London, Jan 15, 2026, 07:37 GMT — Premarket
British American Tobacco said it bought back 118,229 shares on Jan. 14 at prices between 4,160p and 4,245p, paying a volume-weighted average price (VWAP, a volume-weighted trading price) of 4,197.4176p. It said it would cancel the shares, taking the number of voting shares in issue to 2,178,299,552, excluding treasury stock.
The buyback matters now because it is one of the few company-specific signals ahead of results season. BAT extended its share repurchase programme by up to 1.3 billion pounds for 2026 and put UBS in charge of buying shares independently during the company’s closed period from Jan. 2 to Feb. 11.
BAT shares last closed at 4,240.00p on Wednesday, up 35.00p, or 0.83%. The stock was showing a dividend yield of 5.67%, with a quarterly dividend payment listed for Feb. 4.
The wider UK market also ended higher on Wednesday, with the FTSE 100 touching a fresh record as miners and healthcare gained.
Buybacks are a way companies return cash while shrinking the share count. Over time that can lift per-share metrics, though the day-to-day effect is usually small and the signal matters more than the arithmetic.
With London trade about to start, investors will be watching whether the stock holds Wednesday’s rise and how steady the daily buyback disclosures look into late January. In quieter stretches, that drip-feed can move sentiment.
The backdrop is still the shift away from cigarettes toward vapes, heated tobacco and nicotine pouches, a race shared across big tobacco. Investors tend to weigh how fast those newer products can grow against the drag from regulation and price pressure.
But BAT has said 2026 performance is expected at the lower end of its mid-term targets, and it flagged headwinds in markets such as Bangladesh and Australia. Chief Executive Tadeu Marroco said in December that “the Vapour category continues to be impacted by illicit proliferation” in the United States. BAT
The next hard catalyst is BAT’s full-year results on Feb. 12, when investors will look for any reset to the 2026 outlook and detail on cash returns.
