Ramon Laguarta
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Your line is open
Okay. You guys got a lot, the framework there. We are pleased with the acceleration of the business. Going into the year, our priority number one was to accelerate top line across the company. If you think about the enterprise, we grew 3.1% in organic net revenue in Q3. That is the fastest rate of growth since Q4 2023. Clearly, an important milestone for us to cross the 3%. We like the way that growth came, which was volume led. If you think, as Steve mentioned, a 3% growth in beverages, global beverage volume, and a 4% in snacks globally, the snacks business, not the foods. We had some large business in South Africa that are very heavy kind of commodity type that impacted the overall global. Good, I would say, very positive threshold. We crossed the threshold at 3%, and obviously, it is on its way to the long-term 4% that we want to get to. International was a big driver of that, and we are very pleased with the momentum that we have been building on international now for many quarters. Dara, you mentioned weather and some tactic, I think it is much more structural. I think we are becoming much more competitive in both foods and beverages in more markets. The scale of the business now is to the point that we put on the remarks that is year-to-date, international is already 45% of our profit, so that we keep building it. It is broad, it is broad-based. It is in Europe, it is in Middle East, it is in Asia, it is in LatAm. Good performance overall. We are not satisfied with the performance in the U.S., and as Steve mentioned, I would provide some nuance, though. The volume bet that we made in snacks North America, especially with the price reset, we are happy with the turnaround in the volume performance. If you think about last year, that business was low single digit negative volume growth. This year, we are low single digit positive volume growth. That is a major turnaround, and it is the price, but it is also some of the innovation, some of the new platforms we are building aligned with the portfolio of the future. Good progress there. We are going to keep investing in those platforms going forward. I think we can accelerate the category, where we gain share in volume now for multiple quarters in foods North America and snacks North America. We are starting to turn that into value share as well. That was the playbook. As you said, less volume growth than what we had initially anticipated. It had to do with the consumer environment. It had to do with some of the commercial execution. That is getting better, and we feel good. We do not feel good about the beverage business. I think the beverage business, as we put in our remarks, we are competing well in some platforms like hydration, like energy. We are not competing well in soft drinks, so we are putting all the urgency of the business and the focus in improving our performance in soft drinks. We are cutting costs in many areas of the business, including corporate unallocated, including overhead costs everywhere, to invest back into the beverage business, also the food business in North America. We're looking at any other opportunities to improve our execution, because I think there's also an element of execution that can improve. That is the state of the union there. For us, priority, as Steve was saying, going into next year, is to maintain the top-line momentum. That's why we continue to invest in the business, double-digit A&M in both businesses in the U.S. this quarter. We continue to invest in A&M going forward. We want to enter 2027 with a lot of momentum and make sure that we manage the business for the long term, which is what we're doing.