Mocksville, North Carolina--(Newsfile Corp. - April 11, 2024) - 22nd Century Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: XXII), a tobacco products company focused on nicotine harm reduction, today announced that it has expanded its Pinnacle private label brand to add distribution of cigarillo products to its existing Pinnacle cigarette products. Pinnacle products are currently sold as a private label brand in a top-5 U.S. gas station convenience store chain comprising approximately 1,700 stores in 26 states.

Pinnacle cigarette product re-order volumes are now achieving sustained sequential growth as the private label contract enters its second year with this top retail customer, which is itself seeing notable growth in its tobacco sales and gaining market share by offering value to its customers. The Pinnacle cigarillo will provide a new alternative to this c-store chain's customers, as well as help to further the number of Pinnacle branded product offerings available to customers. Stocking shipments of the new Pinnacle products are scheduled in the second quarter.

Said Larry Firestone, Chairman and CEO: "We are excited to expand our Pinnacle brand with new cigarillo products based on the successful sales growth of these private label cigarette products sold at one of the top U.S. c-store chains. Agreements like this help us to further enhance revenue and profitability in our business as we work toward breakeven operations by the first quarter 2025."

The cigarillo expansion agreement is in addition to a recently announced new CMO customer contract that is expected to increase the Company's CMO production volumes by at least 20%, also with shipments commencing from the second quarter.

About 22nd Century Group, Inc.22nd Century Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: XXII) is an agricultural biotechnology company focused on tobacco harm reduction, reduced nicotine tobacco and improving health and wellness through plant science. With dozens of patents allowing it to control nicotine biosynthesis in the tobacco plant, the Company has developed proprietary reduced nicotine content (RNC) tobacco plants and cigarettes, which have become the cornerstone of the FDA's Comprehensive Plan to address the widespread death and disease caused by smoking. The Company received the first and only FDA Modified Risk Tobacco Product (MRTP) authorization for a combustible cigarette in December 2021. 22nd Century uses modern plant breeding technologies, including genetic engineering, gene-editing, and molecular breeding to deliver solutions for the life science and consumer products industries by creating new, proprietary plants with optimized alkaloid and flavonoid profiles as well as improved yields and valuable agronomic traits.

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Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking StatementsExcept for historical information, all of the statements, expectations, and assumptions contained in this press release are forward-looking statements, including but not limited to our full year business outlook. Forward-looking statements typically contain terms such as "anticipate," "believe," "consider," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "explore," "foresee," "goal," "guidance," "intend," "likely," "may," "plan," "potential," "predict," "preliminary," "probable," "project," "promising," "seek," "should," "will," "would," and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding (i) our strategic alternatives and cost reduction initiatives, (ii) our expectations regarding regulatory enforcement, including our ability to receive an exemption from new regulations, (iii) our financial and operating performance and (iv) our expectations for our business interruption insurance claim. Actual results might differ materially from those explicit or implicit in forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are set forth in "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on March 28, 2024. All information provided in this release is as of the date hereof, and the Company assumes no obligation to and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

Investor Relations & Media ContactMatt KrepsInvestor Relations22nd Century Groupmkreps@xxiicentury.com214-597-8200

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COMTEX_450709051/2523/2024-04-11T16:45:59