Coca-Cola Europacific Partners PLC (NASDAQ:CCEP) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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On Europe, I would say our focus is going to be over the next couple of years as we roll out our collaborative demand and supply planning, how do we look at the optimal inventory levels and how that might then translate into some unlocking of cash benefits. In API, I think it’s a continuation of some of the work that we’ve done in Europe around all 3 elements of receivables, payables and inventory. And some of it is some of the housekeeping, some of it is around terms renegotiation and looking at what’s fit for purpose relative to competition in those markets as well. And I think that’s factored in, as we said, into our midterm guidance of at least €1.7 billion. Clearly, you’ll see we guided towards at least €1.6 billion for 2023. And I think that’s just a couple of drivers as we step back up to normalized levels of CapEx. Clearly, the type of benefit that we’ve seen in the earlier years on working capital will probably not be as strong, given what we’ve delivered.

And then obviously, as we also look at the elements around how we deliver on new targets for efficiency programs, there will be some restructuring cash as well. But we feel really good about that number as well and we’ll continue to update you during the course of the year, both for ’23 and beyond.

Operator: We will take our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Lauren Lieberman from Barclays.

Lauren Lieberman: Great. I just want to ask a bit about API because volumes — there’s a lot of pricing, but volumes did come in a bit light — I mean, down. So I’d just love some color on volumes there and kind of the outlook and how that changes from here?

Damian Gammell: Sorry, Lauren. On API, was that the question?

Lauren Lieberman: Yes, the API volume.

Damian Gammell: Yes. So we’re pretty happy with the full year volumes coming out of API. If you’re looking at Q4, in particular, I think it was again a strong quarter for Australia and New Zealand and Indonesia, if we exclude some of the SKU rationalization work that we’ve been working on. So as you recall, as part of the strategic review post the acquisition, we’ve been working with the Coke Company to be much more choiceful around what categories we want to participate in, in Indonesia. We’ve really landed on 2, no surprise Sparkling being our number one priority and secondly, tea. And beyond that, we’ve exited a number of higher volume categories but very, very low or negative margin categories, predominantly water cups and some SKUs in other categories that really were not generating value.

So that certainly was the right decision when we look at our business for the medium term, but obviously impacted volumes. But beyond that, I think there were some comps in Q4, if you go back to Europe from December ’21, where we really started to see a bigger reopening. We had the issue we talked about. But I think if you just look at the full year, we’re pretty happy with the volume momentum that we’ve seen coming into ’23. And if you look at, I mean, market metrics for January in Europe, in particular, we see quite a healthy start to the year in ’23 as well. So I’m pretty happy with our volume performance overall.

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