Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Paramount Sweetens Warner Bros. Bid Terms to Woo Investors
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- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to the
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- 0:24Speaker 2: Let's turn our attention to the media space. Lot's going
- 0:26Speaker 2: on out there. Spotify reported some earnings, but we want
- 0:29Speaker 2: to lead with Warner Brothers Discovery.
- 0:31Speaker 3: That MNA sag can continues to play out today.
- 0:33Speaker 2: Paramount kind of amended its bid to add some more
- 0:38Speaker 2: cash funding for a termination fee, instituting a ticking option
- 0:42Speaker 2: here for this thing. Keitha Ranganath and she file follows
- 0:46Speaker 2: this as the media analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. Keith, let's
- 0:50Speaker 2: start with Warner Brothers Discovery here. I'm still surprised that
- 0:53Speaker 2: Powermount has not raised its bid from thirty dollars. That
- 0:58Speaker 2: are making changes and maybe some enhancement mins to the offer,
- 1:01Speaker 2: but not raising the bid in general.
- 1:02Speaker 3: What do you make of it?
- 1:04Speaker 4: Yeah, still playing the cat and mouse game here, Paul.
- 1:07Speaker 4: They did stop short of actually raising the offer, but yes,
- 1:10Speaker 4: you're right, they are offering now this almost one dollar
- 1:13Speaker 4: and eighty cents per share to cover the termination fee
- 1:17Speaker 4: with the Netflix deal, as well as some of the
- 1:19Speaker 4: financing costs, and then of course, as you just mentioned,
- 1:21Speaker 4: the ticking feed. I don't know though, if this will
- 1:23Speaker 4: necessarily fly with the Warner Brothers Discovery boat. I think
- 1:26Speaker 4: this is just Paramount exhausting all of its options before
- 1:30Speaker 4: you know, they actually raise the bid. But in my mind,
- 1:33Speaker 4: what this signals is, yes, they did stop short of
- 1:35Speaker 4: actually raising that thirty dollars bid, but I do think
- 1:38Speaker 4: that the signals that they are willing to kind of
- 1:41Speaker 4: go back to the table and probably raise that bid.
- 1:45Speaker 4: As you know, kind of this thing keeps dragging on.
- 1:48Speaker 5: Yeah, it does feel a little bit silly given that
- 1:50Speaker 5: David Ellison had said that thirty dollars a share was
- 1:52Speaker 5: not their best and final offer, So let's let's kind
- 1:54Speaker 5: of get to it. That begs the question, Keithan, this
- 1:57Speaker 5: is a dumb question. Do they have the money to
- 1:59Speaker 5: raise bid?
- 2:02Speaker 4: They do, But the question is really going to be
- 2:04Speaker 4: what happens after Scarlet. So you know, right now we're
- 2:08Speaker 4: looking at a company with the thirty dollars per share bid.
- 2:10Speaker 4: We're looking at a company that's going to be levered
- 2:12Speaker 4: about six and a half times, they raise that bid
- 2:17Speaker 4: to let's say thirty two, thirty three, thirty four, whatever
- 2:19Speaker 4: the number is. You're going to look at a company
- 2:21Speaker 4: that's value that's going to be levered at about seven
- 2:24Speaker 4: to maybe seven point three times. What happens with those
- 2:27Speaker 4: dangerous levels of debt is, you know, it just becomes
- 2:31Speaker 4: a distraction. You're not going to be able to invest
- 2:33Speaker 4: in growth, You're just going to be focused on deleveraging.
- 2:37Speaker 4: This is exactly what we've seen, you know, happen many
- 2:40Speaker 4: a time in the media world. It's happened actually to
- 2:43Speaker 4: Warner Brothers Discovery itself. You know, they had over fifty
- 2:46Speaker 4: billion dollars in debt and the only thing that they
- 2:47Speaker 4: were hyper focused on is Okay, how do we keep
- 2:49Speaker 4: you know, reducing that dead pile. And so the biggest
- 2:52Speaker 4: worry is that's what's going to happen to Paramount. So, yes,
- 2:55Speaker 4: they could get their hands on this absolutely world class asset,
- 2:58Speaker 4: but yes, leverage becomes this huge, huge headache for them.
