You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: During our call today, unless otherwise stated, we're comparing results to the same period in 2020.
Future dividend payments and share repurchases remain subject to the discretion of Altria's board.
Altria reports its financial results in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.
Today's call will contain various operating results on both a reported and adjusted basis.
Adjusted results exclude special items that affect comparisons with reported results.
Finally, all references in today's remarks to tobacco consumers or consumers within a specific tobacco category or segment refer to existing adult tobacco consumers 21 years of age or older.
In the third quarter, Altria continued to balance maximizing profitability from our core tobacco businesses with investing to realize a vision of responsibly leading the transition of adult smokers to a smoke-free future.
Our tobacco business has performed well against difficult year-over-year comparisons, and we are encouraged by the significant retail share growth from on!
in the third quarter.
We also continue to reward shareholders with a strong and growing dividend and announced today the expansion of our share repurchase program to $3.5 billion.
Both Altria and the tobacco industry are evolving and with transformation comes opportunity.
It also brings uncertainty and adversity, including the recently International Trade Commission decision related to IQOS.
We knew our journey to a smoke-free future would not be easy, but our determined and talented employees have demonstrated they are up to the challenge.
The pursuit of our vision is not based on a single brand or product platform.
Our vision is built on our understanding of tobacco consumers, their capabilities as a leading tobacco company and a portfolio of smoke-free brands and product formats.
We make progress through the performance of our current smoke-free portfolio and advancements in regulatory sciences, data analytics and a robust consumer engagement system.
Our tobacco businesses remain strong, and our vision keeps us focused and guides us forward.
Let's now turn to our business results.
Altria grew its third quarter adjusted diluted earnings per share, 2.5% despite a backdrop of challenging comparisons and unfavorable year-over-year trade inventory movement.
For the first nine months of the year, adjusted earnings per share grew 4.5%, primarily driven by the strong financial performance of our tobacco businesses and higher ABI adjusted earnings.
Our smokeable products segment continues to generate significant cash and return -- return to shareholders in fuel or vision.
Third quarter adjusted operating company's income decreased 2.2%, reflecting the impact of trade inventory swings, but grew 2.6% to $7.9 billion for the first nine months, while Marlboro remained strong.
The oral tobacco product segment continued to deliver robust profit margins, while Copenhagen maintained its leadership position.
In all nicotine pouches, we have accelerated investment behind Helix and believe that the on!
portfolio is well positioned in this fast-growing category.
We're advancing the sophistication of our analytics across our companies.
The Helix team uses this capability to evaluate the impact of promotional tools on tobacco consumers and understand what actions effectively drive trial, repeat purchase and adoption.
retail share of oral tobacco increased a full share point sequentially, reaching 3 share points for the third quarter and nearly tripling since the end of last year.
These strong results were driven by increased smoker trial and repeat purchase from existing on!
We're excited by the performance of on!
during the first nine months of the year and believe consumer insights, disruptive retail executions and consumer engagement will continue to fuel its growth.
Last year, we submitted premarket tobacco applications to the FDA for the entire on!
While the FDA has made substantial progress in reviewing millions of PMTAs they received, our applications for on!
A week ago, the FDA authorized the marketing of four of our oral nicotine products, Verve discs and Verve chews in the flavors of green mint and blue mint and determined that the marketing of these products is appropriate for the protection of public health.
This is the first flavored product authorization issued by the FDA for newly deemed tobacco products.
While our Verve products are not currently in market, we believe the learnings we gained from developing our Verve submission were critical in filing compelling and timely submissions for on!
, which we completed in only nine months after closing the on!
We're also actively working on modified risk product applications for on!
We believe an MRTP would be an impactful point of differentiation for the brand and an important tool in educating and ultimately transitioning smokers to less harmful products.
In e-vapor, we estimate that the total category volume increased 17% versus the year ago period and increased 2% sequentially as a result of continued elevated levels of competitive activity.
While we had hoped for clarity on the category's outlook as manufacturers receive PMTA decisions, the future of e-vapor is still uncertain.
For most of the leading e-vapor products, the applications are still pending, including those submitted by JUUL.
Moving forward, we expect e-vapor volume trends to be influenced by regulatory activity, which has the potential to impact the degree of cross-category movement.
Recently, the CDC published an update from their National Youth Tobacco Survey.
While caution is warranted when comparing results year-over-year due to the impact of the pandemic on the surveys methodology, underage e-vapor use, including use of JUUL, shows continued signs of decline.
We're encouraged by the progress, but more still needs to be done, and we remain committed to continuing our work to drive down underage use.
