million in cash payments are contingent upon some NJOY products getting regulatory approval.
The owner of Marlboro cigarettes continues to pitch its interest in vaping and e-cigarettes as a way to get smokers to transition to vaping alternatives.
“We are excited to add NJOY’s e-vapor intellectual property as a new platform that we believe we can build on to help more adult smokers transition to smoke-free alternatives,” said Olivier Houpert, chief innovation and product officer for Altria.
If the A.I. hype hasn’t given you enough of a reason to be excited (and a little terrified), the CEO of Zapata AI says the next frontier is designing bridges or creating pharmaceutical drugs.
Stocks are near record highs, inflation is moderating, and analyst Deiya Pernas is 'optimistic' the U.S. is heading for a soft landing without a recession – which is good news for your wallet.
Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin loved pulling pranks, so much so they began rolling outlandish ideas every April Fools' Day not long after starting their company more than a quarter century ago.
Sam Bankman-Fried co-founded the FTX crypto exchange in 2019 and quickly built it into the world’s second most popular place to trade digital currency. It collapsed almost as quickly — by the fall of 2022, it was bankrupt.
The economic effects of the Baltimore bridge collapse, Americans are living longer but not better, and Gen Z and millennials are struggling to afford rent, let alone a mortgage.
Zainab Salbi, founder of Women for Women International and co-founder of Daughters for Earth, shares why she is putting women in positions of power to fight the climate crisis.
