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

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Charlie Higgs: Damian, Nik, I’ve got a question on Indonesia, please. And I mean, clearly quite a big impact on the Q4 volumes. But could you maybe just give an update on Indonesia. How is the reception been to the whole product and SKU trim, how you’re feeling ahead of Ramadan this year where you normally see that starting uptick? How is the route to market development going? And then maybe if you can just maybe talk a bit more about the sale of the stake to the Coca-Cola Company. Does it confer any other benefits other than just simplifying ownership structure and the reduced minority charge?

Damian Gammell: Charlie, so I was in Indonesia in early January. It was my first market visit after the new year and I continue to feel great about that business. So I think the changes that you called out in Q4 on a relative scale are quite minor for the group. I think we’ve made the right choices around people. So we’ve got a team led by Jorge there that continues to look at that business for the medium to long term strategically. So we’re very happy with what we’ve done on that side. We’ve made some good decisions around portfolio management with the Coca-Cola Company. And as I mentioned earlier, being much more choiceful around where we believe we can create the right to win in Sparkling and in tea, we haven’t done that yet.

So that’s work in progress. We have made some good decisions that really allow us to run our supply chain better. So ultimately, putting less through our supply chain is helping us improve customer service. It’s helping us to be more productive on our lines, which over time help us manage capital better. So I’m very happy with that. And clearly, we’re well set up for Ramadan. And this week, actually, we have a big MIT across Indonesia to continue to get everybody into the market for that period. So I think, again, we’re set up for a great Ramadan. And then obviously, beyond that, we are looking at what choices we can make on our route to market, and that’s probably something that we’ll be able to come back to in the second half of this year.

So we’ve been running some tests, we’ve been doing some modeling around what changes we could make. But as you can appreciate, those type of changes are significant. We believe there are moves that we can do to create better value for us and indeed for our customers. And that’s something we’ll probably finalize in the first half of this year and talk a bit more in the second half.

Nik Jhangiani: And Charlie, on your question around ownership. I mean I think it was, I think, twofold. I mean, one, I think it comes back to Damian’s point around, we feel really great about that business. And that minority stake was something we’d always looked at as an opportunity to take 100% at the right time. So for us, this was a great time in terms of some of the changes we’ve been able to make and what we’re looking at going forward. But I think it also comes back to probably the Coca-Cola Company feeling good around our ability to run this operation well, and hence, their own view of being able to sell that balance stake to us. So I think it works for both sides.

Operator: We will take our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Robert Ottenstein from Evercore ISI.

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