Turning to heated tobacco.
The IQOS team continued to refine its go-to-market approach for new and innovative products.
Across the four states where IQOS is available, total Marlboro HeatSticks volume continue to grow, with repeat purchase accounting for approximately 85% of sales.
According to IQOS consumers, our IQOS experts program played a significant role in their repeat purchases.
The program offers smokers personalized support and encouragement through consistent tailored engagements.
In the Northern Virginia lead market device penetrations as a percent of the smoker population continue to exceed the performance of previous rollouts.
In the last four weeks of the third quarter, Marlboro HeatSticks achieved a cigarette category retail share of 1.8% in Northern Virginia stores with distributions.
As we mentioned earlier, the International Trade Commission recently imposed an importation ban and issued season desist orders on IQOS, Marlboro HeatSticks and infringing components.
We're disappointed in this decision as IQOS is the only inhalable tobacco product to have received FDA authorization as a modified risk tobacco product.
The ITC's importation ban will make the product unavailable for all consumers have switched to IQOS, reduce the options for over 20 million smokers looking for alternatives to cigarettes and ultimately is detrimental to public health.
We continue to believe the plaintiff's patents are invalid and that IQOS does not infringe on those patents.
The ITC's decision is currently under 60-day review by the administration's U.S. Trade Representative.
In the event that the administration does not reject the decision, we're preparing to comply with the order.
We've been focused on our contingency plans surrounding sales and distribution and have been in communication with PMI on their domestic manufacturing plans.
We view the ITC's decision as a frustrating obstacle, but we are not deterred from the work required to realize our vision.
We remain committed to the heated tobacco category and believe it can play an important role in transitioning smokers to a smoke-free future.
Going forward, we expect to apply the knowledge and capabilities we gained from introducing and responsibly marketing a brand-new product category.
For example, we've learned how to blend behavioral science, data insights and consumer engagement to support smokers on their smoke-free journey, leverage MRTPs to educate consumers on the benefits of reduced risk products and establish a robust post-market surveillance system as required to monitor FDA-authorized products.
I'm optimistic about the future for tobacco harm reduction in the U.S.
We have an unprecedented opportunity to lead the way in shifting millions of smokers away from cigarettes if we follow the science and foster innovation with the support of reasonable regulation.
Let's turn to our financial outlook.
We're raising the lower end of our full year 2021 guidance and now expect to deliver adjusted diluted earnings per share in a range of $4.58 to $4.62.
This range represents a growth rate of 5% to 6% from a $4.36 base in 2020.
They bring significant combined expertise in operations, business strategy, consumer insights, and public policy and will be tremendous assets as we pursue our vision.
I'd like to begin by discussing the macroeconomic factors we believe influence the tobacco consumer.
We believe rising gas prices, inflation and the conclusion of COVID-19 relief programs led to a decrease in disposable income versus the previous quarter.
In addition, increased consumer mobility offer consumers more options for their discretionary spending.
At retail, trends were unchanged sequentially.
We estimate that compared to pre-pandemic levels, the number of tobacco consumer trips to the store continue to be depressed, but tobacco expenditures per trip remained elevated.
We continue to monitor tobacco consumer behaviors and will provide our insights on the factors impacting those behaviors as we move forward.
Moving to our businesses.
The smokable products segment expanded its adjusted OCI margins to 58%, an increase of 0.5 percentage point for the third quarter and more than 1 percentage point for the first nine months.
This performance was supported by strong net price realization of 11.3% in the third quarter and 9.2% for the first nine months.
Smokeable segment reported domestic cigarette volumes declined 12.9% in the third quarter and 8% in the first nine months.
We believe reported volumes reflect an absolute wholesale inventory swing of 1.5 billion sticks as wholesalers build inventory in the third quarter of last year, but depleted inventories this quarter.
When adjusted for trade inventory movement, calendar differences and other factors, domestic cigarette volumes for the third quarter and first nine months declined by an estimated 7% and 5%, respectively.
At the industry level, we estimate that adjusted domestic cigarette volumes declined by 6.5% in the third quarter and by 5% in the first nine months.
Marlboro remains strong and resilient despite a widening price gap in a dynamic macroeconomic environment.
In the third quarter, Marlboro retail share of the total cigarette category was unchanged, both sequentially and versus the year ago period at 43.2%.
And in discount, total segment retail share in the third quarter continued to fluctuate, increasing 0.3 percentage points sequentially to 25.3%.
