Coca-Cola Has A Sustainable Competitive Advantage And The Vision To Maintain It (NYSE:KO) (2024)

Researchers have shown it is very hard to pick companies that will outperform the broader market. One area that I believe to still be fertile hunting ground, to acquire cash flows at below market prices, is the far future.

If you are able to adopt a 10+ year view and select companies with sustainable competitive advantages, you have a recipe for sweet returns. Picking companies that will still be around after 10+ years or preferably longer is not easy. However some of them are hiding in plain view, like the world's largest nonalcoholic beverage company The Coca-Cola Coompany (NYSE:KO). Insiders know this as they have increased their stakes by 24% over the past year.

Coca-Cola sells a variety of sparkling and still beverages. It generates 60% of its revenue and about 80% of its operating profit from outside the United States. So it also helps to diversify your portfolio. co*ke's core brands include Coca-Cola, Sprite, Dasani, Powerade, and Minute Maid.

Distribution Network

Coca-Cola's owns a unrivalled distribution network that spans over 200 countries. An infrastructure that is extremely difficult and costly for new entrants to acquire. If it were just costly it wouldn't be a sustainable competitive advantage but this distribution network is the basis for an economy of scale advantage that makes it very hard to get your foot in between the door.

The Brand

If you occasionally read my articles you might be aware that I have very little faith in company's basing their competitive advantage on a brand. You can always build a brand given enough capital or at least encroach upon its territory. Even a firmly positioned brand already in place requires investment to keep it valuable. These costs drive excess returns down. If they don't, it becomes feasible for competitors to start building similar brands. You see it happening all the time.

In the end, the brand drives little additional return. However if you can buy into a built up brand at prices far below what it would cost to build it, you still have an interesting proposition. I think right now, the Coca-Cola brand can be considered, temporarily discounted.

2020 Vision

Tell me, how many companies do you know that have a 2020 vision in place? Coca-Cola does and this shows the long term view management is taking. Perhaps having Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.A) as a long term shareholder influenced company culture. No matter how it was developed, this increases my confidence the company is focused on the right things.

Coca-Cola Has A Sustainable Competitive Advantage And The Vision To Maintain It (NYSE:KO) (1)

The system priorities that are of vital importance

In the 2020 vision there are a few system priorities that are of vital importance. I'm very happy Coca-Cola has put so much emphasis on these and think this will take them a long way to stay dominant.

  1. Focus on creating a competitive cost advantage across the entire supply chain
  2. Focus on operating the lowest cost manufacturing and logistics business in every market while maintaining quality standards
  3. In addition the company realizes its size of operations is crucial to create these economies of scale


When management focuses on what is important it doesn't matter what the food and drink trends are. If a certain drink is a hit with consumers, like Innocent (read the earlier article for all details), Coca-Cola can just buy it and roll it out through its unrivalled distribution network with its economies of scale.

This will make economic sense for the acquired company and for Coca-Cola. Creating value for shareholders of both parties. The ones left holding the wrong end of the stick will be the competition. However it needs to be said that main rival Pepsico Inc. (PEP) is a strong competitor that lacks the same scale but can get close and keeps the pressure on Coca-Cola. Smaller firms can't match the scale of Coca-Cola's distribution network and Monster Beverage Corp (MNST) even distributes through Coca-Cola's channels.

Coca-Cola Has A Sustainable Competitive Advantage And The Vision To Maintain It (NYSE:KO) (2)

Valuation

On May 28 I wrote an article called 5 reasons to overweight Coca-Cola. Since that day the price of a share has come down from $42. Coca-Cola reported some numbers that were a disappointment to the market.

But Coca-Cola outperformed the market over the last 10 years and even though the gap has been narrowed,it is a favorite to repeat this feat over the next 10 years in my book. In 2024 analysts on Seeking Alpha and elsewhere will still be writing about Coca-Cola and its competitive advantage.

Coca-Cola Has A Sustainable Competitive Advantage And The Vision To Maintain It (NYSE:KO) (3)

Discounted Cash Flow

In line with my current habit of evaluating companies with a DCF calculation, I've run the numbers on Coca-Cola. Because of Coca-Cola's significant competitive advantage, I've modeled cash flow as far as 10 years into the future. Counting on its ability to stay competitive over a long period of time.

