Filed under: Rumors, Competitive strategy, PepsiCo (PEP), Stocks to Buy

We all know the soft drink giant owns popular brands like Pepsi, Mountain Dew and Gatorade, the perfect complement to a snack food portfolio that includes Frito Lay, Ruffles and Doritos. However, you may not realize what those brands mean in dollars and cents.

Over the past year, PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) has raked in $37 billion in sales. And powerful economies of scale have helped margins remain strong (despite higher commodity costs), meaning a good chunk of incremental sales growth from fast-growing foreign markets has flowed through to the bottom line. In fact, the company currently generates more than $1 billion in free cash flow per quarter.

Much of that cash is handed over to shareholders. The firm’s streak of uninterrupted dividend increases is not measured in years, but decades.

Pepsi has continued to prosper, particularly overseas where revenue and operating income both jumped around 20% last quarter. Meanwhile, the shares have been marching higher as well, climbing nearly 20% to reach Monday’s close of $77.37 — not far from my $80 fair value estimate.

Continue reading Pepsi hasn’t lost its fizz

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Stocks Money News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.