World’s largest vaping devices maker Smoore defies coronavirus, trade war to expand capacity amid booming sales

The Shenzhen-based maker of e-cigarettes, which sells half its products in the US, reported a 40 per cent rise in profits for the first six months of the year

The firm says higher import tariffs have not stopped US demand from growing because its products are ‘technologically superior’

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Smoore says it enjoyed a 16.5 per cent share of the global vaping devices market last year, up from 10 per cent in 2018. Photo: SCMP Handout

Published: 6:30pm, 25 Aug 2020Updated: 6:30pm, 25 Aug 2020

The world’s biggest maker of e-cigarettes has shrugged off the challenges of coronavirus, the US-China trade war and tougher regulations to report a huge increase in profit, as more smokers make the switch to vaping.

Smoore International Holdings, based in Shenzhen, China, posted a 40 per cent year-on-year jump in underlying net profit on Monday for the first half of 2020, to 1.3 billion yuan. Revenue rose 18.5 per cent to 3.88 billion yuan.

“In the year’s first quarter, our sales dropped 8.8 per cent year-on-year, as the pandemic curtailed our production capacity for a month,” chief financial officer Wang Guisheng told reporters on Tuesday.

“We quickly resumed normal operation, with second-quarter revenue doubling from the first-quarter, and rising 38.9 per cent year-on-year.”

Last year Smoore, which recently listed in Hong Kong, enjoyed a 16.5 per cent share of the US$763 billion global vaping devices market, up from 10 per cent in 2018, said Wang.

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