Schweppes reduce bottle size

Food & Drink
21

This may occur for wholly owned subsidiaries, such as those multinationals the ATO are currently investigating and taking on, but doesn’t apply to companies such as CCA which has a parent as a shareholder. It is worth reading their financial/annual reports..

I am a CCA shareholder and investigated such before buying shares as if you were correct, it would allow the parent company to effectively hold all other shareholders to ranson. Something which is not good for any other shareholders. I bought a small number of CCA shares to hopefully ensure, with others, that its Australian manufacturing operations stay Australian…both owned and sourced.

Furthermore, Coke products are a fraction of the whole CCA business, which includes food processing (SPC) and other non-Coke businesses.

If the company mirrored the parent company and was only involved in the same brands, then it could be more of a concern. However for CCA, this is not the case.

Another company with similar arrangements with its parent is Virgin, which the parent has about a 8% holding.

Like CCA, Virgin Group with minority shareholding does not have the ability to control the business and control its profitability through backdoor licencing arrangements which cripple the majority independent (publically listed Auatralian) company. I am sure that Auatralian regulators such as the ACCC, FIRB etc would be very interested in taking action is such case existed.

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22

Dang - must do more research before publication! (i.e. time to visit the dreaded Annual Report).

Wow - pictures of happy people; all young, white… wait, two of the young ladies may be of Asian heritage - but not too much! ‘Let’s laugh - or maybe smile - while holding plastic bottles of carbonated beverages’!

Blahblah vision values strategy yada hey look - on page 2, in the overview: “…We celebrate the diversity of cultures that
come together to make Coca-Cola Amatil the vibrant company we are today!” Yeah guys? How about those opening five pages of photos? (There is one older person. Male, white. Wearing a white shirt, no tie and no pen in his pocket. This is supposed to be believable?)

Moving on, the business summary names five managing directors in the various country/product niches. Let me just check quickly - how many are women? Checked. 0. None. Nil! So the first five pages of pretty pictures show a total of 12 people. None appear to be of Aboriginal descent, but at least seven are women. So good job CCA on promoting women - into pictures on the cover pages, but not into those MD positions.

I’m feeling that this post may be coming across as a little more snarky than I intended - maybe I should focus on the numbers. I mean, the other numbers.

Firstly, warning: I am not a financial markets expert. What I say below can and probably will return to bite me in the butt. You have the right to say “but this stranger told me on a message board…” after you have lost all your money, but not to name and/or sue me. Nothing here is intended as advice - I am the last person to whom I would turn for such advice. Actually, second-… no, third- or fourth-last. You know, now that I think about it some more I do trust my opinion better than I trust a lot of other opinions - but that could just be the Dunning-Kruger effect. (No, not Freddy Kruger!)

Revenue inched up 1.1%. Not great. Net profit after tax 6.2% increase is a bit better. Dividends up by 5.7% seems reasonable, while earnings per share are going in the right direction. Worryingly, a comparison of EPS to dividends suggests inadequate reinvestment in the business.

Good news in the Chairman’s Review - the ante-penultimate paragraph of the first page states that a woman was appointed Group General Counsel! Well done, CCA :grinning:. (Damn my snark!) The following page announces a share buy-back. Good stuff for shareholders, staying or going. Speaking of going, David Gonski is on the way out.

Woah, hold the presses! He’s being replaced by someone of the female variety!!! Ilana Atlas probably feels like she has the world on her shoulders by now.

And here’s a wild card I didn’t see coming: those five male MDs? They report to a female group MD. Well(ish) done, CCA and Alison Watkins.

Next we learn that growth is coming in the company’s ‘emerging market’ locations. So that’s going right, but OTOH Australian EBIT shrunk. It is tough, trying to walk and chew gum, I’ll give CCA that.

Okay, time to scroll ahead - pausing briefly to glance at the board. It’s a whitewash - only one of twelve is non-white. Think about those emerging markets, guys (mainly). They seem to take their duties seriously - most directors attended most meetings they were eligible to attend.

This is boring - -where are the financial statements? (Scroll scroll… scroll, scroll, scroll-scroll… found 'em!)

  1. COGS has gone up. More than it should? I need a calculator, and I’m lazy.
  2. Why so much in cash and current assets? Invest, guys - invest! Decrease in inventories is good. Derivatives is ‘worrying’.
  3. Oh boy - defined benefit superannuation. Any way to get that off the books (e.g. through ‘sale’)?
  4. Cashflow says it all - you have $6b in receipts from customers, but still $1.4b sitting around doing very little in the bank! And last year’s ‘long term deposits’ have been paid out.

Okay - it’s tired, I’m late, and I couldn’t be bothered going through all the notes (although they’ll show the related party transactions). Sorry(?), but this is the end of this comment for now. I may go back to that annual report, but probably not.

In fact, have a look at page 111 - it has related party disclosures. And to all, a good night.

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23

For those old enough to remember it in 1985, The Coca Cola Kid was a light weight and for some even entertaining story about Coca Cola sales in Australia. I cannot vouch for its legality having been uploaded on youtube, and for those just wanting to know about it, IMDB.

“This FILM is a WORK of FICTION. Neither the FILM nor its MAKERS have any CONNECTION with THE COCA-COLA COMPANY or any of its SUBSIDIARIES or AFFILIATES. THE COCA-COLA COMPANY has not licensed, sponsored or approved of this FILM in any way. All PERSONS, EVENTS and CHARACTERS in this FILM are entirely fictional. The FILM in no WAY purports to present an accurate ACCOUNT of THE COCA-COLA COMPANY, its SUBSIDIARIES or AFFILIATES in AUSTRALIA - PAST, PRESENT or FUTURE. COCA-COLA and COKE are registered TRADEMARKS which identify the same PRODUCT of THE COCA-COLA COMPANY. The DYNAMIC RIBBON DEVICE is also a TRADEMARK of THE COCA-COLA COMPANY.”

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24

When you talk about food sizes getting smaller loads of things seem to get more expensive.Even when i was shopping yesterday for a few items at iga i noticed large bag of cheese was just over $10. and the same for a 80g packet of roast beef the beef was $4.95 why such small sizes or large packs charging so much. and they sneakingly reduce the size all the time.

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25

Dang - you made me check that IMDB page!

Becker: [meeting a camel-mounted bush ranger] The last thing I ever expected to see up here was a camel.

Bushman: Yeah, I was riding a wombat up until this morning… broke a leg and had to shoot him.

And having read quotes like:

Terri: If we got sex out of the way, we could relax.

…I’m going to have to watch the movie.

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26

Yes i had heard schwepps has made the 1.25 lite bottle now is 1.1 litre. everything is kinda getting smaller.

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27

That’s when I stopped buying Schweppes.

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28

I buy kombucha, it used to be only in a 750 ml bottle (Remedy brand) now its in 1.25 or 700 from Coles in that size. I’m fed up with this waffling around. Like all those tricks of marketing its the price per litre or part thereof, that matters. I should resume making my own or Kefir - the water variety as it is very nice and of course size doesn’t matter.

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