Jim Cramer’s 17 Stock Calls Like PepsiCo, CVS, and Advice to Stick with Large Tech

7. PepsiCo, Inc. (NASDAQ:PEP)

PepsiCo, Inc. (NASDAQ:PEP) was among Jim Cramer’s stock calls on Mad Money, as he advised investors to stick with the largest tech companies in the market. Cramer commented on the company’s earnings and management commentary, as he said:

This morning, PepsiCo reported a quarter that looked fine on the surface, but failed to wow when you got to the fine print. Meanwhile, the stock, once a market darling, has turned into an ugly duckling. On the conference call, management admitted that inflation and the price of gasoline caused domestic snack sales to fall. That led to a collapse in the stock… This quarter, I think some of the largest distributors had enough and demanded price rollbacks… It wouldn’t shock me if Walmart forced PepsiCo’s hand and demanded rollbacks…

I think it was the rollbacks in the traditional grocers plus the sticker shock of the convenience stores that made it so no matter what Pepsi did, it couldn’t grow the business. Now, they’ve tried things to forestall this moment. I know they want to stick by their innovation playbook. I respect that. They’re tremendous cost cutters too, but maybe they just have to take the darn hit and cut the price of their products big time, take a ton of market share, and then three quarters from now, they can have a much better return. I fear, as others do, that this is the beginning of a slow rollback in pricing. I say rip the band-aid off. Go back to prices from 10 years ago before the endless increases and get realistic.

You raise prices too much, too often for a country that’s now weight-obsessed, health-obsessed, and GLP-1 obsessed, and you’re just not going to make as much money for a bag as you’d like to. Now, PepsiCo gets about half of its sales from overseas, and that business is terrific. They need to make international much bigger to lessen the impact of Frito-Lay’s domestic pain. Here’s the bottom line: I fear now that only drastic pricing can reverse a domestic dive, something, by the way, the CEO Ramon Laguarta disagreed with when we interviewed him on Squawk on the Street. In truth, I thought Ramon wasn’t really disagreeing with me. I think he was subtly disagreeing with the action in the stock, and that’s actually not that great an idea when you’re running a publicly traded company.

PepsiCo, Inc. (NASDAQ:PEP) produces, markets, and distributes beverages and convenient foods, including snacks, cereals, dairy, and ready-to-drink products.