- 3:02Speaker 2: If any sense of timing, it doesn't seem like either
- 3:04Speaker 2: side feels.
- 3:06Speaker 3: The need to, I don't know, be aggressive here.
- 3:09Speaker 4: So February twentieth. That's what that's the date that paramounts
- 3:14Speaker 4: a proxy bid actually expires. It was initially Jan twenty
- 3:17Speaker 4: at the extended to February twentieth, So that's the thirty
- 3:20Speaker 4: dollars hostile bid. That's the date of expiring. Remember, Paul
- 3:25Speaker 4: and Scarlett, only about seven percent of Warner Brothers shares
- 3:28Speaker 4: two date have been tendered at that thirty dollars bit,
- 3:31Speaker 4: so everybody's still kind of holding out for that higher
- 3:34Speaker 4: per share offer.
- 3:35Speaker 5: I think that tells you everything you need to know
- 3:37Speaker 5: right now. Then Februy twenty eight is the day we'll
- 3:39Speaker 5: watch for Geita. Let's also talk about Spotify here. It
- 3:42Speaker 5: added a record number of users thirty eight million users
- 3:45Speaker 5: to seven hundred and fifty one million, topping analyst estimates.
- 3:49Speaker 5: How much more room is there to raise prices because
- 3:51Speaker 5: increased price prices in the US was certainly part of
- 3:55Speaker 5: that story. And it looks like consumers continue to sign up.
- 3:59Speaker 4: Conzuomer's continue to sign up. Yes, we're seeing Spotify and
- 4:02Speaker 4: if you just look at the subscriber trajectory scuddled over
- 4:04Speaker 4: the past few years, they've added about twenty eight to
- 4:06Speaker 4: thirty million subscribers every year, and there's just no signs
- 4:10Speaker 4: of slowing down. They keep adding a record number of subscribers,
- 4:12Speaker 4: record number of active users quarter after quarter. So there's
- 4:16Speaker 4: just so much of appetite for this platform for music
- 4:19Speaker 4: in general, for audio in general, So that is definitely
- 4:21Speaker 4: good news. You talked about pricing power. I think, you know,
- 4:25Speaker 4: just with kind of the user interface that Spotify offers,
- 4:28Speaker 4: with all of the content that it offers in terms
- 4:29Speaker 4: of breadth and depth of content, and as they keep
- 4:32Speaker 4: adding more enhancements, they do have a lot more leverage
- 4:36Speaker 4: to keep raising those prices. So you know, they've made
- 4:39Speaker 4: a pretty bold move by raising their prices a little
- 4:41Speaker 4: bit earlier this year. So now now it is thirteen
- 4:43Speaker 4: dollars for an individual plan in the US. That was
- 4:46Speaker 4: a little bit above the rest of their competitors. But
- 4:49Speaker 4: then we just saw a few days ago Amazon Music
- 4:51Speaker 4: also kind of raising prices, which then I think just
- 4:53Speaker 4: speaks to the audio industry in general. I mean, everybody
- 4:56Speaker 4: there has a lot of pricing power, but I think
- 4:58Speaker 4: Spotify definitely has the most, just kind of again given
- 5:02Speaker 4: the fact that they are a best in class product.
- 5:05Speaker 3: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 5:12Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
- 5:16Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
- 5:19Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever
- 5:22Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 5:26Speaker 5: We have markets in the green right now, and the
- 5:28Speaker 5: NASAC is among them. We've had seen this decoupling between
- 5:31Speaker 5: big tech and the rest of the stock market, but
- 5:34Speaker 5: big tech is back in the green once again, and
- 5:37Speaker 5: the big news really is Alphabet and all the hyperscalars.
- 5:41Speaker 5: It's going to need about one hundred and eighty five
- 5:44Speaker 5: billion dollars in terms of capex over the this year,
- 5:48Speaker 5: and so it has to raise a lot of money
- 5:50Speaker 5: in the debt market. Caroline Hyde is the co anchor
- 5:53Speaker 5: of b Tech and Caroline Alphed has had a banner
- 5:55Speaker 5: twenty four hours looking to raise almost thirty two billion
- 5:58Speaker 5: dollars or a pretty much to raise thirty two billion
- 6:01Speaker 5: dollars in less than twenty four hours.
