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

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Robert Ottenstein: Great, 2 questions, please. One, I’d like to follow up on your comment that retailers are putting maybe a little bit more focus on their own brands. Can you please remind us what the — whether — first of all, whether that is a general comment or a comment in terms of beverages, roughly what the kind of private label — your private label exposure is in key markets and a little bit more detail in terms of what you mean by focus.

Damian Gammell: Robert, it’s a general comment across multiple categories. So I think it’s not just in beverages. In fact, in beverages, the private label share is lower than it is in most of other categories. So I think over a number of years, in Europe and in Australia and New Zealand, we’ve demonstrated the value creation of brands in beverages. So typically, what you’ll see across all of our markets is that the private — our retailer brand share within beverages is lower than at least in other categories. So I think that’s a good starting point for us. It is obviously part of our proposition to offer value, and therefore, they do it across all categories. So beverages is one of many, many categories that they’ve — that they have.

It’s always been around. So this is nothing new. So I think we should also understand that retailer brands in Europe, in particular, have been part of the landscape for many, many years. And typically, in terms of value share, it differs by market, but it’s obviously significantly lower than where we sit and so far, we’ve gained share. So I think this is not a new phenomenon. So that really kicked off. Over a number of years, we saw kicking up a bit in the second half of last year as some of those inflationary pressures came into our markets and retailers responded. But despite that, we gained share in the second half of the year. So I think our value creation story, the smart RGM, good customer service and the continued investments, the margin story on our brands is very, very strong for our retailers.

So I think ultimately, that’s what drives growth, and that’s what we’re focused on. Fully recognizing that they will continue to have to manage some of their value propositions for their business, and that’s something that we’ve seen. But again, it’s nothing really new but it does kind of peak and trough, particularly when you get some of the more macro headwinds for consumers. But so far, we feel pretty good about where we are. But obviously, it’s something we keep a close eye on.

Nik Jhangiani: And Robert, just to add one point to Damian’s comments, is around when you do look at NARTD, there are certain subcategories that have much more private label penetration. So if you take a look at juices or waters, they already have a high share. But keep in mind, that’s not typically where we’re playing. And in fact, we’ve exited some of those. So the categories, from a value perspective, that we’re a lot more focused in on, we’re not necessarily seeing the same level of pressures. But as Damian said, we’re constantly monitoring that to ensure that we remain relevant to a broad consumer base.

Robert Ottenstein: Sure. Can you — I mean, — you guys have been doing this for a long time, just in terms of historical perspective, what happened in prior downturns and let’s just say for Sparkling, I mean did private label go for maybe 5% of the market to 10%? Can you put just kind of some rough ballparking of sort of worst-case scenarios or what you’ve seen and what — which markets are most exposed?

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