(Bloomberg) -- Coca-Cola Co. shares dropped as investors weighed how much longer the soft-drink purveyor could raise prices without getting customers to buy more of its beverages.
While other food and beverage retailers have started to lower prices, Coca-Cola has continued to charge more for its products. The company’s price mix, or the prices it charges across a range of products, increased 10% in the quarter.
That buoyed revenues above analyst expectations, but consumers are increasingly reticent to pay up, particularly for juices, waters and sports drinks. Sales volumes were down or flat across most regions.
“We see us heading to a more normalized level of pricing going into next year,” Chief Executive Officer James Quincey said on a call with investors.
The performance was an outlier for Coca-Cola, which usually counts on strong sales during warm summer months. The war in the Middle East and bad weather in Mexico and India also contributed to declining volumes, the company said.
Coca-Cola shares were down 2.1% at 9:41 a.m. in New York. The stock is up 18% this year through the close of trading on Tuesday. The S&P 500 Index rose 23% for the period.
The company reported adjusted earnings per share of 77 cents during the period, above the average estimate of 74 cents per share.
“KO delivered a mixed-quality 3Q EPS beat, which is unlikely to be good enough to lift the shares today,” said Kevin Grundy, an analyst at BNP Paribas Securities.
Consumers in North America and Japan are showing more resilience than in other regions in the face of higher prices, Coca-Cola said. “Elasticity continues to hold up” in those countries, Chief Financial Officer John Murphy said.
Quincey, the CEO, said the company doesn’t expect to be hit by a recent E. coli outbreak at McDonald’s Corp. which is a large customer.
“Certainly we’re a big partner of McDonald’s,” he said. “At this stage, it’s not gonna be a large, significant impact on business.”
The company said it expects annual sales to rise by 10%, meeting the top end of its previous guidance.
Rival PepsiCo Inc. cut its revenue outlook in its most recent earnings report, citing slower-than-expected growth and unrest around the globe.
(Updates with executive interview and additional earnings detail throughout.)
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