- 6:03Speaker 6: I know we've got dollar denominated debt, you've got sterling,
- 6:06Speaker 6: you've got Swiss frank and what's extraordinary is the extent
- 6:10Speaker 6: of demand. They could have sold way more the thirty
- 6:13Speaker 6: two billion dollars. They had extraordinary, more than one hundred
- 6:15Speaker 6: billion dollars worth of orders for the upsized twenty billion
- 6:18Speaker 6: dollar US sale. We're ranging from you know, three year
- 6:22Speaker 6: to ten is out to as much as thirty year,
- 6:24Speaker 6: thirty two year. But then you're looking to the UK,
- 6:26Speaker 6: they're selling one billion pounds of my great British sterling
- 6:31Speaker 6: in one hundred year bonds, a century bond. Now you
- 6:34Speaker 6: haven't seen a tech company do that since motor rollers.
- 6:36Speaker 7: It's the nineties.
- 6:37Speaker 6: And look this, it's such a vote confidence. Yes, you
- 6:40Speaker 6: can say, is Google going to be here in one
- 6:42Speaker 6: hundred years time? A lot of these companies pay off
- 6:44Speaker 6: the debt well ahead of one hundred years. Disney they
- 6:47Speaker 6: issued back in the nineties, they paid it off in
- 6:49Speaker 6: the in twenty twenties. But really what this is a resolute,
- 6:55Speaker 6: clear signal of is that people believe in Alphabet, they
- 6:59Speaker 6: believe in their ability to pay for the AI infrastructure,
- 7:01Speaker 6: They believe in that one hundred and eighty five billion
- 7:03Speaker 6: of spending in capex is a wise decision, and that
- 7:05Speaker 6: they are going to be an AI winner.
- 7:07Speaker 3: More across the.
- 7:08Speaker 6: Board, we're seeing a record Swiss frame issuance. You haven't
- 7:10Speaker 6: seen a market been tapped to this extent and again
- 7:14Speaker 6: a record amount of demand for it.
- 7:16Speaker 2: Rob Schiffman covers the tech from the credit size for
- 7:18Speaker 2: Bloomberg Intelligence.
- 7:19Speaker 8: T says, the windows wide open for these companies. They
- 7:22Speaker 8: can keep coming to the market, which is amazing for
- 7:25Speaker 8: them and they are. We also got a piece of
- 7:27Speaker 8: news Thaiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing said their January sales worth their
- 7:30Speaker 8: fastest clip in months. So if you needed, I guess
- 7:33Speaker 8: another data point supporting this continuing AI spending, there you go.
- 7:37Speaker 6: Yeah, thirty seven percent increase year on year. In terms
- 7:39Speaker 6: of yes, it was probably a bit of a slower year.
- 7:42Speaker 6: It's a slower January previous year because of the way
- 7:45Speaker 6: that the vacations and holidays fell in China. But TSMC
- 7:48Speaker 6: is the chip manufacturer to the world in Nvidia Apple.
- 7:51Speaker 6: If you think about a consumer electronics, if you're thinking
- 7:53Speaker 6: about the AI data center story, this is the company
- 7:56Speaker 6: that has been dining out on it. The shares are
- 7:58Speaker 6: at a record when you're looking at them entire one
- 8:00Speaker 6: or indeed on their ADRs trading abroad, and it just
- 8:04Speaker 6: signals that the AI bubble that we're so concerned about
- 8:07Speaker 6: the idea that everyone's just passing money amongst themselves. There
- 8:10Speaker 6: is real orders going in from on a fundamental basis
- 8:12Speaker 6: for this particular chip maker.
- 8:13Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's the hardware maker TSMC. Let's talk about
- 8:16Speaker 5: other hardware companies because they are paying up for memory chips,
- 8:20Speaker 5: and those memory chip makers, some are winning, some maybe
- 8:23Speaker 5: are under more pressure, and investors are trying to discern
- 8:26Speaker 5: whose best place. How are you thinking about this?
