Beverage major Coca-Cola has pegged the gains made from selling its three bottling plants in North India at $73 million.
In December, the company decided to divest bottling operations of Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt Ltd (HCCB) in four territories in North India to its existing franchise bottling partners -Moon Beverages, SLMG Beverages (Ladhani Group) and Kandhari Beverages. Under this agreement, it divested three plants at Dasna, Varanasi and Jammu.
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In its earnings release on Thursday Coca-Cola stated: “During the three months and year ended December 31, 2019, the company recorded a net gain of $73 million due to the refranchising of certain bottling operations in India”
Talking about the performance of international markets on an earnings call, James Quincey, Chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola Company said, “Turning to Asia, a concerted effort to recruit new consumers and drive horizontal expansion helped deliver five per cent organic revenue growth for the year. Across Asia, we added 1.4 million new customer outlets, led by our two largest markets in the region, China and India.”
In the Asia-Pacific region, “Unit case volume grew two per cent in the quarter due to broad-based growth across the majority of key markets,” the company stated.
Talking about its bottling investments, the beverage major said: “Operating income growth in the quarter was driven by strong underlying operating leverage, primarily in the company's bottling operations in India, and the acquisition of bottling operations in the Philippines, partially offset by items impacting comparability and currency headwinds.”