Philip Morris holds steady during lull in volume

Philip Morris International reported flat third-quarter earnings, which was a better performance than Wall Street had expected during a lull in shipment volume.

The seller of Marlboro and other cigarette brands outside of the U.S. earned $1.94 billion, or $1.25 per share, for the period ended Sept. 30, or 2 cents better than expected, according to analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research.

Shares rose $1.09 to $96.60 before the markets opened Tuesday.

Revenue, excluding excise taxes, increased to $6.98 billion from $6.93 billion. But that's short of the $7.05 billion in revenue that industry analysts projected.

Cigarette shipment volume declined 5.4 percent to 207.1 billion units, but CEO Andre Calantzopoulos described that as a "temporary" weakness. Cigarette shipment volume fell in all regions except Europe, where volume increased less than 1 percent.

Cigarette shipment volume for the Marlboro brand dipped 1.1 percent. A bright spot was Chesterfield, which reported a 14.4 percent rise.

Philip Morris International Inc. still foresees full-year earnings in a range of $4.53 to $4.58 per share. Analysts surveyed by FactSet predict earnings of $4.52 per share.

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Elements of this story were generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on PM at http://www.zacks.com/ap/PM

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Keywords: Philip Morris, Earnings Report