QUESTION: Can you give us your assessment of the macro, the consumer environment, particularly markets like Russia or eastern Europe where trends have been pretty weak?
RESPONSE: Think of four different quadrants as far as the consumer sentiment is concerned. On the top left quadrant, you've got Europe, you've got North America and maybe a couple of other economies where we will probably be experiencing resets in terms of the consumer psyche where they will probably do things differently than they have done in the past and mostly related to, in terms of durable consumers, consumer consumption habits, but also in general. There will be a reset in the mind.
And then you've got on the top right, you've got China, India, other parts of Brazil, where I think there will be a very strong, quick rebound.
Then you've got on the bottom left quadrant a Japan stagnation and then you've got ... eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine, on the bottom right quadrant, which is basically I call volatility, more zigs than zags. It could come could back quickly, then could go back down quickly.
I think we're in for a few years of zigs and zags for Russia, eastern Europe and so forth.
A full transcript of the conference call can be found here.
Also, here is a summary of Coke's 2Q results from the 2Q09 earnings press release.
Adam
Long position in KO
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