Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP) Q3 2025
2025-10-27 08:45:00
Chethan Mallela:
Good morning, and welcome, everyone. We appreciate you taking the time to join us today, both in-person in New York City and over the webcast. Before walking through the agenda, let me first draw your attention to the slide in recognition of the forward-looking statements we'll make today. Please also keep in mind that we will be citing non-GAAP financial measures throughout our remarks and in the presentation that is posted on our website. Now let's discuss what to expect during our time together. Our Chairman, Bob Gamgort, will kick off the formal presentation with welcome remarks, followed by our CEO, Tim Cofer, discussing our value creation framework and the strategic rationale for the JDE Peet's acquisition and our planned separation. Tim and Olivier Lemire, our newly appointed President of U.S. Coffee, will then walk through our future Global Coffee Co business in more detail. After a short break, Eric Gorli, our President of U.S. Refreshment Beverages, will discuss the future Beverage Co; SVP of Finance, Jane Gelfand, will provide an update on financials and capital structure; and Roger Johnson, our Chief Transformation and Supply Chain Officer, will walk through our integration and separation plans. Finally, Tim will provide an overview of Q3 earnings and share some final thoughts. In total, the prepared remarks portion of the day should take around 2.5 hours. We'll then break for 45 minutes to allow the in-person attendees to explore our product showcase, and then we'll return for a Q&A panel. We expect to conclude our event and the webcast at around 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. We hope it will be a productive and insightful session for you. Let me kick things off by welcoming our Chairman, Bob Gamgort, to the stage, and he will introduce the rest of the Board members joining us today. Over to you, Bob.
Robert Gamgort:
Good morning. It's great to see everyone. Thanks for joining us here. We've got updates to provide on KDP in general on the transaction that we announced in August. We also have some great Q3 results to talk about. So we don't want to forget those either. As Chethan mentioned, we've got a number of directors here today. And what I'd like to do is just take a minute to introduce them. They are mostly are all located to our right over here. Pam Patsley is our Lead Independent Director. She chairs our Remuneration Committee. She's our longest-standing director, having been at Dr. Pepper Snapple Board prior to joining KDP. Tim Cofer, our CEO, you're going to hear a lot from him today. Juliette Hickman, right over there. Juliette serves on our Audit Committee and one of our very newest directors, Mike Van de Ven, who also serves on our Audit Committee. And the directors are going to be available to interact with you during breaks and during the product demonstration, so please engage with them. Pam and I are going to come back on stage with the management team at the end of the day and answer questions as part of the formal Q&A session. So my purpose today is really to represent the perspective of the Board, and I want to kick off today by offering five points that I think the Board would like to emphasize at the start here. And first of all, KDP has a long and consistent track record of delivering strong results. Since formation, 6% revenue CAGR, 11% EPS CAGR, and that places us in the top tier of CPG peers. But from a Board perspective, our job is not to look backwards and congratulate ourselves on good results. It's really to position the company for future success. And that's why we have conviction in this acquisition and separation. What's important is for you to have more detailed information, more insight in our thought process. And that's what we want to do today so that you can come along with us on our journey on how we came to that conclusion and why we continue to have great confidence in the value creation potential of the transactions. Having said that, we heard your feedback. We certainly noted the market reaction and they made it really clear to us that we needed a day like today to better explain the strategy and the thought process behind it, as I said. We also recognized we needed to change some of the executional elements of the transaction. You saw the press release today. Those are good developments, and we'll talk about more optionality going forward. And we really think that we're on the right track and are being very responsive to your feedback. So going from today to this future end state requires great execution. So in addition to talking about the end state, we need to give you confidence in execution. And we'll do that today by showing you our integration plans. But I think more importantly, we're going to give you exposure to more people on our management team who are actually responsible for that and for running the company and making sure that we continue to deliver great results like we just did in Q3. So you'll meet them. And then we're going to be flexible. I mean, you've seen that we've been flexible since announcement. We're going to look for other opportunities to maximize value. And we'll talk about some of the areas where we're thinking about flexibility going forward throughout this presentation. So I think there are three points that I would like to comment on before I turn it over to Tim because I'm in a unique position to do this. So, first of all, is the global coffee category. So you'll find it interesting, but the left-hand side there is my trophy from 1985. This was an on-campus competition sponsored by General Foods, and it was called the Maxwell House brand management challenge, and it was about the coffee category. And my team won it, which is why we have the trophy. It sparked my career in CPG. It also is how I entered General Foods, and it also started a 40-year relationship with the coffee category. So I've seen it over an extended period of time. So, there's no question in the post-COVID period, we saw a slowdown in the global coffee category. We also are beginning to see signs of recovery. And what typically happens is a three-year window starts to become reality. We never thought that this was anything more than temporary or cyclical. It's not structural. And if you look at the category over 40 years, you will see periods of time where the category slowed down only to accelerate rapidly afterwards. And that's exactly where we think we are right now. We're in the beginning of a recovery period. Over that 40-year period, the volume growth of coffee is a 2% CAGR. And we know that in CPG, volume growth, real growth is scarce and important. But it's undeniable when you look at a 40-year trend on coffee, the trajectory continues to be going in the right direction. Actually, Tim has a chart that will show you that very, very clearly. So let's think about this. If you believe it's cyclical, and we're in the beginning of a recovery. We have a strong business in KDP coffee anchored by Keurig. We really believe to succeed going forward in coffee, you got to be global. We'll talk a bit about that. So if you want to form a global coffee powerhouse, the best partner is JDE Peet's. This is a scarce and valuable asset. It's a high quality, and honestly, there is no alternative other than matching these two businesses together. And when you see the fit, it is striking how much each business complements each other. And we're confident that together, we will form a formidable global coffee competitor. So that gets to another question that came up from time to time in the past couple of weeks, which is what happened to the investment thesis? How has it changed? So I'll start with a real obvious comment, which is since we put the companies together seven years ago, a lot has changed in the world. Competitors, consumers, our customers in the way they think about it. Certainly, the macro environment is different. So I think it's natural and necessary to evolve our strategy as well. In 2018, the play was a really good insight at that point in time. We took two subscale beverage companies who are solely focused on North America. We brought them together to create a beverage challenger of scale, and it was wildly successful. If you take a look at what's happened over the past seven years, I gave you the aggregate financial performance. But beyond that, the strength of each individual company enhanced significantly over that time. So if we're going to put together these two companies to form a global coffee competitor, and we'll talk about why global is important later, we could run them together. It is an option to run them as one company, but we think it is optimal to separate them. One company focused on a global opportunity, which is a very different management mindset. Obviously, on one category, coffee across the entire world of all forms and the other to continue to run this very valuable North American refreshment beverage growth machine that has significant runway still in front of it. It also gives investors a choice in two different styles of running these companies. More to come on that, but it really shows that there was this natural evolution that started in 2018 and is our choice to run them separately. You're going to hear from a number of speakers. And I think the third area where I can offer unique perspective is my confidence in the management team. Tim, who you're going to hear from right after me, will run the combined businesses. And then upon separation, he will be the CEO of our stand-alone beverage company. Olivier, Eric and Roger, I have worked with since the take private of Keurig in 2016. My experience with Jane goes back further than that. Jane was at Barclays in 2012, and she was part of the team that supported the IPO of Pinnacle Foods, where I was CEO. And the reason I give you that time period of my experience is I have seen this team deliver across a wide variety of challenging situations time and time again. I have the highest level of confidence in their ability to execute, and that gives me confidence that we can get from where we are today to an outstanding end game when we separate these companies. So, with that, let me turn it over to Tim Cofer, our CEO. He'll take you through a significant amount of content along with all these other presenters. And as I said upfront, I look forward to being back up here at the end with Pam, and we'll be happy to answer your questions at that time. So, Tim? Over to you.
