PepsiCo, Inc. Conference Call Highlights

PepsiCo, Inc. PEP reported its Q1 earnings on Thursday. Shares of the company were down 1 percent.

Below are some key highlights and takeaways from its conference call.

International Expansion and Growth:

• Specifically in developed markets, the consumer category demand continues to be sluggish.
• Developing and emerging markets there's continued macro and political volatility, most notably in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and a number of markets in Latin America.
• In other key emerging markets, China, India, and Brazil, even though the political environments are relatively stable, GDP and consumer spending growth remains mixed.
• Despite these challenges, our businesses performed well in the third quarter and year to date.
• Global volume grew in both snacks and beverages in the quarter and year to date.
• Organic net revenue grew at a rate ahead of volume.
• Developing and emerging markets business has proven to be resilient, with high single-digit organic revenue growth year to date.
• Double digit growth in Egypt and India.
• High single-digit growth in China, Brazil, and Turkey, and mid-single-digit growth in Russia.
• Frito-Lay led performance with 3% organic revenue growth in the quarter and year to date.
• We achieved our targeted productivity savings for the third quarter and year to date and we're on track to achieve our full-year target of $1 million in savings.

Financials:

• Returning capital to shareholders is a top priority, and we're pleased to report that year to date we have returned $6 billion to shareholders.
• And we remain on track to return a total of $8.7 billion to shareholders in 2014, which is a 35% increase over our 2013 shareholder cash returns.
• We raised our full-year core constant currency EPS growth target to 9% from 8% previously.

Brand:

• Dew and Doritos have extremely high co-purchase incidence.
• In the U.S., over 60% of Mountain Dew households buy Doritos.
• Both brands are deeply rooted in gaming, with legacies of high engagement partnerships and activations around Blockbuster video games.
• or example, in Poland we created excitement for the Lay's brand by hiding coupons for 100,000 free Pepsis and bags, the promotion was supported by ads and point-of-sale material
• And in our biggest market, United States, we were the largest contributor to retail sales food and beverage growth.
• The case in point is our 12 ounce glass bottle which sells at more than 100% premium to the 12 ounce can.