Coke Has Positive Earnings, and a Smile (KO)

The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) has managed to beat earnings and shares are trading higher in the pre-market after the report.  On an operational and normalized basis, Coca-Cola’s earnings hit $0.79 EPS and that was above the Thomson Reuters consensus of $0.78 EPS expected.

For all of 2011 there was a 5% total case volume growth for the beverage giant, with Europe up 1% and China up 10%.  North America’s organic case volume was up only 1% in the period.  For the Year…  Full-year EPS of $3.69 and $3.84 EPS on an adjusted basis.  The 10% growth is said to be “both ahead of our long-term growth target.”

Coke is also launching a new Productivity and Reinvestment program that aims for annualized savings of $550 to $650 million by the end of 2015 as part of its 2020 Vision.

Shares closed at $68.03 on Monday and the 52-week range is $61.29 to $71.77; shares are up 1.3% at $68.90 so far in the pre-market with almost two hours until the market opens for trading.

JON C. OGG