Timothy Cofer:
All right. Good morning, everyone. Great to see all of you again. I hope you've had a chance already to enjoy some of the amazing beverages that we have across these stations for those of you that are here live with us at NASDAQ. I can imagine the coffee stations were hit pretty hard it being a Monday morning and all. So, building on Bob's comments, we have strong conviction in the strategic and financial merits of this acquisition of JDE Peet's and the subsequent separation into these two pure-play companies. We are creating North America's most agile beverage challenger and a true global coffee powerhouse. At the same time, as Bob said, I have spent the last two months absorbing shareholder feedback, and of course, the initial market reaction post the announcement. And I recognize that there are a few areas of concern as well as some open questions that would benefit from more explanation. That is why we're here today. So, in my discussions with each of you, I think the questions have largely spanned these four areas. Why is JDE Peet's the right acquisition? What does the separation into Beverage Co and Global Coffee Co. uniquely enable? How will we optimize KDP's capital structure post the acquisition and establish appropriate balance sheets for each of these separate entities? And how will we ensure that KDP delivers with success throughout this process. Over the next couple of hours, we will answer these questions and more. Now before diving into these topics, let's reground you in our business and our strategy. We operate with a sole focus on beverages. I truly believe this is the best sector in CPG. It's large. It generates $1 trillion at a global level. It's growing. We expect a mid-single-digit CAGR in the coming years, supported by structural tailwinds to sustain that momentum. It's dynamic with ever-evolving consumer preferences that create endless opportunities to drive consistent growth through innovation, through mix management, through premiumization. It's financially attractive, strong profitability, compelling industry return profiles. So we understand this beverage industry very well, and we have a proven and successful value creation strategy. At the core of this, as you see on this slide, our five pillars. They serve as our blueprint for how we drive sustainable, consistent, compelling performance over time. The first three of those are commercial priorities, broadly geared around the top line. The true enterprise enablers support that growth in a profitable, efficient and high-return way. Let me touch very briefly on each one, championing consumer-obsessed brand building. This means being consumer-led, consumer-centric as we nurture and expand our iconic brands, shaping our now and next beverage portfolio to access growth accretive white spaces via our flexible build, buy or partner model, amplifying our route-to-market advantage, strengthening our multichannel leadership with differentiated distribution capabilities, generating fuel for growth by reinforcing a continuous productivity mindset and a lean overhead operating model and, of course, dynamically allocating capital to support that long-term value creation. How have we applied that to our businesses? Let's start with Refreshment Beverage. Our results speak for themselves. Our flagship Dr. Pepper, we've turned this into the CSD category's innovation and marketing leader. We've driven nearly a decade of consistent market share gains, and we've established ourselves as the #2 market share position in the category. We've thoughtfully built out meaningful incremental growth platforms in white spaces that we previously didn't compete in like energy and sports hydration. And we've strengthened our competitively advantaged route-to-market DSD network through capital-efficient territory expansions through brand partnerships and capability investments. The result of the efforts you see at the bottom of the page, a high single-digit net sales CAGR since 2018. And we're just getting started with business momentum that should support continued sustained growth into the future. What about in coffee? Look, we know the operating backdrop in U.S. Coffee has been more dynamic over the last few years, particularly in that post-COVID world and the multiple commodity cycles like the one we're in now. And yet, we've made important strides. We've reinforced Keurig's position as the #1 North American single-serve system across both brewers and pods. We've extended our portfolio into exciting growth areas like cold and super premium. We've continued to expand the number of households that brew Keurig every morning now at 47 million strong and growing. And we are preparing to catalyze the next chapter of our growth agenda with disruptive innovation. We've invested in unique assets that drive competitive advantage, including our differentiated and highly profitable direct-to-consumer e-commerce capabilities. All of these initiatives have supported a steady low single-digit sales CAGR in recent years, consistent with our go-forward expectations. So through these commercial achievements as well as robust productivity and thoughtful cash deployment, we've delivered strong results at an enterprise level. Since KDP's formation in 2018, as you see on this slide, we've grown net sales at a 6% CAGR. We've grown adjusted EPS at an 11% CAGR, while also returning meaningful cash to our shareholders. Now at the same time, both our businesses and the external environment have changed in significant ways since 2018. Just as Bob discussed earlier, the original merger thesis was really predicated on combining what at the time was two subscale businesses. We did that to create a North American beverage challenger. What's happened in the last seven years? Our refreshment beverage business is no longer subscale. In fact, it is the same size today as total KDP at merger. Our actions to evolve our ref bev portfolio to strengthen our route to market have also structurally raised the organic profile of this business relative to 2018. And in coffee, while we've made progress, we acknowledge that the category growth trend has fallen short of our expectations in recent years. And while we're the clear leader in North American single-serve, that business is arguably subscale in particular, relative to our global competitors that can leverage broader advantages in technology, in sourcing and who can participate across the entire global coffee category. So as a Board and a management team, we observed these changes since 2018. We discussed these and we reached a couple of conclusions. First, our refreshment beverage business has both the scale and the advantaged positioning to succeed, as Bob said, either as a combined company or a stand-alone. And second, while our coffee business has clear strengths, it is not yet optimized to reach its