CCEP - Coca-Cola Europacific Partners PLC (CCEP) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

2024-02-23 12:46:04 ET

Coca-Cola Europacific Partners PLC (CCEP)

Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call

February 23, 2024 07:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Sarah Willett - Vice President of Investor Relations & Corporate Strategy

Damian Gammell - Chief Executive Officer

Nik Jhangiani - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Edward Mundy - Jefferies

Matthew Ford - BNP Paribas

Lauren Lieberman - Barclays

Sanjeet Aujla - UBS

Eric Serotta - Morgan Stanley

Charlie Higgs - Redburn Atlantic

Simon Hales - Citi

Bonnie Herzog - Goldman Sachs

Presentation

Sarah Willett

Thank you for joining us. I'm here with Damian Gammell, our CEO; and Nik Jhangiani, our CFO. Before we begin with our opening remarks, reminder of our cautionary statements. This call contains forward-looking management comments and other statements affecting our outlook. These comments should be considered in conjunction with a cautionary language contained today, as well as the detailed cautionary statements found in reports about the UK, US, Dutch, and Spanish authorities.

A copy of this information is available on our website at www.cocacolaep.com. Prepared remarks will be made by Damian and Nik, we will then turn the call over to your questions. Unless otherwise stated, metrics presented today will be on a comparable and FX-neutral basis throughout. Following the call, a full transcript will be made available as soon as possible on our website.

I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Damian.

Damian Gammell

Thank you, Sarah, and good morning, everybody, and many thanks for joining us today. Before I begin, I just want to take this opportunity to thank all of my great colleagues at CCEP for their continued hard work and dedication to our customers and our business. And obviously, today, we welcome our new colleagues joining us from the Philippines, a great coke market and a great addition to the CCEP story. So welcome. And again, a big thank you to everybody at CCEP for your ongoing hard work.

2023 was another great year for CCEP. We continue to execute on our clear strategy. We have an unwavering commitment to stakeholder value creation. Our retail customers importantly continue to share in our success since 2017, we've created more value for them than any of our peers. And indeed, our tier store speaks for itself, validated by entering the NASDAQ 100 index late last year, we've paid a record dividend last year and now returned more than $6 billion to shareholders since 2016.

We are clear on the strategic choices we make. We're making the right decisions on our portfolio to drive a more efficient business for the long-term. And from today, as I mentioned, we welcome Coca-Cola Beverage Philippines to the CCEP family, the acquisition having now formally closed. This creates an even more diverse footprint for CCEP, provides the opportunity to leverage best practice and talent, including supporting our exciting transformation journey in Indonesia. I'll come back on bulk markets a little bit later. And as always, we are supported by our strongly aligned relationship with the Coca-Cola Company and our other brand partners.

So now to our full year key messages. I'm really pleased with our performance in 2023, delivering on all key metrics. We achieved solid top and bottom line growth, value share gains in the market and as always, an impressive free cash flow generation. Top line growth was price/mix led, but also supported by solid volume growth in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, where we also grew transactions at of volume.

We continue to invest for the long term in our portfolio, our digital journey, our supply chain, sustainability and, of course, in our people. We are a stronger and better business. We're more diverse and robust in our categories. They remain resilient despite some of the ongoing macroeconomic and geopolitical volatility. This collectively makes us well-placed for full year 2024 and beyond, underpinning our commitment to create continued shareholder value. As I've talked about before, we are focused on great people, great service, great beverages, all done sustainably.

So now let's take a brief look back on last year. Starting with our great people, we achieved an excellent score in our global engagement survey, position us comfortably ahead of our industry benchmark group. And we continue to be externally recognized as being a great and diverse place to work. This included our 2023 inaugural entry into the Forbes Top 200 World's Best Employers and the Top 100 World's Top Companies for Women....

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