The Coca-Cola Company at Morgan Stanley Global Consumer Conference 2014 (Transcript)

Sandy Douglas, SVP, Global Chief Customer Officer and President, Coca-Cola North America Presents at Morgan Stanley Global Consumer Conference on November 19, 2014. Below is the webcast audio and the associated transcript of the event…

Listen to the Webcast Audio MP3: The Coca-Cola Company at Morgan Stanley Global Consumer Conference 2014

Dara Mohsenian – Analyst, Morgan Stanley

I’m Dara Mohsenian, Morgan Stanley’s beverage and household products analyst. We’re very excited to have Coca-Cola with us here today. Sandy Douglas will be presenting, the Senior Vice President at Coke, and Global Chief Customer Officer and President of Coca-Cola North America. It’s a great time to have Sandy here.

Clearly, Coke has a very successful long-term track record, but recent trends have been a bit more difficult the last couple of years and the company has responded in our minds with very significant positive changes announced recently. And North America is really on the forefront of a lot of those changes in terms of a pricing focus and mix focus under Sandy’s leadership recently, marketing boost and pending bottler refranchise.

In terms of format today, Sandy’s going to present for about half of the time, and then we’re going to move to a fireside chat. So, thanks for coming, Sandy.

Sandy Douglas – President, Coca-Cola North America

Good morning, everybody. I’m happy to be here this morning with you to tell you the progress that we’re making in the North America business, the company’s oldest market. And I think the best way to summarize the presentation — well actually I’ve got to start with this. Obviously, you’re cautioned by our forward-looking statement that can be found on our investor website.

The best way to describe it, is to say this. Our focus in North America, playing our role in the Coke global jigsaw puzzle, is to focus on driving economic profit and value creation for the company, and to do that with three main levers: accelerating top-line growth, margin expansion, and capital efficiency. That is our role in North America, and we’re going to do that. The action agenda is driving brand growth through an improving quantity and quality of all types of marketing, but led by great advertising.