On TechRepublic: Worst excuses for missing work

The Coca-Cola Company Q3 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

  • download
  • Print
  • Recommend
  • 0

2008-10-15 10:52:19.0

Tags: Innovation, Coca-Cola Co., Call Transcript, Earnings, Morgan Stanley, Leadership, Strategy, Management, Seeking Alpha, Innovation, Coca-Cola Co., Call Transcript, Earnings, Morgan Stanley, Leadership, Strategy, Management, Seeking Alpha

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Bill Pecoriello - Morgan Stanley.

Bill Pecoriello - Morgan Stanley

You mentioned the system's ability to adapt to the rapidly changing economic environment as a key competitive advantage. Can you give us some examples, some of the tactics the system is using to adapt, especially as immediate consumption begins to slow in several regions of the world, maybe a shift in channel or package focus to adapt to that?

Muhtar Kent

First I think what you need to see is that we keep focus with our strategies of growing sparkling and expanding still beverages, balanced growth, increasing our pace of innovation and growing capability. But within that, as I said, we've continued to calibrate and recalibrate to ensure that our system remains very flexible, leveraging new packaging innovations, new price points, and also ensuring that there's an absolute good balance between above the line and below the line activities; a much closer relationship with our customers, value offers.

And in this environment more and more people, particularly in the West, are going to spend more time at home and we have programs to address that with future consumption, bringing back refillables in many countries in emerging markets. So all of that taken as a whole, I think - affordability focus, new price points, package innovation, and continued bottler investment ensure that we keep focus.

There is no other business in the world that visits 20 million customers on a weekly basis and no other business that is as close to the marketplace as our business, so we've continued to leverage that and stay connected with all local markets and I think we're seeing the benefit of that.

Bill Pecoriello - Morgan Stanley

Any implications for system margins as you see more of the future consumption focus or are you going to pull various levers so the system can maintain margins as you get that shift?

Muhtar Kent

I think we will balance the margins with share gains. And we want to be absolutely sure that we do the right thing for the long term. You know, I've been through this movie in smaller versions a number of times in the past - in 1998 in Russia, 2001 in Turkey, and in Latin America - and I can tell you that the key here is to make sure that you keep connected to the consumer, maintain the health of your brands, and that's what you're going to be seeing us do.

TalkbackShare your ideas and expertise on this topic
What do you think?
The following tags are supported in BNET comments: <b></b> <i></i> <u></u> <pre></pre>
You are currently a guest | Login?
advertisement
Recommended Business Articles
advertisement