- 8:28Speaker 6: I think a lot of people are trying to understand
- 8:30Speaker 6: where is the cost pressure. The cost pressure is for
- 8:32Speaker 6: those electronics companies. Apple has more control over its supply chain,
- 8:36Speaker 6: its own own chips, but still, more broadly, if you're
- 8:38Speaker 6: looking at an index of electronics makers, like thinking of
- 8:41Speaker 6: the Nintendos of this world, they've sold off about ten
- 8:43Speaker 6: percent in the beginning of this year. Meanwhile, the memory
- 8:47Speaker 6: makers are up about one hundred and sixty percent or so.
- 8:49Speaker 6: We're seeing Samsung being the winner here, you're seeing the
- 8:52Speaker 6: likes of Micron. You're seeing Yes, there is turbenance day
- 8:54Speaker 6: in day out, but more broadly it has been up
- 8:57Speaker 6: and to the right for these memory makers because not
- 9:00Speaker 6: only is there necessary to put them into your hardware
- 9:02Speaker 6: and your electronics but really the ferocious demand to put
- 9:05Speaker 6: them in AI data centers. Remember this is high bandwidth
- 9:08Speaker 6: memory that everyone's been going on about. The hk Heinex
- 9:11Speaker 6: has been winning in for Skhinex, for example, over in Korea. Well,
- 9:15Speaker 6: because there's so much demand there and it's so much
- 9:17Speaker 6: more profitable for them, they're having to sort of put
- 9:19Speaker 6: their boring, bog standard memory chips that you want in
- 9:23Speaker 6: your devices to the back burner, and it's really hurting
- 9:26Speaker 6: these companies.
- 9:28Speaker 3: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up. Care
- 9:31Speaker 3: for this.
- 9:35Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 9:39Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am.
- 9:40Speaker 3: He's done on.
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- 9:44Speaker 1: Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts, or watch
- 9:47Speaker 1: us live on YouTube.
- 9:49Speaker 5: Let's get to some more corporate earnings, because we are
- 9:52Speaker 5: knee deep in earning season. We're past the big tech
- 9:55Speaker 5: companies and now we're really focused on the companies that
- 9:57Speaker 5: make up this US economy. Companies like Has, the toymaker.
- 10:01Speaker 5: The shares are up more than seven percent right now.
- 10:03Speaker 5: Lindsay Dutch is joining us. She is the consumer Hardline
- 10:06Speaker 5: Senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence and Lindsay. This earnings report
- 10:11Speaker 5: shows it had a decent fourth quarter revenue and earnings
- 10:14Speaker 5: for share beat, but the guidance the outlook was seen
- 10:17Speaker 5: as fairly conservative, yet investors seem to be rewarding the
- 10:21Speaker 5: Stock's the what's the story here for Hasbro?
- 10:26Speaker 9: Hice Garlet, thanks for having me. So the story for
- 10:28Speaker 9: Hasbro is, you know, the result in twenty five, including
- 10:32Speaker 9: the fourth quarter, is really being driven by their Wizard
- 10:35Speaker 9: of the Coast digital gaming segment. That that segment has
- 10:39Speaker 9: been growing rapidly forty five percent on the year, sixty
- 10:42Speaker 9: percent I think for Magic of the Gathering in the quarter.
- 10:46Speaker 9: So just tremendous growth coming out of that brand, better
- 10:49Speaker 9: than expected, and that unit is really going to carry
- 10:53Speaker 9: the growth in twenty twenty six. The outlook for the
- 10:56Speaker 9: consumer products with their toy segment is still kind of weak,
- 11:00Speaker 9: so it's really coming out of that digital gaming segment.
- 11:04Speaker 9: But I think investors are pleased with the outlook there
- 11:07Speaker 9: just because they're lapping very difficult comps. So to see
- 11:10Speaker 9: solid growth in twenty six coming out of that, it
- 11:13Speaker 9: was a good surprise.
- 11:14Speaker 3: What's the competitive landscape out there? Hasbro Mattel others. How's
- 11:19Speaker 3: that playing out.
- 11:20Speaker 9: Yeah, So we get matel results later today and we'll
- 11:23Speaker 9: have to see how that goes. It was a very
- 11:24Speaker 9: challenging twenty twenty five, you know, with the tariffs, we
- 11:28Speaker 9: had retailers delaying the holiday orders and that really threw
- 11:32Speaker 9: a wrench into the entire year for these toymakers. Hasbro
- 11:36Speaker 9: did report, you know, a plus seven percent sales growth
- 11:39Speaker 9: in the fourth quarter for consumer products.
