Coca Cola Zero Creations

[Tyler Bannowsky]

CocaCola Zero Sugar Byte launched in extremely limited quantities in select countries in Latin America on April 4 in retail outlets. In the United States, the product will launch May 2 and be exclusively available to purchase in twin packs of 12.5-ounce slim cans online at www.coca-cola.com/creations, making the can itself a portal between the digital and physical worlds. China will follow with a retail launch May 23.

Sponsored Content is a special paid section where industry companies provide high quality, objective, non-commercial content around topics of interest to the Beverage Industry audience. All Sponsored Content is supplied by the advertising company and any opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily reflect the views of Beverage Industry or its parent company, BNP Media. Interested in participating in our Sponsored Content section? Contact your local rep!

In 2024, PACK EXPO International will be the biggest packaging and processing show on the planet, connecting more end users with more suppliers and more innovation than anywhere else you can imagine. 40+ vertical industries and 2,500 exhibitors under one roof!

Coca Cola Year 3000 Creations Limited is a zero sugar cola with a flavor created by artificial intelligence (AI). Coca-Cola invites fans to imagine what the future will taste like and experience with a limited edition drink and a new AI experience. Coca-Cola Y3000 Zero Sugar was created in collaboration with human and artificial intelligence by understanding how fans imagine the future through emotions, aspirations, colors, flavors and more. The perspectives of fans around the world, combined with the mistakes of artificial intelligence, inspired Coca-Cola to create the unique flavor of Y3000. Five Star Trading Holland has replaced this drink from China especially for you.

Founded in 1993, The Motley Fool is a financial services company dedicated to making the world smarter, happier, and richer. The Motley Fool reaches millions of people every month through our premium investing solutions, free guidance and market analysis on Fool.com, top-rated podcasts, and non-profit The Motley Fool Foundation.

So welcome, everybody. And thank you for joining us today. We're all based in London, well most of us are. And by that, I mean, myself, you know me. So, you'll see a bit later on in the presentation. Damian is obviously here, CEO; Nik Jhangiani, our CFO; and later on you'll get to meet Peter West for the first time from our API, new business unit.

So, a quick reminder of our forward-looking statements and cautionary statements as you see here, I'll leave you to read those later. And then, just by way of agenda, four areas to cover as you see here; a couple of breaks along the way, so I'll break it up for you. So it's not too much PowerPoints in one go. And asking questions, there's two ways of doing that. We do have some live stream later on during the Q&A session. Those individuals know who they are. But any of you, if you want to ask a question on the chat function that was linked to the original registration, we'll cover as many of those at the end of the presentation as we can.

10 stocks we like better than Coca-Cola European Partners plc

When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*

David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the ten best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Coca-Cola European Partners plc wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.

Thank you, Sarah. And thank you, everybody, for joining us today. Very exciting day. We not only get to share with our Q1 overview, but also we get to talk about Coca-Cola Europacific Partners and look forward to sharing a lot more with you as we go through your morning and our afternoon.

So, as you'll have seen from our Q1 update, we continue to adapt to the backdrop of an easing pandemic, albeit with restrictions in Europe moving at a slightly slower pace, except here in the UK, where you can really feel the difference as the vaccine continues to roll-out and restrictions start to lift. But we continue to have a strong position. And as we did in 2020, we continue to focus on our core brands. We are winning with our customers both through value creation over 2 times that of our nearest any NARTD peer and that's really led by Brand Coke and Brand Monster.

We have achieved our pricing ambition in the first quarter and that'll flow through 2021. We are gaining share both in-store and the physical environment and, most importantly, we're gaining share online as we continue to embrace the digital marketplace and truly become a leader, not just as a bottler, but as a key FMCG player on the digital platform.

As I mentioned in my opening, COVID restrictions are impacting volumes, particularly in away-from-home. So, similar trend as we saw coming out of the end of 2020 with our away-from-home volumes down just over 30%. The good news obviously, a lot of those consumers are consuming and shopping at home. So, our at-home volumes up just over 4% and our revenue per case down about 1.5%, which is prudently driven by mix, as I mentioned, our pricing is in good shape.