full potential in current form. And we decided as a Board that it needed further assessment, and it could benefit from potential enhancement. So the first step in that assessment was to step back and take a fresh look at the coffee category. You've heard Bob's story 40 years ago, the Maxwell House Award. I've also spent a lot of my career in coffee in a past life, different employer. We're long-term believers in the attractiveness of the global coffee category. We believe in the structural tailwinds supporting future growth, but we did the analysis once again to underwrite our confidence. Let's start with the consumer lens. Coffee remains a preferred way to address the universal human need for energy, and it's ever more important these days. Coffee is a highly emotional category. It evokes passion. It's artisanal. Craft specialization plays a key role in premiumizing the category, which is a clear growth tailwind. Coffee is habitual. Coffee has unmatched global frequency of consumption. And coffee is healthy, even as defined by regulators, both in this country and globally. Simply put, coffee is the #1 beverage American consumers cannot live without, and I am certainly one of them. And it enjoys a similar status in so many markets around the world. Now to see the evidence of this category's essential nature, look at the long-term trend on the chart. Bob mentioned this in his opening remarks. What you'll see over 40 years is a low single-digit global volume growth. And in dollar terms, recent growth trends are even faster. thanks to premiumization and innovation. Importantly, the structural factors supporting consumption growth remain as powerful as ever. And I would highlight that increased adoption, especially in emerging markets as younger generations embrace coffee culture and begin to shift versus historic tea culture is yet another growth tailwind long term. Now as with many categories, coffee goes through cycles, including most recently this post-COVID lull that we've experienced. But as Bob said, and as this chart, I think, pays off nicely, the historic pattern is that these lulls are temporary and the category recovers to its long-term growth trajectory. We're seeing signs of this -- right now in the United States, this post-COVID recovery is underway. Category volume trends bottomed out in 2022. They've been stabilizing ever since. And encouragingly, this dynamic also holds true this year, year-to-date 2025, even as this high inflation has fueled significant price increases. You see here that the elasticities on an absolute basis compare favorably to the historic trend. So that was our assessment, our step back assessment on the coffee category. With renewed confidence in the attractiveness of that global coffee category, our challenge was then to determine how do we optimize our coffee business. Our goal here was to create an even stronger business with higher growth prospects, greater resilience and improved operational efficiencies. And look, we considered all options. All options were on the table, sell the business, spin it off as a stand-alone, continue to operate it as part of KDP. But ultimately, after thorough diligence, our management team and our Board of Directors determined that the acquisition of JDE Peet's represented the most attractive and actionable path for maximizing the value of our coffee business. Here's the reality. Scale matters in coffee. The category addresses a universal need state. Common formats, common consumer trends, similar premiumization opportunities across markets. This means that consumer insights, innovation, technologies can be leveraged and reapplied across markets. And of course, in coffee, there are clear economies of scale in operations and costs. Bob said it in his opening remarks, JDE Peet's is one of the very few assets of global scale in this category, and it will step change Keurig in several ways. You see it on this chart. Our coffee net sales will more than triple to $16 billion, making us the second largest global coffee player and the largest pure play. We'll gain access to additional geographies, including many high-growth markets. We'll become a significantly larger manufacturer and the #1 coffee buyer in the world. These elements are critical to fortifying Keurig as an even stronger coffee player. In JDE Peet's, we also see a unique fit with the Keurig business. Through this combination, we can bring together the best of both companies. Keurig's North American leadership, know-how, innovation prowess and JDE Peet's global reach, leading brands and full format expertise. The resulting Global Coffee Co. will enjoy an advantaged and complementary portfolio, incremental revenue opportunities, visible, actionable, achievable cost synergies and greater resilience. Let's unpack each of these four. Starting with advantaged and complementary portfolio. The combined company will be able to benefit from global category growth, given its strong brand portfolio, including $4 billion-plus trademarks, broad participation across every coffee subsegment and geographic diversification. Moving to enhanced revenue potential. We see upside potential from scaling Keurig's system expertise and JDE Peet's format capabilities across more brands and more markets, capitalizing on the growth runway for Peet's here in the United States and extending Keurig's next-generation coffee systems beyond North America. The third is clear and actionable cost synergies. We will discuss this in more detail, but we have identified clear and actionable efficiencies that we know will generate $400 million in savings in the next three years. These synergies can fund reinvestment while also supporting earnings growth. And finally, increased resilience. Obviously, as a larger company with greater supply chain capabilities, we will be much better positioned to navigate external volatility like tariffs and commodity fluctuations. Together, the union of JD Peet's and Keurig will create a stronger business that is more efficient and more capable of delivering consistent, profitable growth. So, upon closure of the JDE Peet's acquisition, we will, for the first time, have scaled advantage platforms in both Refreshment Beverages and coffee. Through the subsequent separation, each of these businesses will become that focused pure play with attractive yet distinct profiles. Beverage Co., a growth-oriented player, supported by a leading brand portfolio, a competitively advantaged route to market. The business will be disruptive. The business will be entrepreneurial, and it will deliver an attractive growth profile with potential upside from strategic optionality over time. Global Coffee Co. will be a steady grower with strong and resilient cash flow, enhanced by near-term synergy capture opportunities. Performance will be supported by differentiated deep coffee capabilities