- 11:41Speaker 7: That was the first quarter of growth and quite some time.
- 11:44Speaker 9: They do expect toy growth in twenty twenty six, but
- 11:48Speaker 9: it could be low single digits.
- 11:50Speaker 7: You know, there's a lot of headwinds.
- 11:51Speaker 9: You know, we just saw you know, disappointing retailer sales
- 11:54Speaker 9: for December, so there's a lot of uncertainty about consumers
- 11:57Speaker 9: out there and a rebound in that category. And we
- 12:00Speaker 9: should hear more from Mattel, you know that they're the
- 12:03Speaker 9: dominant player in dolls.
- 12:05Speaker 7: So we'll heal more later today.
- 12:09Speaker 5: Lindsay, what about Tariff's Is this something that Hasbro has
- 12:11Speaker 5: figured out and it's no longer something that leaves its
- 12:16Speaker 5: earnings to be kind of unreliable and they've kind of
- 12:19Speaker 5: smoothed things out.
- 12:22Speaker 9: So it definitely affected the year, so about forty million
- 12:25Speaker 9: dollars in the fourth quarter. A headwind for margin there,
- 12:29Speaker 9: especially on that consumer products segment, so that margin did
- 12:33Speaker 9: decline year over year, which was a disappointment.
- 12:36Speaker 7: It's certainly going to be a headwind.
- 12:38Speaker 9: For profitability at least in the first half, and comps
- 12:42Speaker 9: will get easier in the second half. But Hasbro did
- 12:45Speaker 9: note that, you know, much of the cost savings program
- 12:49Speaker 9: that they're working on and other supply chain efficiencies, they
- 12:52Speaker 9: were able to offset a significant portion of that cost.
- 12:56Speaker 9: So that is a good sign, but there's still a
- 12:58Speaker 9: little bit of a headwind for the next two quarters.
- 13:02Speaker 2: I'm just looking at the FA function on the Bloomberg terminal,
- 13:04Speaker 2: gives me all the financial analysism. Boy, the operating income
- 13:07Speaker 2: profit for the Wizards of the Coast and the digital
- 13:10Speaker 2: segment is huge, whereas the profitability of their regular toy
- 13:14Speaker 2: business not so much. Is a company just throwing all
- 13:18Speaker 2: the resources into their digital stuff?
- 13:19Speaker 3: Is that the strategy?
- 13:22Speaker 9: So they have definitely been pushing for several years now
- 13:25Speaker 9: to become a bigger player in that digital world, but
- 13:28Speaker 9: also really to become known for that. So I would say,
- 13:32Speaker 9: you know, one of Hasbro's big brands, Monopoly that that's
- 13:35Speaker 9: what many people know that the company for is that
- 13:38Speaker 9: traditional Monopoly board game. But they are pushing into this
- 13:41Speaker 9: world of digital games. You know, they want to be
- 13:44Speaker 9: valued as such. And I will say, you know, they
- 13:47Speaker 9: do have a digital version of Monopoly Monopoly Go, and
- 13:50Speaker 9: that has done very very well over the past couple
- 13:53Speaker 9: of years. It continues to surprise, including in the fourth quarter.
- 13:58Speaker 9: So they're definitely moving in that direction. But that toy
- 14:01Speaker 9: segment consumer products, you know, still is pretty large. It
- 14:05Speaker 9: was still around fifty percent of revenue for twenty five.
- 14:08Speaker 9: I do think that will that mix will come down
- 14:11Speaker 9: over time, but it's still a big piece of their
- 14:13Speaker 9: business that they can't ignore.
- 14:16Speaker 10: Lindsay.
- 14:16Speaker 5: I also noticed that in this latest earning support, they
- 14:18Speaker 5: announced a one billion dollar stock buyback authorization. I believe
- 14:22Speaker 5: this is the first by back since twenty eighteen. What
- 14:25Speaker 5: does that signal to you?
- 14:27Speaker 9: You know, I think that their Hasbro was still working
- 14:30Speaker 9: through their capital allocation priorities. They're still focused on reducing leverage.
