The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) reported its third quarter earnings on Tuesday. Shares of the company were down 6 percent.
Below are some key highlights from its conference call.
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Performance:
• Our overall top-line results for the third quarter were below our expectations.
• Comparable currency neutral net revenues grew 1% in the quarter and after adjusting for structural items due to factors both within and outside of our control.
• We continue to face a challenging macro environment, more challenging than was expected when we started the year.
• In many of our key emerging markets, we see deteriorating economic environments, coupled with the continued softness in consumer spending in the U.S. and particularly in Japan and Europe.
• This is placing strong pressure on the short-term performance of our business.
• These factors have driven a deceleration in personal consumption expenditures.
• And as a result, the non-alcoholic beverage industry is growing one to two points slower than our initial forecast at the beginning of the year.
• There's no question that we need to improve our execution in many markets, especially our consumer marketing and commercial strategies.
• We achieved a 3% price/mix in Europe, which was partially offset by a volume decline of 5%.
• We're not comfortable with our year-to-date share performance in Europe.
• North America, our disciplined approach to pricing supported by incremental media investments, high-quality marketing programs such as Share a Coke and disciplined price/pack strategies.
• We plan to expand the program from $1 billion in savings by 2016 to $2 billion in annualized savings by 2017 and $3 billion by 2019.
• This productivity program will build on previous successful programs, encompassing our entire spend base, and will supplant our existing plan announced earlier this year.
• We are restructuring our global supply chain, including optimizing our manufacturing footprint in North America, and investing in technology to further streamline our operations.
• Our 2020 Vision has served to focus our system on the opportunity and to align on a common set of strategies.
• We began the process of evolving our 2020 Vision with our bottlers earlier this year.
• Comparable currency neutral gross profit was up 4% in both the quarter and year-to-date after excluding the impact of structural items.
• Our gross margin expanded in the quarter due to pricing, favorable geographic and product mix and a slight tailwind from commodity cost.
• We expect net interest income to be approximately $100 million for the full year 2014.
• We now expect approximately $2.5 billion in net share repurchases for the year.