Higher costs lead to lower profit for Coca-Cola

The Coca-Cola Company’s first quarter profit has dropped compared to the previous year, but turnover was also weaker, for the eighth straight quarter.

Volume remains stable

Coca-Cola’s total first quarter turnover reached 9.1 billion dollars (8.36 billion euro), compared to 10.3 billion dollars (9.46 billion euro) the year before. A different Easter holiday was partly to blame, but the drop was still higher than what analysts had expected.

Net profit reached 1.2 billion dollars (1.1 billion euro), considerably lower than the 1.5 billion dollar (1.38 billion euro) net profit from the year before. Earlier this year, Coca-Cola already warned its profit would be lower because it made changes in its bottling activities, an operation it hopes to finalize by the end of the year.

Sales volumes remained stable all across the globe, thanks to a 2 % increase in the EMEA region. Latin America suffered a 3 % drop, particularly in Brazil.

The company also announced it would cut another 800 million dollars (734.4 million euro) in costs by 2019. In a six-year period leading up to 2019, it hopes to have cut 3.8 billion dollars (3.49 billion euro) in costs.