Coca-Cola Europacific Profit Rose; Increases 2023 Guidance on Strong Performance

By Joe Hoppe

Coca-Cola Europacific Partners said that first-half pretax profit and revenue significantly increased, and raised guidance for the full year based on its strong performance to date.

The London-listed bottling company said Wednesday that for the period ended July 1, pretax profit was 1.10 billion euros ($1.21 billion), compared with a profit of EUR898 million for the first half of 2021. The company attributed the rise to strong volume growth across its developed markets and increased revenue per case.

Revenue for the period rose to EUR8.98 billion from EUR8.28 billion the year before, it said.

"Our focus on revenue and margin growth management, along with our price and promotion strategy, drove solid gains in revenue per unit case with transactions outpacing volume," Chief Executive Damian Gammell said.

The company raised its revenue, operating profit and free cash flow guidance outlook for 2023, attributing the increase to the strength of the business.

It said it now expects revenue growth of 8%-9%, from a previous 6%-8% forecast, and operating profit growth to be in the range of 12%-13%, from 6%-7%. Free cash flow is expected to be at least EUR1.7 billion, from prior guidance of at least EUR1.6 billion.

Write to Joe Hoppe at joseph.hoppe@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 02, 2023 03:35 ET (07:35 GMT)

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