Coca-Cola Co. on Thursday said an earlier completion of a major European bottling merger will drag results in the current quarter.
Coke now expects the net impact of acquisitions, divestitures and other structural items to be a 5 to 6 point headwind on revenue and a 4 to 5 point headwind on income before taxes in the second quarter.
Last August, three Coca-Cola Co. bottlers agreed to a merger combining $12 billion in revenue across 13 European countries, part of a global consolidation push by the U.S. soda giant to cut costs amid slowing sales.
Publicly traded bottler Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc., which makes and distributes Coke in eight European countries including the U.K. and France, combined with Spain’s privately held Coca-Cola Iberian Partners SA and Germany’s Coca-Cola Erfrischungsgetränke AG, the latter owned by Atlanta-based Coke.
The tie-up, which was completed May 28—about one month before expectations—formed the world’s largest independent Coke bottler by revenue.
By Anne Steele
Source: Wall Street Journal
Schumacher will replace Alan Jope, who announced his decision to retire last September, less than a year after a failed attempt by Unilever to buy GlaxoSmithKline’s consumer healthcare business and just months after activist investor Nelson Peltz joined the company’s board.
Globally, plant-based ice creams have doubled their share of the market over the last five years, according to Tetra Pack. Pea protein and coconut milk are leading the way, but Tetra Pak cites data showing that oat-based ice cream launches have doubled in the previous year.
A myriad of so-called eco-labels are being rolled out across various F&B products, but with no gold standard or strict rules governing precisely what the logos mean and what methodology is behind them, concerns are growing that they will confuse consumers and ultimately be counterproductive.