and expertise. And as we've said earlier, while we could conceivably run these two businesses together, we believe the separation will provide clear benefits to both entities. What are those benefits? First, focus. Each company will tailor its strategy, its operating model, its capital allocation priorities to align with distinct category and geographic exposures. Culture. The respective leadership teams will have strategic clarity, and we can structure and incentivize our organizations accordingly. Strategic optionality. Each stand-alone entity can think creatively and flexibly in pursuing additional value creation opportunities. And finally, shareholder benefits. Investors will be offered the opportunity for two very attractive yet distinct investment opportunities. Now as I said at the beginning of my remarks, we have conviction in these transactions, and we have a clear view of the compelling destination once this is complete. It's now on us to execute with excellence. And that all begins with a robust plan and the right team. So we've recently established a transformation management office or a TMO. To drive this comprehensive integration program. Bob mentioned it earlier, it will be led by our newly appointed Chief Transformation and Supply Chain Officer, Roger Johnson. You'll hear more from Roger in a minute. The TMO structure is designed to establish the processes and the workflows to guide our integration teams while also importantly, freeing up the rest of the KDP organization to focus on maintaining that great base business momentum that you've seen us deliver again in Q3. The TMO will be comprised of a dedicated internal team in partnership with key advisers that will be responsible for the integration planning, the future company design for the value capture. Our Board of Directors and my executive steering committee will obviously provide support and oversight. Importantly, many of these leaders, team members, advisers, obviously have significant experience in executing complex transactions like this. As just one example, among others, I was fortunate enough to have a central role in the Kraft acquisition of Cadbury and the subsequent separation into Mondelez International and Kraft Foods Group. Many of the other leaders, including those you'll hear from today, have had similar experience with complex transactions like this. We will draw upon those collective experiences to further derisk the next steps. So one important element of executing these transactions is ensuring that we have the appropriate capital structures for KDP at acquisition close and importantly, for each independent entity upon separation. We are well aware that some investors were uncomfortable with our initially proposed post-transaction leverage. And as you've seen today in the press release, we've taken meaningful action to address those concerns. So we've announced two cost-efficient transactions, a minority investment into a newly created coffee manufacturing [ JDE ] and a private convertible investment into our future Beverage Co. These two equity-like instruments will help to shore up our balance sheet. As you see on this slide and in the release, we now expect net leverage to be below 5x when the acquisition closes, and we're also targeting initial leverage ranges for Bev Co. in a range of 3.5x to 4x and Global Coffee Co. in a range of 3.75x to 4.25x. Based on the anticipated cost of this new financing, we continue to expect very attractive returns on our JDE Peet's acquisition, including year-one EPS accretion of approximately 10%. These capital raises also have the benefit of partnering and aligning KDP with sophisticated strategic investors, including Apollo and KKR, who understand and appreciate our vision. Let me walk you through the key acquisition, integration and separation milestones from here. We said this back when we announced the deal in late August. We continue to expect that the JDE Peet's deal will close in the first half of 2026. Our path to separation will be milestone-based with a plan for us to be operationally ready by the end of 2026. But before separating, we want the following conditions to be in place. First, a quick start to synergy capture; second, balance sheet readiness for both companies. Third, an independent Board of Directors and experienced leadership team for each stand-alone company; and finally, market conditions that are conducive. But as we've said all along, we will be flexible in our approach to secure the best outcome. In that spirit, as we optimize from here, one element where we're taking a refreshed approach is to our leadership. We've made the decision to not name the leader of Global Coffee Co. at this time, and we no longer intend for Sudhanshu Priyadarshi to serve in that future role. We will name full leadership teams of both new companies at a future date closer to separation. So, before we unpack both Global Coffee Co. and Beverage Co., let me conclude with three priorities to maximize value creation. First, maintaining base business momentum. As you saw this morning, we reported strong Q3 results. In fact, we raised net sales outlook, and we reaffirmed our full year EPS guidance. You should have also seen that JDE Peet's this morning reaffirmed its full year guidance. Indeed, we are initiating this transformation from a position of strength. Second priority, integrating with excellence to achieve our key deal objectives. You'll hear more from Roger about the processes and the plans we're putting in place to underwrite successful outcomes. And third, setting up each company for success with focused strategies, tailored operating models, purposeful capital allocation. After the separation, we expect both companies will offer their shareholders quality, consistency, simplicity and be viewed as world-class leaders in their sectors. Okay. With that, let's move to Global Coffee Co. We're going to bring this new company to life in a couple of sections. First, I'll invite Olivier Lemire to stage. He's our recently appointed President of U.S. Coffee, and he'll give an overview of the attractive Keurig Coffee business. I'll then return to talk about JDE Peet's specifically and then the combined Global Coffee Co. Real quick additional intro on Olivier. He is a tremendous leader. He's been with KDP for 14 years. The last four, he was President of our KDP Canada business. And I can tell you, in that capacity, he led KDP Canada to significant coffee outperformance, consistently growing pod volume, brewer volume, net sales and operating income. Indeed, Olivier knows the coffee business. He has deep experience with integrations as well, including steering the former Keurig Canada and Canada Dry, Mott's integration. Overall, he built a very strong Canadian organization, and we're very excited for him to take this U.S. coffee desk. Olivier, over to you.
