British American Tobacco says trading well, in line with expectations

LONDON, June 14 (Reuters) - British American Tobacco (Kuala Lumpur: 4162.KL - news) said on Wednesday it continued to perform "very well" and was trading in line with its expectations.

BAT, home to the Lucky Strike and Dunhill cigarette brands, said it continued to record market share growth and noted that profit growth was expected to be weighted to the second half of the year, reflecting the phasing of volume shipments, product investment and marketing spend.

It said that if exchange rates stayed the same for the remainder of the year, there would be an adverse transactional impact on operating profit of 2 percent for both the first half and the full year.

But the translation impact would be a tailwind on operating profit of about 13 percent for the half year and 7 percent for the full year.

First (Other OTC: FSTC - news) -half earnings per share was expected to benefit from a significant translational foreign exchange tailwind of around 14 percent. (Reporting by James Davey, Editing by Paul Sandle)