Altria

Altria Group, Inc. (previously known as Philip Morris Companies, Inc.) is an American corporation and one of the world's largest producers and marketers of tobacco, cigarettes, and related products. It operates worldwide and is headquartered in Henrico County, Virginia, just outside the city of Richmond. Altria is the parent company of Philip Morris USA, John Middleton, Inc., U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company, Inc., and Philip Morris Capital Corporation. Altria also maintains large minority stakes in Belgium-based brewer AB InBev, the Canadian cannabis company Cronos Group, and the e-cigarette maker Juul. It is a component of the S&P 500 and was a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 1985 to 2008, dropping due to spin-offs of Kraft Foods Inc. in 2007 and Philip Morris International in 2008. History Altria emerged from Philip Morris. The onset of "rebranding" of Philip Morris Companies to Altria took place in 2003 (Philip Morris would later split, with PM USA remaining Altria's primary and only consistently held asset). Altria was created because Philip Morris wished to emphasize that its business portfolio had come to consist of more than Philip Morris USA and Philip Morris International; at the time, it owned an 84% stake in Kraft, although that business has since been spun off. The name "Altria" is claimed to come from the Latin word for "high" and was part of a trend of companies rebranding to names that previously did not exist, Accenture (previously Andersen Consulting) and Verizon being notable examples, though linguist Steven Pinker suggests that in fact the name is an "egregious example" of phonesthesia—with the company attempting to "switch its image from bad people who sell addictive carcinogens to a place or state marked by altruism and other lofty values".