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Coca-Cola Reports Solid Profit, Topping Wall St. Forecasts
The Coca-Cola Company managed to beat Wall Street’s expectations, reporting strong profits for its fourth quarter thanks to higher prices for its products.
The company also said on Tuesday that it would accelerate sales of its bottling operations, a tactic favored by investment analysts because it bolsters earnings.
Volume sales for the last quarter of 2015 continued to shift toward noncarbonated drinks like bottled water, tea and juice, which grew at three times the rate of sales for carbonated drinks.
Revenue in the quarter that ended Dec. 31 fell to $10 billion, down 8 percent, compared with $10.9 billion in the same period a year earlier. The figures, though, exceeded analysts’ expectations.
Profit rose to $1.24 billion, or 28 cents a share, up from $770 million, or 17 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Excluding one-time items, Coke’s earnings were 38 cents a share, a penny more than analysts had predicted.
“Our fourth-quarter performance was a testament to the action we took as the company continued to deliver solid pricing and unit case volume growth,” Muhtar Kent, chief executive of Coca-Cola, said in a news release.
Like many other companies that report their earnings in dollars, Coca-Cola said foreign currency translation had sliced 10 percentage points off its per-share earnings in the fourth quarter.
Weakness internationally, where economies in several of Coke’s major markets are slowing, crimped the company’s performance and offset volume growth of 3 percent in North America.
In 2015, Coca-Cola’s sales fell to $44.3 billion, down 4 percent, compared with $46 billion a year earlier. Profit for the year rose to $7.4 billion, a 3 percent gain over $7.1 billion in 2014.
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