Coke’s broadening palate drives sales

Coca-Cola upped its revenue expectations for the year as new lines of healthier drinks and coffees win over fans.

The world’s largest drink company posted second quarter earnings of $2.61 billion, or 61 cents. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, came to 63 cents per share, which is a penny better than expected, according to analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research.

Revenue was $10 billion, also beating expectations.

Shares of Coca-Cola Co. rose 2% before the opening bell Tuesday after the Atlanta company projected organic revenue growth of 5% for the year. That’s equal to its growth in 2018, and better than the 4% organic revenue growth the company initially forecast in January.

Coke said it still expects full year earnings growth between 1% and negative 1%.

Coke said its first energy drink, Coca-Cola Energy, launched in Europe during the quarter and saw some sales success. The company plans to expand sales of the new product to 20 markets by the end of this year.

Coke’s acquisition of British coffee shop chain Costa Coffee — which was completed earlier this year — is also paying off. New drinks like Coca-Cola Plus Coffee and chilled, low-sugar Costa Coffee beverages saw growth in the April-June period.

Sales of Coke’s namesake soft drinks rose 3% in the quarter, thanks to double-digit growth of Coca-Cola Zero Sugar and new products like Coca-Cola Orange Vanilla.

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Portions of this story were generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on KO at https://www.zacks.com/ap/KO

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