Earnings Preview For The Coca-Cola Company (KO, CCE, PEP)

The Coca-Cola Company is expected to announce its Q1 earnings report before the bells ring on Tuesday, April 26. Analysts are predicting earnings per share to be $0.87, slightly up from the $0.80 level recorded last year. The Coca-Cola Company, based in Atlanta, GA, is the world's largest beverages company. The company owns or licenses and markets more than 500 non-alcoholic beverage brands, primarily sparkling beverages but also a variety of still beverages such as waters, enhanced waters, juices and juice drinks, ready-to-drink teas and coffees, and energy and sports drinks. It also owns and markets non-alcoholic sparkling beverage brands, including Diet Coke, Fanta and Sprite. It manufactures, markets and sells, beverage concentrates, referred to as beverage bases, and syrups, including fountain syrups (the concentrate business or concentrate operations), and finished sparkling and still beverages (finished products business or finished products operations). It operates in six segments: Eurasia and Africa, Europe, Latin America, North America, Pacific, Bottling Investments and Corporate. On October 2, 2010, it acquired the North American business of Coca-Cola Enterprises CCE. Coca-Cola has managed to grow revenue by an average of 9.8% over the past five years, which is faster than the 10-year average of 7.9%. Investors will be hoping that Coca-Cola can maintain this growth in the current year as well. Analysts have very high expectations from Coca-Cola. Its revenues are predicted to stand at $10.54 billion this quarter, before surging 16.5% to 12.28 billion in the next quarter. Revenues for the whole year are expected to be 30% higher on a yearly basis, way above the five-year trend. Coca-Cola's shares are gaining steadily throughout the year. Since Diet Coke overtook Pepsi PEP as the number-two soft drink in America, Coca-Cola's shares have gained 10% to close last week at $67.88. On a yearly basis, its shares gained 26%.