To determine a realistic rate of return; I've also examined the past ten years of data on earnings growth and net income growth. In addition I gave weight to the company's history of return on equity and returns on invested capital. The latter records are truly outstanding.

After weighing these factors I've arrived at a net present value of ~$45 dollar per share. A premium of 12.5% over today's share price.

Conclusion

At ~$40 a share Coca-Cola is discounted as much as 12.5%. With a P/E of 20, a history of growing earnings by an average of 10% a year while returning large amounts of money to shareholders through buybacks and a dividend of 2.8%, I view Coca-Cola as a great investment.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

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Coca-Cola Has A Sustainable Competitive Advantage And The Vision To Maintain It (NYSE:KO) (4)

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15 years of investing and I feel like a rookie in his first year at the academy. My roots are in the value school but over time I've learned to respect different approaches. I'm interested in what quants do, options traders do, and even what WallStreetBets is doing (keep your friends close and...)

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Coca-Cola Has A Sustainable Competitive Advantage And The Vision To Maintain It (NYSE:KO) (2024)

FAQs

Does Coca-Cola have sustainable competitive advantage? ›

Coca-Cola is a company with sustainable competitive advantage. The company is innovative and has an extensive business model with boasts of a sustainable distribution network.

What is Coca-Cola's vision for sustainability? ›

Our vision is to craft the brands and choice of drinks that people love, to refresh them in body & spirit. And done in ways that create a more sustainable business and better shared future that makes a difference in people's lives, communities and our planet.

What company has a sustainable competitive advantage? ›

Examples of Sustainable Competitive Advantages

Strong brand reputation: Customers are more likely to choose companies like Coca-Cola, Nike and Apple because of their positive associations and perceptions.

What are the competitive advantages of Pepsi and Coca-Cola? ›

While the Coca Cola company enjoys a large market share, solid consumer loyalty, and a broad portfolio, PepsiCo also enjoys an extensive global production and distribution networks and a more comprehensive product mix.

How does Coca Cola have a competitive advantage? ›

Coca-cola effectively uses a low pricing strategy a lot to penetrate new markets that are very price-conscious. They set the prices around the same level as the competitors to enable Coca-cola to be distinct but affordable. They do this to beat the competition on price and raise the awareness of the Coca-Cola brand.

What gives Coca Cola its competitive advantage? ›

Coca Cola has a large product portfolio of which several are billion dollar brands which earn it more than a billion each year. Many of them are market leading brands that enjoy very high level popularity. A larger product portfolio caters to the taste and preferences of various customer segments.

Is Coca-Cola really sustainable? ›

BIGGEST POLLUTER IN THE WORLD

Coca-Cola, with more than 500 brands, sells more than 100 billion plastic bottles every year. This equates to 200,000 bottles a minute. Of these, an unrecoverable large part ends up in the environment, and definitely in places where waste is not collected and processed.

What is the mission vision and value of the Coca-Cola company? ›

Satisfy our beverage consumers with excellence. Become the best total global beverage leader, generating sustainable economic, social, and environmental value by managing innovative, winning business models with the best employees in the world. They guide our behavior day by day.

What is the vision of sustainability? ›

A sustainability vision is a top-line statement of what sustainability means to your business. It may seem like something that can be can skipped, but it's a crucial underpinning of any work towards building a more ethical brand.

What is the best example of sustainable competitive advantage? ›

A well-known example of a company with a sustainable competitive advantage is Walmart. Walmart maintains a sustainable competitive advantage in part because its strategies are specific to its organization and these strategies are known for creating a gap between Walmart's performance and that of its competitors.

What are the 4 sustainable competitive advantages? ›

The idea here is that if a firm is to maintain sustainable competitive advantage, it must control a set of exploitable resources that have four critical characteristics. These resources must be (1) valuable, (2) rare, (3) imperfectly imitable (tough to imitate), and (4) nonsubstitutable.

How do you explain sustainable competitive advantage? ›

Sustainable competitive advantages are a set of assets, characteristics, or capabilities that allow an organization to meet its customer needs better than its competition can. Sustainable competitive advantages are difficult to duplicate or replicate.

What are three competitive advantages? ›

The three main types of competitive advantages are differentiation, cost advantages, and focus advantages.

