British American Tobacco (BAT) can be a hard sell, particularly to the increasing number of "woke" investors.

Globally — barring a handful of emerging markets — cigarette sales are steadily being stubbed out. There’s frankly not much to debate about the potential health hazards of tobacco, and more stringent smoking regulations are increasingly snuffing out the last vestiges of social acceptability. Not surprisingly, BAT’s share price, which traded at more than R900 in May 2017, is now back at levels seen in early 2014...