Olivier Lemire:
Thanks, Tim. Good morning, everyone. So after 14 years in the coffee and beverage industry, I've seen firsthand the unique power of coffee to bring people together, whether it's friends, families, colleagues, there's just no other beverage like it. And from my time in country of origin with coffee farmers to walking the floor of our different coffee labs and manufacturing facilities to building strong relationship with our many brand partners, my passion for coffee and strong conviction about the future of our coffee business has only grown. So it's a real honor to now lead our U.S. coffee business and the amazing team behind the Keurig system. And with this system, we've created and now drive a highly profitable subsegment of the coffee category. Over the last 12 months, we've driven $4.6 billion in net sales and $1.4 billion in adjusted EBITDA. We are trusted by some of the best coffee brands in the world with unmatched capability, quality and scale. Brand names like Starbucks, Lavzza, Dunkin', Peet's, McCafé, La Colombe and Tim Hortons and many more. And it goes as well for our own powerhouse coffee brands, Green Mountain Coffee, The Original Donut Shop and Van Houtte. Keurig is -- and it's all driven by the Keurig brand. Keurig is a beloved brand with 94% brand awareness. It is truly the undisputed leader in single-serve coffee. Keurig is one of those handful of businesses that have become synonymous with their categories. People don't say, I hope our vacation rental as a single-serve coffee maker. They say, I hope our Airbnb has a Keurig. And we don't take that lightly. Since 2019, we've added 13 million active households, reaching 47 million in North America by 2024. We've gone from being one in four coffee makers sold at retail to being one in three today. And the Keurig system over these years continue to gain market share in both the coffee makers but also the coffee categories, with K-Cup pods now being the largest coffee format and actually driving twice the retail sales to the next closest format. And from the start, the Keurig system was designed to offer variety and choice to our consumer. And this open system drives significant value for all of our stakeholders. Our consumer love us for quality, our convenience and the variety of brands and beverages they can enjoy. Our partners value our quality, our system expertise and coffee know-how. And the retailers would recognize that we've driven premiumization in the coffee category with single-serve and K-Cup pods driving more revenue per every cup of coffee. So this creates a very strong growth engine. More brands, more variety, appeals to more households, generating more profit to be reinvested in the system. We also have a very strong track record of building and accelerating coffee brands, starting with our very own Green Mountain Coffee, now realizing more than $800 million in retail sales annually and holding the #2 position in the Keurig system. It is part of a robust owned and licensed portfolio of brands that drives strong distribution and obviously, retail activation. Here are a few examples. McCafé was a brand in decline when it transitioned over in our system mid-2020 and has been growing share every year since. Lavazza is the fastest-growing brand since we took over the selling rights, and we see acceleration in distribution and retail activation. And finally, the original doughnut shop, we know flavored coffee is actually growing faster than black coffee and is the leader in flavored coffee growth with unique partnerships and beverage types. In addition, we have a very powerful asset in our business with keurig.com. The keurig.com consumer consumed twice the daily average and has a 5x lifetime value versus the average household. With Keurig -- while keurig.com is an excellent sales channel for our coffee business, it is also a significant driver of household penetration being the fourth largest sales channel for brewers in volume. The site enables us to have a one-on-one relationship with more than 1.5 million consumers each month. If it were to be part of our retail channels, Keurig.com would be amongst our top five with other industry giants. For those that know our brand history, know that Keurig was actually founded in the workplaces, delivering a fresh brewed solution over the dreaded still pot of office coffee. And on that foundation, we've built a very strong business in away-from-home with now 650,000 workplaces with active brewers and 1.2 million hotel rooms. And we actually see significant upside in large away-from-home areas, primarily corporate workplaces, manufacturing, health care, construction. There is a powerful synergistic relationship between our out-of-home and at-home channels. with workplaces serving as a great trial environment for both the Keurig system and our many brands in the portfolio. Our coffee business has actually delivered meaningful productivity over the last five years, averaging 4% in year-over-year cost saving through a series of initiatives ranging from tactical to strategic. These programs include brewer-direct import, [ large nested compact ], lightweight cups and meaningful reductions across process and product waste. Our productivity initiatives usually serve dual purpose of generating cost savings and advancing our sustainability agenda, reducing packaging, eliminating waste and driving a more efficient logistics. So by being cost conscious and driving a productivity mindset throughout the organization, we unlock fuel to reinvest in our business. And with that fuel, we can actually drive and accelerate our strategic imperatives. We know our business is strong, and we know we can improve. And over the last year, we've actually refined our consumer-centric strategy, and we're focused on four key areas: driving household penetration, growing premium coffee, scaling cold coffee solution and defining the future coffee system. In terms of Keurig, we're excited about our new marketing campaign hitting in Q4. It will have strong in-market presence, and we believe that with consumer insights and strong data-driven campaigns, we will be able to continue to unlock household penetration. With premium coffee, we are on the eve of launching our first-ever coffee brand with the Keurig name, the Keurig Coffee Collective. It will be our first scaled and premium owned premium brand. It features elevated packaging will -- sorry, elevated packaging. It will have 30% more coffee within each cups and will have distinctively delicious blends. And we're leaning into cold coffee solutions with innovations across brewers, pods and ready-to-drinks. We've actually recently launched new refreshers based on TikTok trends, and we found new ways to offer consumer the way to customize their favorite cold beverages. And as you would have seen in the product showcase and invite you to do so at the break, we are getting ready to disrupt once again the coffee category with the launch of a breakthrough system, Keurig Alta. Alta uses K-round plastic-free and aluminum-free pods. It is designed to offer a large range of barista-style beverages, including rich cups of coffee, authentic espresso and a variety of coffee shop style beverage, either hot or cold. We have completed multiple rounds of in-home testing with the Keurig Alta system, supported by pilot production of the K-rounds. And we are looking forward to sharing this innovative format with consumers soon. And while it's early days, we are excited to think about scaling this innovation in the future. So, with that, I'd like to welcome Tim back up to speak to JDE Peet's and how these two complementary businesses will be even stronger together. Thank you.
