What economic slowdown? Shoppers swallow up Coca Cola’s price hikes to help boost firm’s revenue to $11.95 BILLION – beating Wall Street’s expectations

Coca-Cola exceeded Wall Street expectations in its third financial quarter as customers were undeterred by the soft drink company’s higher prices.

The company reported that revenue rose 8 percent year-over-year to $11.95 billion, thanks in part to a 2 percent increase in unit sales of its various beverages, including carbonated soft drinks, juice, water and milk. The company has also increased the cost of its products this year.

Profit of $3.09 billion was 9 percent higher than last year’s $2.93 billion. The operating margin increased by 0.2 percent to 29.7 percent.

Coca-Cola’s share price rose more than 2.5 percent when markets opened on Tuesday morning and continued to gain into the afternoon.

It comes two weeks after Coca-Cola’s main rival Pepsi also reported strong quarterly sales despite rising prices.

Coca-Cola’s share price rose more than 2.5 percent when markets opened Tuesday morning and continued to gain into the afternoon

In response to inflation, Coca-Cola has raised the price of its products over the past two years, but said in July that price increases in the US and EU would plateau for the rest of the year. Compared to the third quarter last year, prices increased by 9 percent.

During Tuesday’s earnings call, CEO James Quincey said that increasing sales with higher prices was not the company’s goal and that it wanted to maintain broad consumer interest in its products.

“Regardless of the level of environmental inflation, we want to protect and grow the size of our consumer franchise,” Quincey said. “We want to see positive volume or transaction growth.”

CFO John Murphy addressed concerns that weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy could impact sales, and reassured investors that 68 percent of the brand portfolio is now low or no calorie.

Markus Hansen, portfolio manager at Vontobel Quality Growth, told Reuters the threat of those drugs seemed insignificant.

CEO James Quincey (pictured) said it was not yet clear whether weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy had an impact on sales

“It certainly feels like it was a bit of an overreaction… because as a pure liquids company and because it’s a global company (Coca-Cola), it’s probably going to see the impact later than anyone else,” Hansen said.

The maker of Sprite and Fanta now sees full-year organic sales growth of 10 to 11 percent, compared to its previous forecast of an increase of 8 to 9 percent.

Coca-Cola expects annual core earnings per share to rise between 7 and 8 percent, compared with an increase of 5 to 6 percent previously.