PepsiCo and Coca-Cola Company - Analysis of the 2015 Financial Results - Example

The paper “PepsiCo and Coca-Cola Company - Analysis of the 2015 Financial Results” is a forceful example of a finance & accounting report. Coca-Cola is the world’s largest beverage company. The company owns or licenses and markets over 500 non-alcoholic beverage brands including four of the top five brands --- Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Fanta, and Sprite (Pepsi is the competing brand in the top 5). The company primarily markets sparkling beverages but the products include still beverages such as waters and waters with additives, juices and juice drinks, ready-to-drink teas and coffees, and energy and sports drinks.

Coca-Cola beverages are sold in over 200 countries around the world (Coca-Cola 2015 AR, p1). The company’s business model is to sell concentrates and syrups to bottlers. Bottlers are either owned or controlled by the company or are independent businesses with long-term contracts with the company. Inside the US, 82% of the bottling is company-owned. Outside the US, the majority of bottlers started out as independent bottlers but over time, Coca-Cola has made equity investments in them to ensure the efficiency of operations.

These equity positions are majority stakes in some of the bottling operations. Coca-Cola primarily focuses on marketing the beverages by brand with the bottlers having exclusive or non-exclusive bottling rights for a given territory. Coca-Cola also helps market the bottler from time to time (Coca-Cola 2015 AR, p6).The bottling process is primarily to add water and sweeteners to the concentrate or syrup supplied by the company. Both nutritive and non-nutritive sweeteners are used. In the US the principal nutritive sweetener is high fructose corn syrup and outside the US it is fructose or table sugar.

Non-nutritive sweeteners include aspartame and saccharin sourced from designated suppliers (Coca-Cola 2015 AR, p8).2. Auditors Opinion Ernst & Young is the independent registered public accounting firm that has audited the company’s financial report. The auditors have expressed the opinion that the financial statements are free of material misstatement.