April was the toughest month last year. And clearly, we see April this year bouncing back. But as I mentioned, that is really a factor of how quick markets are opening up. And clearly, as I've mentioned earlier, we see GB leading the pack. We've seen an easing of restrictions coming through in France and Spain, but clearly we've got a number of weeks to go before we get a full picture on when the full away-from-home universe will reopen.

As I mentioned, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar is doing fantastically well. I'll talk a little bit about that later. Monster is having another phenomenal start to the year, driven by innovation in multipacks and we are now number one in three markets, Spain, Portugal and Norway. And finally, as always at CCEP, we are very focused on our growth being sustainable and we've set some new RevPAR targets in Germany at 70%, ahead of our Group target of 50%.

So, as we navigate our way through to the end of the pandemic and the associated restrictions, we are very mindful that we're not there yet. So we will continue to prioritize the well-being of our people. They are our priority. They are our business. We learnt a lot in 2020. We're clearly applying that across our business at an enterprise level. But fundamentally, our number one priority is to make sure all of our people remain safe and well. There is optimism. We are seeing improving trends as we go through the quarter, particularly in GB. We'll talk a little bit later about Australia and New Zealand. But clearly, you will have seen a very strong post-pandemic recovery. And we're applying those learnings back to Europe.

And we are leveraged to return to a new normal. So we are continuing to invest in our business for the long-term, led by a sustainability green agenda and most importantly led by digital agenda. And as Nik will touch on later, we continue to focus on cost efficiencies, resetting our cost base so we can move forward. So we will emerge stronger, particularly on our cost structure than before.

So, looking ahead. As we go through 2021, we are ready to reopen. We've got a fantastic frontline capability. Supporting our customers is our priority. Our field sales have been redeployed to the home market to make the best of the current situation, but they're ready to go for away-from-home. We've got our coolers in place. We've got our fountain in place. So we are ready for the reopening. And in many ways, we are reopening as we sit here today.

Coca-Cola Zero Sugar has done phenomenally well over a number of years. But I'm personally really excited about the new branding. I've been on a number of market visits. It's been great to get back into the market. And you really see that new look and feel stand out on shelves. So that's going down really well. And beyond Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, we've got great innovations on our brands with What the Fanta, New Monster variance Ginger Mule and Ultra. On Topo Chico, clearly, a brand position for the summer, but early indications are very encouraging.

On top of that, we've got the Euro football activation coming in store as we speak and online. And as we've talked about before, we continue to look at opportunities for the cost of brand, rolling it out as we speak in Germany and in Belux. So, lots happening. Very exciting few months ahead of us as we head into the summer and a great lineup of activity.

Thank you, Damian. So, we're going to move on to the main part of the presentation now. So, the narrative today you'll see as we go through the flow of the presentation is centered family around further together, expressly chosen to reflect the future of the coming together of Coca-Cola European Partners and Coca-Cola Amatil. And of course, as you know by now and as of officially yesterday, the creation of Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, our new name. So let's have a look together.

Thank you, Sarah. So you're going to see this slide a couple of times and it's something that myself, the Board, Nik, all of our executive leadership team in what was CCEP and Amatil are truly excited about. So we truly believe that this deal will create significant value for our shareholders and a better more sustainable future for all of our stakeholders.

In some ways, it's a deal on a page. I believe it's a great move at the right time and clearly creates a lot of value going forward for our shareholders and indeed for our customers. Why are we so excited about it? It's got a very tangible top-line growth story. We know that's critically important as a Coca-Cola bottler. But that top-line growth also flows through to a great bottom-line growth story around synergies and best practice sharing, more to come on that later. It's got higher cash generation, equaling a higher dividend and based on rapid deleveraging. And as you can all appreciate, it strengthens our relationship with the Coca-Cola Company and other brand partners. So, a very compelling transaction at the right time.

3a8082e126