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

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Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Kevin Grundy with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Kevin Grundy: Great. Thanks, good morning everyone. And congratulations on the strong results this year. I would like an update on PBNA, please, on 2 fronts, Mountain Dew and then segment margins more broadly. So market share, nice to see Gatorade performing well, though the company’s market share continues to slide here a bit in CSDs, most notably with one of your power brands in Mountain Dew. So Ramon, perhaps an update there on your investment plans behind Mountain Dew to try to turn around some of the share loss. And then just relatedly, how does the scope of your investment, not just in Dew, but broadly in PBNA, how does that impact your other key priority within that segment of restoring margins towards mid-teens? So thank you for that.

Ramon Laguarta: Thank you, Kevin. We feel good about or very good, actually, about the progress that PBNA is making in this triangle of growing the top line, improving the margins and keeping share. And that’s the balance we’re trying to strike every year as we go forward. Now there are things of the portfolio, we feel very good and things that we have to do work, things that we feel very good as you mentioned, all the sports nutrition category. Gatorade, obviously about Propel and some of the other brands are doing very, very well. That’s a big area of investment. We’re getting the returns. We feel very good about the Pepsi brand. Pepsi brand is growing well. Now we’re investing behind Zero, as we discussed. We feel good about the coffee portfolio.

Finally, we’ve gone beyond some of the supply chain challenges, and that Starbucks range is going to be very, very good for us. Already, we saw it in Q4. It’s going to continue this year. We feel good about Energy. We feel what about Energy, the steps we’re making to improve Rockstar, as I said, the coffee portfolio. And then the Celsius integration into our portfolio has gone very smoothly, and that brand has keeps gaining market share behind our improved distribution, and I think the attractiveness of the product. So that is a very strong set of growth opportunities that we’re going to continue to dial up in our investments and our execution and our customer plans, which are very strong for 2023. Now as you mentioned, an opportunity is Mountain Dew.

Mountain Dew, we keep refining the positioning. We keep refining the product, and we’re going to be investing. But this is just a small part of a very large portfolio, and there’s a lot of positives in that portfolio. Now when you see the triangle, we’re trying to improve the margins as well. As we said, we are not deviating from our long-term goal, actually, not so long-term goal to go to mid-teens with this business. You saw we’re progressing in Q4. It was a good step forward, and that continues to be the plan for 2023 and beyond. So we’re going to dial it up efficiency. We’re going to dial up our investment behind the key brands. And we’re improving our execution, which has been painful throughout the COVID and subsequent year, especially as labor market was very tight.

Hugh Johnston: And Kevin, just to add a few numbers to that. For the year, PBNA grew revenue 11%, which is obviously quite strong, and operating profit grew strongly as well. As Ramon mentioned, the mid-teens margin thesis is still very much intact and the drivers are still very much intact. For the year, we improved operating margins 43 basis points in the business. And in the fourth quarter, margins were up 110 basis points. So we’re making good progress and good momentum on both fronts. Top line has obviously been terrific, and we’re making good progress on the cost side as well, and I expect we’ll continue to see improvement into 2023.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Vivien Azer with Cowen. Your line is open.

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