WE MAKE MONEY (not cigarettes)

Investor relations is where Altria is at its absolute best. As a company that has made money in virtually every economic situation, regardless of climate, people who have invested in Altria or its predecessor Philip Morris are usually glad they did so. This is no accident, if you go to Altria.com from the home page on the entire site could be taken as an investor relations tool. Every press release currently displayed on the companys homepage has to do with investor relations. Altria has a much bigger interest in maintaining good investor relations because the companys work in other forms of PR is often ineffective. My grandfather always tells me if I buy stock I should look at Altria because of its consistent performance and despite its moral downfalls. He tells me this because Altria from its website down to its mailings and emails is focused on easing the minds of investors. When a company admits its customer base is dwindling every passing year and it increases net revenues ten percent in a year as Altria has you know they have strong brand loyalty and strong investor confidence. I imagine most of the man hours spent doing PR for Altria are spent on these two things. In fact the company goes as far as to predict that if you invested 100 dollars in Altria in 2002 it would be worth over 300 today well above the market average and their so called peer stocks. That information is posted at the following link http://www.altria.com/AnnualReport/ar2007/2007ar_09_0100_01.aspx