- 14:36Speaker 9: You know, their dividend has been flat for quite some time,
- 14:40Speaker 9: so I think they're looking at different avenues now that
- 14:42Speaker 9: they're in a much better financial position than they had been.
- 14:46Speaker 7: Maybe a year or two ago.
- 14:48Speaker 9: So I think it's just a signal that that that
- 14:50Speaker 9: position is solidly better and they're looking to redeploy cash
- 14:55Speaker 9: in different ways that they maybe couldn't have done a
- 14:57Speaker 9: year or so ago.
- 14:58Speaker 2: Again, using the PG function, you can see where the
- 15:01Speaker 2: revenue comes from geographically for this companigy, and the international business,
- 15:05Speaker 2: which was about forty percent of the revenue, has been
- 15:07Speaker 2: declining as a percentage of total revenue. Here, is there
- 15:11Speaker 2: a strategy there to focus on the US or are
- 15:14Speaker 2: they pulling back from international?
- 15:15Speaker 3: What's that strategy?
- 15:18Speaker 9: Yeah, so I don't think that they're necessarily pulling back
- 15:20Speaker 9: from international.
- 15:21Speaker 7: Toys is a global business.
- 15:23Speaker 9: I think a lot of that is reflecting the growth
- 15:25Speaker 9: and wizards of the cost and the digital gaming. So
- 15:27Speaker 9: the digital gaming, it's really picking up very quickly in
- 15:30Speaker 9: the US or seeing a lot of growth there, and
- 15:32Speaker 9: that's partly shifting that geographical concentration. That digital gaming business
- 15:38Speaker 9: is a global business, So some of that shift might
- 15:43Speaker 9: move back the reverse over time, but I think the
- 15:46Speaker 9: near term shift is just part of that growth on
- 15:48Speaker 9: the digital gaming side.
- 15:52Speaker 3: Stay with us more from Bloomberg Intelligence coming.
- 15:54Speaker 1: Up there for this, you're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligen
- 16:00Speaker 1: in the podcast Catch us Live weekdays at ten am.
- 16:03Speaker 3: He's done on.
- 16:03Speaker 1: Apple, Cocklay and Android Auto with the blue Berg Business App.
- 16:07Speaker 1: Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts, or watch
- 16:10Speaker 1: us Live on YouTube.
- 16:12Speaker 5: All right, let's get back to earning season, because those
- 16:14Speaker 5: are not the only companies that reported. Coca Cola also
- 16:17Speaker 5: came out with its latest results and maybe perhaps a
- 16:20Speaker 5: bit underwhelming given the stock price reaction down two percent
- 16:23Speaker 5: at the moment. Kenshe is our consumer products analysts, our
- 16:26Speaker 5: senior consumer products analysts, and he joined us now from Princeton.
- 16:30Speaker 5: So what's the story from Coca Cola, Ken, What did
- 16:32Speaker 5: they tell us?
- 16:34Speaker 10: Yeah, hi, Scarlett. Well, Coke in the fourth quarter, revenues
- 16:38Speaker 10: are up to EPs was up six percent, pretty much
- 16:41Speaker 10: in line with expectations. But I think what maybe concerning
- 16:46Speaker 10: the mark a little bit about Coke is that the
- 16:50Speaker 10: mix was not as favorable as it had been well,
- 16:53Speaker 10: so the company with the past couple of years had
- 16:54Speaker 10: been relying heavily on price mix to boost the top line.
- 16:59Speaker 10: It was a considerable slow going in the quarter. Having
- 17:02Speaker 10: said that, there's always some noise in the fourth quarter.
- 17:04Speaker 10: It's hard to draw too many conclusions from the fourth quarter.
- 17:07Speaker 10: But I think the market is also being spooked a
- 17:10Speaker 10: little bit by the guidance for next year, which came
- 17:14Speaker 10: in a bit a little bit late. The company's long
- 17:17Speaker 10: term algorithm is to generate about four to six percent
- 17:21Speaker 10: organic revenue and from that it can generate high comparable
- 17:25Speaker 10: EPs growth, and it did that in twenty twenty five.
- 17:28Speaker 10: In twenty twenty six, other saying four to five percent
- 17:31Speaker 10: top line and four to five percent EPs growth, and
- 17:34Speaker 10: so that's EPs growth again, that's excluding currency effects. It's
- 17:40Speaker 10: not only below their long term algorithm, but also below
- 17:43Speaker 10: consensus expectations going in.