In cigars, we continue to believe Black & Mild is the most profitable brand in the large mass machine-made cigar category.
Reported cigar shipment volume increased by 2.7% in the first nine months of 2021.
Turning to the oral tobacco products segment.
Adjusted OCI and adjusted OCI margins contracted for the third quarter and first nine months primarily due to increased spending behind on!
and shifting mix between MST and oral nicotine pouches.
We're pleased with the strong overall margins for the segment and continue to be excited about the opportunity for on!
in the oral nicotine pouch category.
Total reported oral tobacco products segment volume decreased by 3.8% for the third quarter and by 0.5% for the first nine months.
When adjusted for trade inventory movement in calendar differences, segment volume decreased by an estimated 2.5% for the third quarter and 0.5% for the first nine months.
Oral tobacco products segment retail share for the third quarter was sequentially unchanged as strong share gains for on!
offset declines in MST. The segment declined 2.2 percentage points versus the third quarter last year due to the continued growth of the oral nicotine pouch category.
Looking ahead, we're monitoring several factors as we move toward the end of this year and into the next.
Many industries are experiencing rising input costs and supply chain disruptions.
For Altria, we foresee modest inflation in the year ahead.
This could have some impact on the input costs and the inflation adjustment to our Master Settlement Agreement payments.
However, our tobacco businesses remain strong, and we are confident in our ability to manage through short-term economic challenges.
As a reminder, we contemplate an array of scenarios in our financial forecast and intend to incorporate these factors into our 2022 earnings per share guidance, which we expect to provide in January.
Turning to our investment in ABI.
The five-year lockup on our restricted shares expired earlier this month.
We've been an investor in the beer category since 1970 and our original investment of $230 million has served us extremely well over the past half century.
In fact, since 2003, our beer investment has served as a diverse income stream that contributed over $12 billion of adjusted equity earnings, contributed over $10 billion of cash from both dividends and 2016 merger proceeds and strengthened our balance sheet.
We've performed rigorous analyses regarding the ABI investment.
First, as part of the preparation of our third quarter financial statements; and second, in anticipation of the expiration of the lockup.
In preparing our third quarter financials, we assessed the latest outlook for ABI's business under the applicable accounting guidance and recorded an impairment to the asset.
While we continue to believe ABI's share price will recover, we now do not expect it to fully recover to its carrying value as soon as previously expected.
As a result, we have written our investment in ABI down to its September 30 market value of $11.2 billion.
Regarding our decisions around the lockup, we view our ABI stake as a financial investment, and our goal is to maximize the long-term value of the investment for our shareholders.
We consider several factors as we analyze the investment, including the strategic rationale of continuing as a long-term investor in the beer category.
ABI's share price, which has declined by more than 30% since October 2019, due in large part to impacts of the COVID pandemic.
Our expectations of ABI's business, alternative uses of capital and tax considerations.
We have determined that selling our ABI investment at this time would not maximize long-term shareholder value.
Therefore, we continue to plan to maintain our ABI investment.
We continue to have confidence in ABI's long-term strategies, premium global brands, experienced management team and capability to successfully navigate near-term challenges.
We will continue to monitor and evaluate market conditions and the analytical factors mentioned previously on a regular basis, consistent with our goal of maximizing the long-term value of this investment for our shareholders.
We remain committed to creating long-term shareholder value through the pursuit of our vision and our significant capital returns, which we demonstrated in the third quarter by paying approximately $1.6 billion in dividends and raising the dividend for the 56th time in 52 years, selling Ste.
Michelle Wine Estates and expanding our share repurchase program from $2 billion to $3.5 billion and repurchasing 6.7 million shares totaling $322 million.
We have approximately $2.5 billion remaining under the newly expanded $3.5 billion share repurchase program, which we expect to complete by December 31, 2022.
With that, we'll wrap up.
We've also posted our usual quarterly metrics, which include pricing, inventory and other items.
Let's open the question-and-answer period.
Operator, do we have any questions?

user
qtrly total cigarette shipment volumes $24.05 billion (not $24.50 billion), down 12.9%.
raises fy adjusted earnings per share view to $4.58 to $4.62.
narrows its 2021 full-year adjusted diluted earnings per share (eps) guidance.
altria narrows its guidance for 2021 full-year adjusted diluted earnings per share to be in a range of $4.58 to $4.62.
altria group -continue to monitor impact of covid-19 on juul’s business, including near-term supply chain constraints and component part shortages.
altria group - during 2020 and the first nine months of 2021, cronos has been adversely impacted by the covid-19 pandemic.

assistant