Your business has to be sustainable, flexible to meet global challenges and adaptive to changes in the consumer environment

I’ve accumulated various data on Coca-Cola and organized it in a spreadsheet very similar to my presentation of Taking Stock in COST. While each companies spreadsheet in my SA data will differ slightly based on their unique industry my focus will often concentrate on margins, return on equity, debt levels, book value growth, increases in costs and dividends. Remember that as a prospective owner in the business I want to investigate information that directly impacts my returns, my financial stake in the business and potential for future returns.

First on the list for examination are revenues and cost of goods sold (COGS). Revenue is income that the company receives from the sale of a good or service and COGS is the direct cost of producing that product or service.

Coca-Cola has successfully reported a profit over the past twenty years, but I want to evaluate the relationship and trend between revenues and COGS. This is important because I want to identify if one side of the equation is changing in any drastic manner relative to the other. The 20-year average for increases in revenues has been 7.12% and the increase in COGS has been 6.45%. This is positive in my view because I can see an established trend where overall revenues are increasing at a faster rate than overall costs. If these numbers were reversed (6.45% for revenues & 7.12% for COGS) I would be very concerned because it demonstrates that costs are increasing at a faster rate than revenues and that is not sustainable for any business. These trends affect the profit growth of a company and as a shareholder I may be concerned that management isn’t doing a good enough job of managing their cost structure. Taking the past five years (a smaller snapshot) I get an average increase in revenues of 8.42% and average increase in costs of 8.36%. The margin between the two is smaller, but the trend remains intact.

Margins are one of the first calculations I ever determine when I’ve decided to look at a company in greater depth. There are two types of margins I want to identify and examine: gross margins and profit margins.

When we examine gross margins for KO we see a very healthy average of 63.85% on a historical basis. This means for every $1.00 the company receives in revenue they retain nearly $0.64 after direct production costs. Profit margins for KO are 17.46% and for every dollar the company receives in revenue they retain a profit of over $0.17.

This is a much higher gross & profit margin than many other businesses and is a direct effect of the type of business Coca-Cola conducts. They sell higher margin products around the world and do so because their costs are relatively low and brand loyalty is very high. We can clearly see variations in each margin category through different time periods where profit and gross margins fluctuated in relation to different economic periods. One thing to notice is whenever they dropped relative to the historical average they subsequently rebounded shortly after with increases in the margins.

SGAE as % of net sales is another category I always focus on that provides insights into how management is managing their own spending and not just that of the corporation. SGAE stands for “Selling, General and Administrative Expenses” and tracks the spending of non-core expenses that aren’t linked to the production or operating process. Management may be great at minimizing costs and boasting a fat gross margin, but I want to focus on the question: Can they control the spending that directly impacts the profit margins their company achieves?

Readers will notice a stark contrast in SGAE versus my previous stock analyses with KO reporting its average SGAE as % of net sales of over 40%. This means that non-core production costs are 40% of total revenues! Normally this should be an alarm bell going off for any prospective investor, but we first need to put this number into the proper context. We can see that the historical trend has fallen over the past few years, but 38% is still a relatively high number in 2007.

We first need to identify that Coca-Cola’s business is much different than other businesses. Although they have low production costs and significant gross margins, they spend a lot of money on advertising promoting their products around the world. KO didn’t become the biggest and wealthiest brand in the world by restricting spending on promotion of their products and this commitment to effective advertising has led to sales increasing globally for the past twenty years. KO also operates in a variety of challenging markets where they may be focusing on conservation of market share for mature products and heavy spending for promoting new innovative products that are fuelling future sales growth.

To really put this into the proper perspective we need to compare margins to a company in the same industry: PepsiCo (PEP)

Coca-Cola has a simple business model to understand and this benefits an individual investor who wants to focus on fundamentals. They sell carbonated & still beverages and syrups for consumption around the world, have a dominant brand image in hundreds of products, own stakes in nearly all their bottling operations, possess strong brand loyalty, are expanding into new markets with conservative acquisitions and focus on doing what they do best.

The company is profitable and by a large margin because they keep costs low and focus on maintaining very high margins. Despite slower sales growth than their main competitor (PEP) their growth of expenses has been lower resulting in revenue growth outpacing expense growth and this too is by a wider margin than PEP.

The company has made accretive acquisitions by not overpaying and continues to focus on growth of products domestically (Coke Zero) and abroad (Huiyuan Juice Group Limited). Although they’ve had a change of management the new CEO steps into a role that the company has adequately prepared him for as seen by his past leadership roles.

I’ve found that there are times when focusing on the simplest facts of a business result in some of the best businesses to invest in over the long-term. An individual who drinks one Coca-Cola product today is likely to drink another one tomorrow and again in the near future. A Coke tastes the same at 9am in the morning as it does at 5pm in the evening regardless of if those two drinks are consumed in opposite parts of the world and this creates the perpetual demand that the company has enjoyed for so many decades.

One of the most distinct and sustainable competitive advantages held in the world today is possessed by Coca-Cola. It’s not a patent, a manufacturing process or real estate; it’s the products, brands and operating structure that allow Coca-Cola to operate at a much more cost effective position than their global competition.

I don’t want to discount that there are significant long-term threats due to an increase in health awareness and the short-term global economic dynamics. Management has done an admirable job diversifying their product portfolio to more health conscious brands and the one wonderful thing about a lower cost structure and significantly higher margins is that as a company you are well protected to weather any significant storm. While I never advocate that a company compete on price higher margins provide Coca-Cola with an adequate buffer to cushion any economic volatility so that the bottom line of the business is minimally affected.


Disclosure: I own shares of Coca-Cola (KO), Kraft Food (KFT) and IGM Financial (IGM) at the time of this post.