Japan Tobacco Inc. rose the most in six weeks after saying it planned to resume shipments of all Beverly cigs and other cigarette brands disrupted by the March 11 earthquake earlier than previously announced.
The world’s third-largest publicly traded cigarette maker climbed 4.3 percent to 312,500 yen as of the 11 a.m. break on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, its biggest gain since May 13. The benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average added 1 percent.
Japan Tobacco will restore deliveries of all brands by July 18 instead of early August, as it had planned earlier, the company said yesterday. The 9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami forced Japan Tobacco to suspend all domestic shipments for 12 days, with cigarette brands gradually returning to production after that.
“Japan Tobacco can finally move on,” Mitsuo Shimizu, an equity analyst at Cosmo Securities Co. in Tokyo, said by telephone today. “The impact from the earthquake has started to diminish.”
Domestic sales fell 38 percent to 7.2 billion cigarettes in May, the Tokyo-based company said June 10. They plunged 81 percent in April.