Vuse and Juul both see slight declines in U.S. e-cigarette market share

According to foreign media reports today, in the latest Nielsen convenience store report released last week, the market-share lead of RJ Reynolds Vapor Co.'s Vuse vaping system declined slightly.

Vuse's market share slipped from 42.2% to 41.8%, while JUUL fell from 26.1% to 26.0%.

The latest Nielsen analysis covers the four-week period ending April 22.

According to Barclays, Nielsen mainly covers large chain stores. For smaller chains, the group infers trends, which is why trend changes do not appear in Nielsen data immediately. Local vape shops are not included in the data.

According to media reports today, consumer demand for tobacco products has fluctuated over the past 12 months, mainly due to inflation and recent price increases for traditional cigarettes.

Third-ranked NJoy was flat at 2.7%, while Fontem Ventures' blu eCigs was unchanged at 1.4%.

In the latest report, Juul's four-week dollar sales declined 22.6%, a sharp reversal from the 50.2% growth reported on August 10, 2019.

By comparison, Reynolds' Vuse rose 23.1% in the latest report, while NJoy fell 8.1%, blu eCigs dropped 35.1%, and Japan Tobacco's Logic increased 4.9%.

As recently as May 2019, Juul still held 74.6% of the U.S. e-cigarette market share.

In March this year, Altria Group announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire Njoy Holdings for about $2.75 billion in cash. Altria said the deal would be funded from multiple sources, including cash from last year's $2.7 billion agreement with Philip Morris International regarding IQOS. 

The day before the Njoy announcement, Altria Group said it had exchanged its entire investment in Juul Labs for a non-exclusive, irrevocable global license to certain Juul heated tobacco intellectual property.