Timothy Cofer:
All right. I will put in a plug for those last two coffees that Olivier shared with you. If you've not tried our new Keurig Coffee collective, for those of you in the room, it's in that station belt back there, my favorite new K-Cup pod, outstanding cup of coffee. And then Alta, please be sure and try Alta before you go today. So I will start this next section with thoughts on JDE Peet's, including an overview of the business, why we think it's such a compelling asset and some of the recent strategic changes that are underway at that management team. Then I'll discuss Global Coffee Co. and highlight how the complementary nature of JDE Peet's and Keurig creates this attractive pure play that's truly positioned to win. So if you're wondering, what am I doing here? Why am I the guy talking about JDE Peet's? The answers are, number one, I will be responsible for it while we run for a period of time as a combined company. Number two is I do have an up close perspective on this, having spent months of diligence on this acquisition and getting to meet and interact with this leadership team. And number three is, believe it or not, I used to run some of these brands back in the past life, brands like Jacobs, Tassimo, Kenco, Gevalia and others. So I actually think I know firsthand the strength of these brands and the roles that they play in the lives of our consumers and our customers. I also want to tell you, we are very pleased that we actually have the CEO of JDE Peet's, Rafa Oliveira, in the room. Rafa, you can give a quick wave. There he is. He's in the audience. Rafa and I, as you might imagine, have gotten to know each other pretty well over the last few months, and he's actually here stateside for a couple of days. Tomorrow, he'll be at our Boston headquarters as we're advancing our integration and transformation agenda. So let's talk about JDE Peet's. JDE Peet's is a unique asset. It's large. It's profitable. It is a global pure-play coffee company, $11 billion in net sales, nearly $2 billion in adjusted EBITDA. The company holds the #1 or the #2 share position in dozens of markets around the world, reflecting an enviable portfolio of leading coffee brands. The business is anchored by billion-dollar icons like Peet's, L'OR, Jacobs, but it also boasts a sizable regional and local portfolio, brands like Pilão, Moccona and Friele, among others. JDE is also distinguished by its rich coffee heritage. This company has deep, deep coffee expertise. Its participation in coffee dates back to the 1700s with the founding of Douwe Egberts in the Netherlands, and its capabilities are quite strong. As one example, we put it on this chart, the company has the ability to produce over 1,000 distinct coffee blends. You can imagine that's a skill and capability, especially useful in times of extreme coffee inflation and the tariff volatility. For me, one of the simplest ways to understand this company's strength is by looking at a map of the world. Many countries have large and vibrant coffee categories, and JDE Peet's is present in most of those countries, often with a leading position. Coffee is a category in which the market leader is frequently a regional or local favorite, not necessarily a global brand. Consumers are fiercely loyal to their local brands, particularly in the largest and most developed coffee markets. And JDE Peet's has a portfolio aligned to that reality. So in the Netherlands and Belgium, Douwe Egberts is the category standard. In the U.K., it's Kenco. In Brazil, it's Pilão. In Germany and actually much of Central and Eastern Europe, it's Jacobs. And in France, it's L'OR. And that's just scratching the surface of their market leadership. So we recognize that this company's brands may be less familiar to an American audience. But as you can see, they're powerful equities with strong resonance in their core markets. And I'd be remiss to say that these brands also produce a very good tasting cup of coffee, each very individualized kind of taste of the nation qualities. Again, for those of you that are here, there's a station on my back left there that will give you a nice assortment of their brands, and I highly recommend, if you haven't had enough coffee already, please try it at the next break. Another hallmark of JDE Peet's is the broad category participation. The company has an offering spanning all major coffee formats, from whole bean, roast and ground, single-serve, liquid, ready-to-drink concentrate. The portfolio also captures the full price tiers from mainstream to super premium. The channel diversity is universal, including all major at-home and away-from-home channels where coffee is consumed. You can imagine there are significant strategic benefits to this broad category participation. Now given its advantaged brand portfolio and strong capabilities, it's probably no surprise that JDE Peet's is also a leading partner to retailers across the globe. I'll give you one example. This chart here of a retailer -- major retailer in France. L'OR actually holds the distinction as the #1 brand in all of CPG, driving growth for the retail trade in France over the last 10 years, ahead of even the biggest global trademarks like Coca-Cola. These photos that you see on the slide underscore the level of in-store activation that retailers support because of the power of these coffee brands and the central role that they play in building shopper basket and driving category growth. JDE Peet's Pet's brand strength also extends to the consumer. Its portfolio has beloved trademarks, obviously evidenced by those strong market shares I showed you. But what's equally important and I think encouraging for future growth prospects is the brand's particular resonance among younger consumers. In some markets, here are three examples, the sub-30-year-old demographic prefers the leading JDE Peet's brand by nearly a 2:1 margin relative to the next largest player. That type of brand loyalty among the next generation is priceless. As younger consumers grow their spending and influence in coffee as they age, JDE Peet's appeal to these groups should represent a growth tailwind. The company also has brands with a demonstrated ability to stretch. And I'll give you two examples on this chart. Take L'OR. L'OR began as a roast and ground coffee staple, but it's now expanded into basically all other consumable formats, including into appliances. And these adjacencies now account for a meaningful percent of total L'OR brand sales. The other example, Jacobs. Jacobs started as a German icon. But over the last couple of decades has successfully established #1 positions across Central and Eastern Europe, in fact, in 19 markets. Now more than half the sales of Jacobs is outside of its home country of Germany. I think this is notable because one of the incremental revenue opportunities from combining Keurig and JDE Peet's is the pairing of our technology and our innovation with JDE Peet's brands. We believe the stretch potential of these JDE Peet's trademarks can create intriguing growth opportunities down the road. Beyond the commercial success, the JDE Peet's business has also demonstrated resilient financial performance. I'm sure I don't need to tell anyone in this room. In fact, a few chats I did prior to the start reflect this, that the last few years has been marked by quite a bit of unusual level of green coffee inflation, triple-digit cumulative cost pressure on Arabica and Robusta. You see the numbers on this chart. And yet, even as a coffee pure play, this business has delivered steady and consistent gross profit growth. I think another indication of brand strength. Bringing it all together, it's clear for us that JDE Peet's has a strong structural foundation. This is a good business. It's got iconic brands. It's got significant capabilities. Yet it's also true that it's a business with significant value creation potential that has yet to be fully realized. To be clear, JDE Peet's management team recognized this, and they've already begun the important work to begin to capture that potential upside. They hosted a Capital Markets Day back in July, and they set a path to become a more agile, more focused, more commercially capable organization. I visited Amsterdam a few times with Rafa and team, and I can already see the early stages of this important cultural shift taking hold. The centerpiece of their approach is an evolved strategy, and they aptly call it reignite the amazing. Now there are many elements to the plan, but I'll just highlight a few notable points. an emphasis on fewer, bigger bets with resources and management attention going towards the largest brands, greater consumer centricity and commercial excellence and a stepped-up productivity flywheel to unlock savings, flexibility and agility. The strategy makes sense, and it's definitely aligned with CPG best practices and operating principles. And upon integrating JDE Peet's with Keurig, we would expect to continue this work and harmonize it into a combined strategic playbook for Global Coffee Co. It remains early days as they've embarked on this new strategy, but I would tell you, there's already some initial proof points showing up from this refined strategic approach. I'll give you a couple of examples. On big bets, JDE Peet's is prioritizing leveraging insights and infrastructure to launch compelling innovations and ideas across multiple brands and multiple geographies in a highly efficient and profitable way. As one example, right now, there's a hot trend out there called Dubai Chocolate. JDE Peet's was able to quickly launch a Dubai Chocolate coffee mix across