- 17:46Speaker 2: What's the You know, we always talk at a lot
- 17:50Speaker 2: of your companies, the contuber products companies as staples companies
- 17:52Speaker 2: that you think about them as kind of GDP maybe
- 17:54Speaker 2: a little bit GDP plus kind of growth here.
- 17:56Speaker 3: Is there any secret.
- 17:57Speaker 2: Sauce to the Coca Cola story or is that the
- 17:59Speaker 2: way we should think about it?
- 18:01Speaker 10: Well, there's a lot of truth to that, Paul, because
- 18:04Speaker 10: Coke is in the two hundred markets around the world.
- 18:06Speaker 10: You know, I guess the way for growth is lunar
- 18:09Speaker 10: at this point, I mean they're everywhere. But I think
- 18:14Speaker 10: there's gonna be a new CEO on March thirty first,
- 18:16Speaker 10: Henry Barraun. He's a long time veteran at Coca Cola,
- 18:19Speaker 10: was the COO used to head a Latin American operations.
- 18:22Speaker 10: I think there's a lot of confidence in his ability
- 18:25Speaker 10: to take the reins here. And I think what he's
- 18:29Speaker 10: going to spell out in his vision next week at CAGNY,
- 18:32Speaker 10: that's when they usually do it.
- 18:34Speaker 3: That's what you'll be Yeah.
- 18:37Speaker 10: Well, I think he's gonna say that they need to
- 18:40Speaker 10: step up their marketing and innovation here to boost that
- 18:43Speaker 10: top line growth. And I think they're going to talk
- 18:46Speaker 10: a lot about functionality, something that we talked about with Pesico.
- 18:50Speaker 10: What I mean by functionality, well, well, consumers want more
- 18:53Speaker 10: from their beverages than just taste good and hydrate them.
- 18:56Speaker 10: They want to not only have zero calies, zero sugar,
- 19:01Speaker 10: but if they wants to have more electrolytes in their water,
- 19:04Speaker 10: it wants to have more protein in their drinks. Particularly
- 19:07Speaker 10: the JLP one crowd, they want to have fiber coke
- 19:12Speaker 10: offers in its probiotics. So it is like simply pop
- 19:15Speaker 10: So these are the kind of things they're going to
- 19:16Speaker 10: talk about in terms of product innovation, I believe next week.
- 19:20Speaker 10: In addition to that, I think the company's going to
- 19:22Speaker 10: spend more in marketing, digital marketing, get the message out
- 19:25Speaker 10: to new young consumers.
- 19:27Speaker 5: I guess the idea is to just have your drink
- 19:29Speaker 5: or place your food.
- 19:30Speaker 3: I guess.
- 19:32Speaker 5: Zero Sugar actually was a standout, right with Coca Cola
- 19:36Speaker 5: Zero Sugar posting double digit volume growth in the quarter.
- 19:39Speaker 5: When you say that they want to focus on the
- 19:41Speaker 5: innovation and get the word out, what does that mean
- 19:43Speaker 5: in terms of spending on marketing. What does that mean
- 19:46Speaker 5: on in terms of capital expenses?
- 19:49Speaker 10: Well, I think, broadly speaking, more social media advertising. I
- 19:52Speaker 10: mean on a purview basis, that's a lot more cost
- 19:55Speaker 10: efficient than traditional ways like television poll You would know
- 19:59Speaker 10: that right analyst days. So it's more of that. It's
- 20:02Speaker 10: also working more closely with their bottlers in terms of
- 20:05Speaker 10: co marketing ventures. That could be a wide range of things,
- 20:09Speaker 10: not only digital marketing, but perhaps coming out new packaging,
- 20:13Speaker 10: whether it's multi packs to attract an economical consumer, to
- 20:19Speaker 10: spending more on its fountain dispenser. You see a lot
- 20:23Speaker 10: of a lot of fast food restaurants where they can
- 20:27Speaker 10: make their own sodas and so on. Spread that out
- 20:30Speaker 10: more to have more consumer engagement matter where they are. Yep,
- 20:34Speaker 10: so I see.
- 20:35Speaker 6: More of that.
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