The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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So you can do the math on the variance that’s gone in from 2023 to 2024. We expect the underlying performance to continue. We’ll invest as we need to in the business to support the growth agenda. And we do have, I’d say, a couple of hundred million extra in 2024 million under transition tax. And then with regard to interest, yeah, as we’ve highlighted, we — with our current debt portfolio, we will see an uptick in 2023 in interest charges and interest — sorry, interest expense. And I’m not going to go into the specific numbers, but you can expect a couple of points of deleverage primarily driven by interest expense as we navigate through this year.

Operator: Our next question comes from Steve Powers from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Steve Powers: Yes. Hey, good morning. Thank you. James, maybe going back to the top line. For a while, you’ve been making simultaneous efforts to drive both affordability, on the one hand, and then premiumization on the other hand, and I think doing a good job along the way, balancing those, in some ways, competing efforts to net out in a way that ends up in both positive volume and positive price/mix territory. I guess the question is, as you as you look at 2023, do you see more opportunity in your efforts to optimize revenue growth on the value side and the affordability side, or is it on the premiumization side? And to the extent that there’s a leaning, how does that impact where you prioritize incremental investments?

James Quincey: Yeah. Thanks, Steve. Absolutely, we see opportunities in 2023 and, frankly, beyond to continue to leverage the capability around RGM to both use affordability to keep typically lower income consumers enacted and engaged with our brand franchises whilst also pursuing premiumization. And then it’s going to be dynamic implementation as we go forward. We’re going to see continuations into 2023 of different sorts of packaging options, whether they be drives around returnables, whether they be drives, which obviously tend, given the economics of returnables to have lower price points, whether you see, for example, in emerging markets, the greater use of 1-liter packaging instead of larger packaging for at-home occasions, we’re going to continue to see a lot of opportunity to push forward right across the world with affordability options.

And given that they tend to be dilutive to margins, we also look for all those consumer opportunities for premiumization, whether it be directly a brand launch. I mean things like the Jack and Coke will be accretive to revenue, or directly within some of our brands to use the sleek cans and the smaller cans to kind of put more premium packaging into the marketplace. It will be an ongoing — ongoing effort, and we don’t see the runway of that running out anytime soon.

Operator: Our next question comes from Nik Modi from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Nik Modi: Thanks. Good morning everyone. I just — James, I just wanted to follow up on the last question regarding all the affordability packaging. Just based on the historical kind of observations across the world, how does it work with retail? I mean are these incremental phasings you’re getting, or is it replacing older pack sizes that might have a lot more type sensitivity?

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