multiple brands in 20 markets this year using this platforming approach. Less visibly, but no less critically, the company has also made progress in refining its marketing approach and building capabilities in key areas like revenue growth management. We certainly know from experience, the payback from these investments can be very high when you get it right. And finally, JDE Peet's is also beginning to progress its productivity program that they unveiled on their Capital Markets Day. The plan targets EUR 500 million in savings through 2032 with roughly half being reinvested in the business. Four primary areas underpinning this target. Portfolio simplification across brands and SKUs and the manufacturing and distribution footprint, simplified ways of working, which involves removing complexity and generating savings accordingly, continuous improvement in sourcing, in design and plant level productivity and driving improvements in the company's asset-light route-to-market system. As you can imagine, we carefully vetted this program as part of our diligence, and we're confident that the savings are achievable. JDE Peet's has already begun to implement this program, including some plant closures and other operating efficiencies that they announced this morning in their press release. So you've now heard Olivier talk about the strengths and our future growth plans for Keurig. You've now heard me walk through the virtues of JDE Peet's. Let's now talk about what happens when we put these businesses together. So let's start with some background. These businesses are strong in their own right. They've proven resilient, and they've delivered solid performance in a very challenging operating backdrop the last few years. You see on this chart, sales growth and adjusted EBITDA ranging in the low single digits. And importantly, each business has proven highly cash generative. For example, you see here, Keurig, we expect to deliver more than $600 million of free cash flow this year. And JDE Peet's this morning reaffirmed its outlook for the year of EUR 1 billion, about $1.2 billion. When we put these two companies together, we expect even stronger top and bottom line growth going forward. And let me take you through why we believe that. To start, Global Coffee Co. will be an advantaged market leader in the $400 billion global coffee category. And as I said previously, scale matters in coffee. This business will have it. Global Coffee Co. will be the #2 coffee player in the world by revenue and the #1 pure play operating across 100 countries. It will have a strong portfolio of brands, diversified across formats, across channels. It will have a strong financial profile, $16 billion in net sales and over $3 billion in adjusted EBITDA. The combined entity will have a broader product line than either stand-alone company had, but in particular, relative to Keurig. Prior to the combination, as you see on this first bar, our business was almost exclusively focused on the single-serve subcategory here in North America. But with the addition of JDE Peet's, you now see Global Coffee Co. will have a format mix that's far more closely aligned with the global category split and yet still with a favorable skew to the high-margin single-serve segment and other more value-add areas. What does that mean? Global Coffee Co. can then fully participate in the growth of the entire category, both in meeting existing consumer preferences and emerging growth opportunities. Similarly, as a true multinational now, Global Coffee Co. will be better positioned to capture a fair share of category growth. At the category level, coffee has two large structural growth drivers. We think both of these are evergreen. The first is per cap consumption growth. This has been and we expect will continue to be a tailwind for the category. It's supported by elements like a rising middle class and ongoing preference shifts, particularly in non-coffee legacy markets of preferences driven by youth from tea to coffee. The second is premiumization as measured by value per cup. This trend is occurring across all formats. And you see it most evident in the growth of premium solutions like single-serve, but it's occurring across brands as well with premium trademarks growing faster than mainstream and value. So while per capita consumption is a greater opportunity perhaps in less developed coffee markets and premiumization is a bigger trend than established countries, we actually see significant runway in both of these structural growth drivers. The business will also enjoy unique revenue opportunities arising from this very complementary combination. Let me quickly talk to these five formats. Given the potential to expand Keurig's brand equities now into new subcategories, leveraging JDE Peet's full segment exposure, technology, especially in brewers, Keurig is best-in-class in brewers. We've been an innovation leader. We know how to produce them at an efficient and profitable manner. We can provide insights to some of JDE Peet's systems like Senseo, Tassimo and L'OR. Channels, we can capitalize on our complementary footprints, including in away-from-home. Next generation. next-generation exciting Keurig Alta and K-rounds innovation now has the potential to think about expansion beyond North America and brands, targeting growth opportunities for specific brands in the portfolio. And one I'll call attention to is Peet's, and I'll give you more in a moment. As you see, the synergistic growth opportunities are ample and indeed global. Let me talk a little bit more about Peet's, just to bring that to life. We all know that brand, I think, pretty well here in the U.S. It has a rich heritage. It's a coffee pioneer. It's got strong brand awareness, premium coffee credentials across the U.S. But as this map shows, the map on the left, its market penetration is very much concentrated in the West Coast, and in particular, California, the home territory. And its commercial execution at point of buying meaningfully lags Keurig's. But as a combined entity, Global Coffee Co. can utilize Keurig's significant commercial scale, our very strong customer relationships to improve Peet's geographic footprint. I'll give you one example with numbers. You see that on the far right. We have the ability to achieve -- well, today, Keurig achieves almost 4x the feature and display activity of brand Peet's. We can and we will close that gap. The result can be a much larger, faster-growing Peet's premium brand over time. So we've talked about the revenue opportunities, but we also see visible cost synergies at Global Coffee Co. Our $400 million synergy target in the first three years spans several areas. In procurement, we will benefit from enhanced scale across green coffee sourcing as well as direct and indirect spend pools. In manufacturing and logistics, we have plans for network optimization for route-to-market consolidation and other go-to-market efficiencies. And for SG&A, we've already identified corporate scale efficiencies as well as IT infrastructure and other system savings. Importantly, these synergies have been scoped and we've developed concrete and actionable plans to deliver on these cost synergies, if not exceed them. Ultimately, we expect Global Coffee Co. will generate consistent, attractive profit growth. This will be driven by a few factors. First, obviously, profitable top line growth. This company will be well positioned to capture its fair share of the coffee category's volume growth, which, as you've heard a couple of times, consistently grows on a volume basis at a low single-digit rate over time. This will obviously generate fixed cost absorption, operating leverage benefits. And in addition to that, the innovation that you've heard about today, our price pack architecture and RGM work, promotional effectiveness can further translate that top line growth into nice bottom line growth. Next, Keurig and JDE Peet's each have robust productivity programs, even beyond the deal synergies I just covered. And obviously, some of these savings will be earmarked for reinvestment, but others will flow through to the bottom line. And finally, it's not built into our baseline financial outlooks, but it's our belief that current coffee prices are clearly well above the long-term trend, and they do not appear to be supported by market fundamentals. I'm not going to try to predict commodity market gyrations on this stage, but it is worth noting that any normalization in this cost would clearly drive a cyclical profit tailwind. Bringing these elements together, the business' structural advantages the potential revenue synergies, the cost synergies of the combination, the other profit levers available to the business, Global Coffee Co. will support an attractive growth algorithm. Now there certainly can be some year-to-year volatility in top line due to commodity volatility. But over time, we project low single-digit net sales growth and high single-digit adjusted EPS growth. And we would expect this business to be highly cash generative. As you see on this chart, anticipated cumulative free cash flow of more than $5 billion from '26 to '28. We are excited to create this global coffee powerhouse the world's largest coffee pure play and a stable of the best loved brands powered by advantaged capabilities. All right. I think you've earned a well-deserved break. Let's take a 15-minute break, and we will come back and talk about Beverage Co. Thank you. [Break]
Chethan Mallela:
We're starting in one minute. Everyone find your seats. Please welcome Eric Gorli, President of U.S. Refreshment Beverages.
