Higher Prices Energized Coca Cola's Q3 Financials

On Wednesday, The Coca Cola Company KO surpassed Wall Street estimates on both revenue and earnings fronts as higher prices managed to offset a rather sluggish demand for its beverages in the face of increasingly price-sensitive consumers. 

Third Quarter Highlights

Adjusted net sales were roughly flat compared to last year, amounting to $11.95 billion, surpassing LSEG’s consensus estimate of $11.60 billion. However, when acquisitions, divestitures and currency are excluded, organic revenue actually rose 9%. 

Net income attributable to shareholders went did go down to $2.85 billion, or 66 cents per share while adjusted earnings amounted to 77 cents per share, topping LSEG’s consensus estimate of 74 cents per share.

But, the reality is that North America consumers have been snacking and and drinking less, even its rival PepsiCo Inc PEP noticed it while also dealing with the fallout from Quaker Foods recalls. Pepsi said volume for its North American beverage business fell 3% in its third quarter. Overall, PepsiCo reported disappointing third quarter sales and also trimmed its growth outlook. 

With a weakened international demand, Coca Cola reported its unit case volume fell by 1%. China and Turkey’s declines were specifically named out.

Unit case volume fell 2% in both Europe, Middle East and Africa as well as Asia-Pacific regions. In North America, it was flat, as the weakened demand for water, sports, coffee and tea products offset growth in its namesake soda, juice, dairy, plant-based beverages and sparkling flavors. However, premium products with higher price tags like seltzers have performed well.

Global volume for sparkling soft drinks, like Sprite, and for its namesake soda were both flat, while juice, dairy and plant-based beverages division reported a 3% volume drop, with water, sports, coffee and tea segment's volume shrinking by 4% which was mainly triggered by a 6% drop in bottled water's volume.

Coca Cola executives stated that pricing rose 10% with a more normalized pricing on the horizon going into 2025. 

A Reaffirmed Full Year Outlook

Coca Cola guided for 2024 organic revenue growth of roughly 10% which is the high end of the range between 9% and 10% it had previously provided, while also reiterating its earnings per share growth projection between 5% and 6%. 

While Coca Cola will provide a full-year outlook for the upcoming year with the release of 2024’s fourth quarter earnings report, it already revealed it is expecting currency to hurt its 2025 results, with headwinds for comparable revenue being in low-single digits and for earnings per share being in mid-single digits.

As for the fourth quarter, Coca Cola warned that earnings per share percentage growth will include a 10% currency headwind in addition to headwinds from acquisitions, divestitures and structural changes that will be about 3% to 4%.

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