Coca-Cola HBC has maintained its annual profit and sales forecasts despite reporting higher quarterly revenue on strong demand for its energy and coffee drinks, as the bottler faces foreign exchange headwinds.
The company expects an annual impact of €50 million to €60 million from translational foreign exchange on group comparable operating profit.
Coca-Cola HBC, which lifted its annual revenue forecast in August benefiting from price increases, said sparkling, energy and coffee drinks were facing less pressure from private label competition than other non-alcoholic ready-to-drink categories.
The bottler operates in Europe, parts of Africa and Ukraine.
Demand for packaged beverage and food has stayed resilient, even though companies have hiked prices to pass on elevated energy and input costs to consumers.
'Solid Performance'
"We're pleased to have delivered another solid performance, and a second consecutive quarter of organic volume growth," commented Zoran Bogdanovic, chief executive. "This was driven by our strong execution, underpinned by a continued focus on our strategic priority categories of Sparkling, Energy and Coffee, as well as our focus on bespoke capability development to drive personalised execution for every outlet.
"Our sophisticated revenue growth management, powered by data, insights and analytics, is helping us to adapt our initiatives and execution to different consumer environments and successfully balance affordability and premiumisation."
Revenue Growth Slows
However, Coca-Cola HBC's organic net revenue growth per case in the third quarter slowed to 12.9% from the 19% seen in the first half amid lower levels of cost inflation.
The Switzerland-based company, in which U.S. beverage giant Coca-Cola owns more than 20%, witnessed a 3.8% rise in reported revenue for the three months ended Sept. 29.
Last week, Coca-Cola raised its annual sales and profit forecasts for a second time this year, riding on resilient demand from consumers for its soft drinks, juices and energy drinks as well as higher prices.
Additional reporting by ESM
