An accountant I absolutely am not, but a lot of this is writing off goodwill assets from the balance sheet. At the time of purchase BUD and MO were paid for with 2019 (or whatever year last decade cash). They presumably have value at the time and have to be placed on the balance sheet. Per GAAP rules the assets must be written down to fair value. There may be some wiggle room for subjectivity, but I think we can all agree the JUUL investment might not actually be worth the the $12B or whatever they paid. If they win the JUUL appeal it has some value, but it's not looking great for now. They already wrote off 90% of that the past few years. I believe these are NON cash transactions. That money was spent years ago. But the business just lost book value. Wrapping my head around that doesn't seem too complicated, but there are so many non-GAAP accounting entries I don't really understand.
All that said I got very light on MO for a reason. The government drama never ends. We never know what might come to reality. Tobacco could survive a menthol ban if the party that does it wants to lose some votes. The real scare is the FDA intent to rduce nicotine to non-addictive levels. That is a nicotine ban pure and simple. Is anyone going to buy and smoke a carton of cigarettes a day trying to get the nicotine they used to get from half a pack? Of course not. It would be like trying to get an alcohol fix off near beer. You can't drink enough to get a buzz.
All that said, MO dividend is fine for now. Nothing has actually changed. But it's the same old story.
All that said I got very light on MO for a reason. The government drama never ends. We never know what might come to reality. Tobacco could survive a menthol ban if the party that does it wants to lose some votes. The real scare is the FDA intent to rduce nicotine to non-addictive levels. That is a nicotine ban pure and simple. Is anyone going to buy and smoke a carton of cigarettes a day trying to get the nicotine they used to get from half a pack? Of course not. It would be like trying to get an alcohol fix off near beer. You can't drink enough to get a buzz.
All that said, MO dividend is fine for now. Nothing has actually changed. But it's the same old story.