UK – Coca-Cola Europacific, one of the largest anchor bottlers of Coca-Cola, has seen its half year profits jump 58% driven by a strong market rebound in Q2, reflecting the easing of pandemic restrictions in Europe and Asia Pacific regions.
As pandemic restrictions eased, more people were able to eat away from home (AFH) leading to CCEP recording sales of 1.442-billion-unit cases during the quarter ending July 2.
The jump in unit cases sold led to the group recording a record €6.974bn (US$8.26bn) in revenues, an 11.5% jump when compared to the same period last year.
Comparable operating profits attributable to CCEP jumped 58% to €802m (US$950.28m) reflecting the increased revenue, the benefit of ongoing efficiency programmes & our continuous efforts on discretionary spend optimisation.
Regionally, Europe with volumes of 1.124 billon unit cases, accounted for a majority of the sales. Sales in this region comprising of France, Germany, Iberia, and Northern Europe, jumped 10.5% to €5.385bn (US$6.38bn).
Recently merged region comprising of Australia, Pacific, and Indonesia (API) reported a 15.5% profit jump to €1.589 bn (US$1.88bn) from 321 million unit cases.
“We are pleased to report a strong H1 performance, as we confidently navigate the varied impact of the pandemic across our markets, with our focus remaining on supporting our people, customers and communities,” Damian Gammell, Chief Executive Officer, said.
“Top-line growth, operating margin improvement and stronger free cash flow generation demonstrate the strength of our business and the successful integration of Coca-Cola Amatil.”
During the half-year period, Coca-Cola also made significant progress towards achieving its 2040 net zero carbon ambition.
The company recently announced plans to accelerate its use of recycled plastic (rPET), saving an additional 43,000 tonnes of virgin plastic each year.
To this end, CCEP’s subsidiary, Coca-Cola Belgium & Luxembourg announced in June that the brand will from this summer switch from virgin plastic to 100% recycled plastic for its bottles (with the exception of the bottle cap and label).
Coca-Cola Great Britain (GB), is also transitioning to using 100% recycled plastic in all on-the-go bottles across its entire range, as it continues its progress towards fully sustainable packaging.
Further doubling down on sustainable manufacturing, CCEP recently announced that two of its manufacturing sites in Spain and Sweden were now certified carbon neutral according to the international standard PAS 2060.
During the financial release, CCEP announced that it is transferring its US stock exchange listing to The NASDAQ Global Select Market from The New York Stock Exchange.
CCEP noted that its shares are expected to begin trading as a NASDAQ-listed security on 13 September 2021, and will continue to trade under the ticker symbol CCEP.
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