Finimize - 🥤 Coke takes on inflation

Hi Reader, here's what you need to know for April 26th in 3:05 minutes.

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Today's big stories

Coca-Cola reported its highest quarterly revenue and profit since 2016
There’s one sector your portfolio could do with at a time like this, and it’s not getting enough attention – Read Now
Global military spending hit a record high last year

Pixel-Me-Up

What’s Going On Here?

Coca-Cola posted its highest quarterly revenue and profit since 2016 on Monday, and the drinks maker has already found its next untapped market: dead-eyed avatars.

What Does This Mean?

You’ve got to hand it to Coke: the rising cost of its drinks didn’t put loyal customers off last quarter, but the company still went out of its way to cater to an inflation-hobbled market. It released smaller bottles at more affordable prices (which, less altruistically, probably had higher profit margins), and subsequently sold 8% more products last quarter than the same time last year. That helped push up the company’s organic revenue – which strips out the effects of currency swings and acquisitions – by a better-than-expected 18%. And even though it announced that suspending operations in Russia – one of its fastest growing markets – would bruise growth, the company stuck with its full-year revenue target for 2022.

Why Should I Care?

The bigger picture: Consumer staples aren’t invincible.
Coke’s results aren’t exactly surprising: it’s a consumer staples company that sells products people tend to buy no matter what. But Coke acknowledged that there’s only so far that it can put its prices up before customers put the bottle down, while admitting that even higher costs – of sugar, aluminum, and more – were on the way. Fellow staple Kellogg’s said similar things earlier this year, suggesting the typically recession-proof sector could eventually see profits melt away like yesterday’s soggy cornflakes.

Zooming out: Epic marketing, n00bs.
It’s good to know that if you’re ever feeling virtually parched, you can just slake your virtual thirst with a refreshing virtual Coke: the company announced earlier this month that it would be launching a new drink in the metaverse. But not to worry if you’re one of the dweebs still hanging out in the real world: you could get your hands on the super-limited edition “pixel-flavored” drink when it launches next month.

You might also like: How to protect your portfolio against rising inflation.

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Analyst Take

Why Is Everyone Ignoring Utilities Stocks?

Stéphane Renevier, Analyst

What’s Going On Here?

Utilities stocks are in a weird place right now.

They’ve barely outperformed the broader market since the start of the year, even as the prices of electricity, gas, and the other services they offer have skyrocketed.

Now, there are good reasons for that. For one thing, they might be making more money, but they’re paying more for the raw materials they use too.

But investors have been so pessimistic about the short-term outlook for utilities that they’ve arguably pushed their valuations too low.

So that’s today’s Insight: why utilities have a lot more potential than they’re getting credit for, and Goldman Sachs’s picks for the best stocks available.

Read or listen to the Insight here

Is crypto mining its way to a brighter future?

The crypto specialists at Tradestation just released new data that suggests mining could be ready to shine.

After all, TradeStation reported that top bitcoin miners Marathon and Riot Blockchain saw their stocks rally by a combined 26% in late March – their biggest weekly gain in over a year.

TradeStation ‘s findings suggest that this could bode well for digital assets on the whole. And not just that: it thinks bitcoin could actually be getting less volatile – as the chart above shows.

TradeStation used its very own TradingView tool to create that graph – just one of the platform’s many trading tools you can use to spot future investment opportunities.

Better still, sign up today and you’ll get a $150 joining bonus.

Find Out More