Eric Gorli:
Right. You all hear me? Excellent. Good morning. Thrilled to be here getting to represent this great business. And most likely, I'm a new face to most of you. Believe it or not, I've actually been in this industry closing in now on 30 years. I spent the first 20 in the [ R.E.D. ] system, and I just hit my 10th year anniversary here at KDP. And look, as I've told Tim, Bob, our Board, there is absolutely no other place than I'd rather be right now than here with this collection of iconic brands and the incredible team that we've been able to assemble. So let me tell you why I feel that way. Tim hit some of this to start with, we work in a fantastic industry. It is large, over $300 billion in retail sales. And most importantly, year after year, it has demonstrated the ability to consistently grow sales dollars north of 3%. And what fuels that growth is just how dynamic the consumer and her ever-increasing demands are. Underlying megatrends, these are things we all experience in our day-to-day lives, convenience, wellness, the need for functionality. The fuel a cycle of innovation and the opportunity to continuously participate in new pockets of growth. And this landscape is way more fragmented than most people realize. We view this as an opportunity for future expansion, particularly with our unique build, buy, partner model. So let's talk a bit about Bev Co. and why we feel like we are uniquely positioned to be a formidable challenger in this industry. We have scale. We exited 2024, as you saw in Tim's slides, north of $11 billion in net sales. Our business is profitable. Our EBITDA margin is at 30%. And again, importantly, we're growing. Since 2018, we've averaged a top line growth rate of 8%. We have incredible portfolio of brands with incredible organic growth upside. That's going to be most of my presentation today, just the confidence we have in these products. We also have an advantaged commercial and route-to-market model. This includes one of only three national direct store delivery systems for nonalcoholic beverages here in the U.S. And we've invested significantly in our operations to support network expansion. And yet we still have so much room for improvement. So I'll now get into the details on why I personally have so much confidence we can maintain this momentum into the next chapter. So one of the things that is so very special about beverages is just how they are so very personal. These are products where consumers create deep lifelong relationships with their favorite brands. We have many of these brands inside our portfolio, brands that consumers love, brands that our retailers value. So a few facts and figures. On the slide, you'll see over 25 brands that have over $100 million in annual retail sales. They are led by our $3 billion trademarks, brand Dr. Pepper, fast approaching the $6 billion mark as well as category leaders like Canada Dry and Mott's. Some other key brands, you'll see icons like Snapple, A&W, 7UP, as well as a few fast-growing disruptors like Bloom, GHOST and Electrolit. Today, we believe we have a portfolio that not only provides us with exposure to growing categories, but it creates scale for us with our customers and efficiency inside of our operations. So over the past several years, we've done a really nice job of being very thoughtful in how we want to evolve our portfolio. As you heard Tim mention, we employ a flexible but disciplined model that's really centered around building, buying or partnering. It all starts with build. And you can see on the slide where we have demonstrated a really strong track record of bringing innovation. No better example of this than inside of our CSD portfolio. Here, we are repeatedly recognized by our retailers for our market-leading innovation. We've also been very purposeful in our approach to utilizing different ways to go expand the portfolio, particularly our partnership model. Our approach to partnerships is very, very unique in the industry. We work hard to ensure that there is a win-win in the relationship that we have aligned incentives and that both partners are in it for the long term. These partnerships are able to go leverage our DSD network and allow us to rapidly participate in growth pockets with a very capital-efficient model. And in a number of cases, they provide us with a superior risk-adjusted return that we likely could achieve on our own through a build model. So we'll start now with the portfolio with my favorite brand, our flagship brand Dr. Pepper. I literally could speak for an hour to some brand Dr. Pepper alone. It is a brand that has had incredible success, and yet we still believe tremendous headroom for growth. A couple of years ago, you heard Tim say, Dr. Pepper became the #2 most consumed soft drink brand. This year, 2025, we will complete our ninth consecutive year of share growth. This is all built upon a consumer obsession for the brand. You can see that demonstrated in category-leading household penetration growth as well as industry recognition for our marketing campaigns. We believe we have a repeatable playbook that works. It starts with Dr. Pepper's unique flavor, its distinct positioning. It plays firmly and wins in what we call the treat demand space. We're able to take that positioning and then make meaningful connections with what consumers really care about and where their passions are. Right now, you can see that on Any Given Saturday come to life in season 8 of our highly successful Fansville campaign. We also leverage winning innovation, innovation that creates excitement not only with our consumers, with our retailers and our distributors. That drives some of the scale retail activation you'll see in market for the full trademark. Importantly, not only for the innovation, this also attracts new households into our base flavor, we execute this well. So this is great, but what excites me the most is the runway we still have ahead of us. Let me talk about Dr. Pepper Zero Sugar, still very much in its early days. You'll see in your scan data, it's already the #2 Zero Sugar CSD, but still has significant opportunity in terms of distribution, display presence, even consumer awareness. As a percentage of the trademarks mix, we're still only about 60% of the development of the #1 Zero Sugar CSD. Point number two, Dr. Pepper is Gen Z's most popular beverage brand, and we've rapidly been adding households within this cohort. If you are like myself, a student of our industry, you know that this