What is the Coca-Cola competition? ›

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are two of the world's largest beverage companies, and their rivalry is one of the most well-known in business.

What are three major competitive advantages? ›

There are three main types of sustainable competitive advantage: differentiation, cost leadership, and focus advantage.

How does Pepsi have a competitive advantage? ›

For example, to compete against Coca-Cola products, PepsiCo offers low prices based on low operating costs. The company also sometimes has special promotional offers with discounted prices. On the other hand, PepsiCo uses broad differentiation as its secondary generic competitive strategy.

What is the main competitive advantage of a company? ›

A competitive advantage is anything that gives a company an edge over its competitors, helping it attract more customers and grow its market share. A competitive advantage can take three primary forms: Cost advantage–producing a product or providing a service at a lower cost than competitors.

What makes a competitive advantage? ›

Competitive advantages are attributed to a variety of factors including cost structure, branding, the quality of product offerings, the distribution network, intellectual property, and customer service.

What is the focus strategy of Coca-Cola? ›

For its focused low cost strategy, it has defined a specific line of beverage products through which it can target a specific market and achieve low cost by manufacturing these products under highly efficient manufacturing processes. The Coca-Cola is manufactured and promoted under focused low cost strategy.

What does Coca-Cola do to attract customers? ›

Sponsorships: Sponsorships are one of the most widely used methods to attract most customers. Coca-Cola is also one of those well-recognized brands for its sponsorships. Coca-Cola provides world-wide sponsorships for organizations like the Olympics, FIFA, NBA, and also television shows like American Idol.

What is the strategic positioning of Coca-Cola? ›

Positioning of Coca-Cola

With Coca-Cola, it positions its products as thirst-quenching and refreshing. The products they offer are said to bring joy to its target market. The drinks and other products from Coca-Cola are also associated with having a great time with family and friends while enjoying daily life.

Why is Coca-Cola a sustainable company? ›

Design. Making 100% of our packaging recyclable globally by 2025—and using at least 50% recycled material in our packaging by 2030.

Does Coca-Cola have poor sustainability? ›

Coca-Cola has been declared the worst plastic polluter in the world. It pumps out 200,000 bottles a minute, an equivalent of 3 million tons of plastic packaging a year.

How Coca-Cola strives for a sustainable world without waste? ›

Collect and recycle a bottle or can for each one we sell by 2030. We are working towards improving local recycling systems where post-consumer cartons, cans, and bottles are efficiently recycled.

What is Coca-Cola's current Mission Statement? ›

The Coca-Cola Company purpose remains clear: To refresh the world and make a difference. This purpose is uniquely us. It's why we exist, and it's needed now, more than ever.

What are the mission vision values and goals of a company? ›

The mission statement communicates the purpose of the organization. The vision statement provides insight into what the company hopes to achieve or become in the future. The values statement reflects the organization's core principles and ethics.

What is an example of mission vision and values of a company? ›

Mission statement: We strive to offer our customers the lowest possible prices, the best available selection, and the utmost convenience. Vision statement: To be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online.

What is an example of a sustainable vision statement? ›

We are committed to a sustainable future and to improving the social, economic and environmental well being of the community. We are dedicated to environmental improvements that foster a sustainable future and lead to social and economical improvements in the community we do business.

What is sustainability vision of a company? ›

Sustainability vision theory means a vision should convey enduring values and a lasting higher-order purpose, so as to guide employees and all other stakeholders to what is really meaningful to them in their path toward realizing the vision.

What is the vision of sustainable goals? ›

What are the Sustainable Development Goals? The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as the Global Goals, were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

What are the 7 sources of sustainable competitive advantage? ›

There are eight main sources of sustainable competitive advantage, including Brand Loyalty, Location, Scale, Intellectual Property, Innovation, Proprietary Information, Network Effects, and Lock-up Supply. Let's go over them in a bit more detail.

What is a real life example of competitive advantage? ›

One of the most popular competitive advantage example of companies is Walmart, which sells branded items at low costs. They rely on a cost leadership strategy to minimize spending and offer 'everyday low prices' by leveraging economies of scale.

