NEW YORK — While the e-cigarette refill market works to recover, the disposable e-cigarette market has begun to contract as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) goes after non-compliant market participants, Bonnie Herzog said.
Herzog, managing director with New York-based Goldman Sachs, said in a recent research note the e-cigarette refill market is nearly 74% of the total category and includes rechargeable, non-tobacco/menthol flavored cartridges and pods that are FDA-restricted. The disposable segment is closer to 23% of the category.
Disposable e-cigarette dollar sales were down about 16% for the two weeks ending on Sept. 25, Herzog said, citing NielsenIQ, Chicago, data. Herzog noted that Puff Bar dollar sales were down 91% and Bidi Stick dollar sales declined about 40% in that same time frame.
On a two-year stack basis, though, which looks at the sum of the last two years of growth rates to help smooth out volatility, disposable e-cigarette dollar sales were up 458% for the two-week period.
The recent data reflects the FDA’s continued crackdown on the flavored disposable category, following the Sept. 9, 2020, premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) deadline.
After Sept. 9 of this year, a year after the application deadline, the FDA has been issuing marketing denial orders (MDOs) for many flavored electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), including flavored disposable e-cigarettes. Bidi Vapor LLC, Melbourne, Fla., has already filed a lawsuit against the FDA and other agencies challenging the agency’s issuance of an MDO for its flavored Bidi Sticks.
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