What Happened?

Shares of tobacco company Philip Morris International (NYSE:PM) jumped 10.5% in the afternoon session after the company reported strong fourth-quarter results that beat analysts' revenue expectations, driven by its 9% sales growth in the Smoke-free division. Specifically, the division's growth was led by a 46% increase in unit sales of nicotine pouches like ZYN. In addition, its gross margin, EPS, and EPS guidance were higher than Wall Street's estimates. Overall, this quarter had some key positives.

Is now the time to buy Philip Morris? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.

What The Market Is Telling Us

Philip Morris’s shares are not very volatile and have only had 2 moves greater than 5% over the last year. Moves this big are rare for Philip Morris and indicate this news significantly impacted the market’s perception of the business.

Philip Morris is up 19.6% since the beginning of the year, and at $144.98 per share, has set a new 52-week high. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Philip Morris’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $1,681.

Today’s young investors likely haven’t read the timeless lessons in Gorilla Game: Picking Winners In High Technology because it was written more than 20 years ago when Microsoft and Apple were first establishing their supremacy. But if we apply the same principles, then enterprise software stocks leveraging their own generative AI capabilities may well be the Gorillas of the future. So, in that spirit, we are excited to present our Special Free Report on a profitable, fast-growing enterprise software stock that is already riding the automation wave and looking to catch the generative AI next.