PepsiCo, Inc. (NASDAQ:PEP) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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And we’re asking consumers Zero sacrifice to pivot to Zero Sugar version. So that’s the principle why we’ve seen that the category will continue to pivot and why the brand will continue to invest in moving consumers into that space. How big it’s going to be? I think eventually, it’s going to be a large part of the brand, not only here in the U.S., but all over the world. We improved the formula. We moved the formula closer to the formula we have in Western Europe and some other parts of the world. It’s more refreshing formula, is closer to our original flavor. And I think I mean, the initial results are very good. The consumer testing was excellent. We’re going to be investing now in the Super Bowl that we continue throughout the year is going to be one of the pillars of growth of our CSD business in the US.

Hugh Johnston: And Bonnie just to give you a data point Pepsi Zero Sugar grew 26% volume in the fourth quarter so that business is really growing.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Peter Grom with UBS. Your line is open.

Peter Grom: Thanks, operator. And good morning, everyone. So I wanted to ask about the long-term organic revenue algorithm, 4% to 6%. And recognizing that a lot of the upside the past few years has been driven by pricing. But this is now the third straight year, you’re excited to be at the high end or above the high end of the range. And I guess, as you take a step back and look at your performance and think about the path ahead, has anything changed and how you think about that target? You mentioned increased spending and driving the top line, do you have a higher degree of confidence that Pepsi can consistently be at the higher end of that range longer-term? So just like any perspective on whether you feel differently today about the building lots of algorithm versus maybe 2019 will be really helpful? Thanks.

Ramon Laguarta: Yes, of course, we feel good about the return that we’re getting on our investments that we’ve made both in our brands and you see the our A&M has gone up significantly since 2019 and the same with our CapEx, right? We’ve added a lot of capacity, a lot of go-to-market strength to our business. And we see the consumer reacting to that very positively. We’ve also invested a lot in quality and our brands, our products are better or more consistent, are better tasting. So from that point of view, we’re happy to the — we’re winning market share in many markets around the world. So yes, we’re feeling good that we can be close to the top end of the — of our long-term growth algorithm for the continuous future. Now obviously, the last two years, there’s been a bit more pricing that would expect going forward long-term.

But if you think about the mix of growth between developed and developing markets, I think we have tremendous opportunities for growth in developing markets. The per capita is still very, very good. And we have good playbooks to develop those per caps in a lot of those consumer bases. And we know how to grow developed markets as well. So you will see us continuing to invest in our brands, continue to invest in our go-to-market and what drives the top line, what makes consumers stay with our brands. And we’ll guide every year to the particular circumstances of volume and pricing that we see for that particular year.

Hugh Johnston: And Peter, just as a reminder, both Ramon and I have said in the past that our goal is to be at the high end of that guidance. And also as a reminder, recall 5 years or so ago, our long-term guidance was 4% to 6%, but we were struggling to get to 4%. We were averaging somewhere in the low to mid-3s. So it’s obviously a material acceleration where we’ve been as recently as 5 years ago.

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