Imperial Tobacco Group Plc, the world's fourth largest international tobacco company and the only tobacco manufacturer in the United Kingdom, announced on Tuesday that the company earnings increased in the last quarter of 2007 fiscal year and its shares in several of its markets also grew.

Gareth Davis, the company’s chide executive officer, said after “another record year for Imperial Tobacco” ended in September 2007 that positive trading trends continued in its first quarter to December 2007.

"In the first quarter of 2008 many of these positive trends continued with further growth in earnings, cigarette volumes and share gains in many markets," Davis said in a statement.

The company’s annual share in the UK market, a market that fell 4 percent to 47 billion cigarettes in 2007 partly because of the public smoking bans introduces, remained stable at 46.4 percent.

In Germany, another main market for the Imperial Tobacco, the company’s share rose to 21.4 percent in December from 21.3 percent in September.  The German market fell 6 percent at 126 billion cigarettes in 2007.

The company also recorded share gains in most of its markets of the Rest of Western Europe region on price increases in Spain and Italy. As for the Rest of the World region, Imperial also recorded an increase in cigarette volumes and shares.

This good news for the Imperial Tobacco came a week after the company completed its 12.6 billion euros takeover of Franco-Spanish cigarette maker Altadis and also made a 910 million euros bid for the 40 percent of Spain's Logista.