What are the benefits of sustainability? ›

Sustainability maintains the health and biocapacity of the environment. Sustainability supports the well-being of individuals and communities. Sustainability promotes a better economy where there is little waste and pollution, fewer emissions, more jobs, and a better distribution of wealth.

What are the six competitive advantages? ›

There are six items that are considered very important to competitive advantage. They are: location, selection, service, quality, price, speed, and turnaround.

What are the four 4 strategies for competitive advantage? ›

The four primary methods of gaining a competitive advantage are cost leadership, differentiation, defensive strategies and strategic alliances.

What is strongest competitive advantage? ›

The strongest competitive advantage is a strategy that that cannot be imitated by other companies. Competitive advantage can be also viewed as any activity that creates superior value above its rivals. A company wants the gap between perceived value and cost of the product to be greater than the competition.

What are the 5 types of competitive advantage? ›

Five types of competitive advantage
  • Cost-based advantage. This is the most obvious way of achieving competitive advantage. ...
  • Advantage from a differentiated product or service. ...
  • First mover advantage. ...
  • Time-based advantage. ...
  • Technology-based advantage.

What are the competitive risks of Coca-Cola? ›

The company has more than five significant risks that impact the company's business performance, cash flow, and financial condition. The risks include; changing consumer mindset, continuously evolving competitive and commercial landscape, financial risk, strategic stakeholder, and quality and food safety.

Who is in competition with Coca-Cola? ›

Coca-Cola and Pepsi compete in several categories, including soda beverages, health and energy drinks, bottled water, and juices.

Who are the 3 main competitors in the soda industry? ›

Multinational companies facing the high competition in the soft drink market comprise The Coca-Cola Corporation, Pepsi-Co. Inc. and Dr Pepper Snapple. In this segment, The Coca-Cola Corporation and PepsiCo have been long-term competitors for ages.

What are 3 competitive advantages that make a business successful? ›

superior – the offer must be better than any other technologies or processes which provide the same benefit. communicable – customers must see the benefit and communicate it to others easily. protected – the difference must not be easily copied by competitors. affordable – the customer must be able to afford the ...

What is the difference between competitive advantage and sustainable competitive advantage? ›

A competitive advantage is a quality or an attribute that the company uses to create this point of difference from other businesses. A sustainable advantage is one that the company perfects and operates over a long period to represent the difference of the organization.

Is there a sustainable competitive advantage? ›

Sustainable competitive advantage occurs when a company consistently outperforms its competitors in the same industry or field. Most often, companies with this type of advantage create a value for their customers that's superior when compared to other businesses.

What is having a sustainable competitive advantage? ›

Sustainable competitive advantages are a set of assets, characteristics, or capabilities that allow an organization to meet its customer needs better than its competition can. Sustainable competitive advantages are difficult to duplicate or replicate.

What are the three benefits of a sustainable competitive advantage? ›

3 Types of Sustainable Competitive Advantages

The three main types of competitive advantages are differentiation, cost advantages, and focus advantages.

What are the three sources of sustainable competitive advantage? ›

What are the Sources of Sustainable Competitive Advantage? The sustainable competitive advantage sources for any company include Brand Loyalty, Innovation, Proprietary Information Scale, Intellectual Property, Innovation, Network- effect.

How do you make sustainability a competitive advantage? ›

Five key steps to create and execute a sustainability and ESG strategy
  1. Define stakeholder expectations. To deliver long-term value to shareholders, companies need to understand and respond to the needs of all the communities they serve. ...
  2. Establish commitments and ambitions. ...
  3. Infuse ESG into organizational strategy.
Aug 19, 2021

Why is sustainable competitive advantage difficult? ›

There are four basic reasons why maintaining a competitive edge has become so difficult: lack of differentiation. well informed buyers in the marketplace. the rise of different types of competition.

Which is better competitive advantage or sustainable competitive advantage? ›

A competitive advantage is anything that allows a business to outperform other businesses in the same industry or sector (its competitors). A sustainable competitive advantage is one that lasts in the longer term.

What is sustainable competitive advantage quotes? ›

The only sustainable competitive advantage is an organization's ability to learn faster than the competition.

What is competitive advantage and why is it important? ›

A competitive advantage enables a company to perform better than its competitors. It refers to factors allowing a company to produce services or goods better or for less expense than the competition, which may generate more sales or higher profit margins.

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