How Much Money Does Coca-Cola Make?

In this article, I take a look at how much money the Coca-Cola Company makes, who owns it, and how much money gets paid to those owners.

Humble beginnings

The story of Coca-Cola is truly incredible. Who would have thought the simple Cola that a pharmacist brewed in 1886 marked the start of the massive global empire we see today? After all, nobody needs to drink Coca-Cola, yet people consume 1.8 billion servings of Coca-Cola Company beverages each day (1). People just buy Coca-Cola beverages again and again. In this article, we’ll look at how much money the company makes and what exactly they do.

So how much money does Coca-Cola make?

Well in 2012 the company reported these financials:

Revenue (Sales) (2):

$48’017’000’000 USD

Net Income (2):

$9’019’000’000 USD

Amount paid to company owners (3) :

$4’595’000’000 USD

(Figures rounded to the nearest million dollars.)

Wow!

As you can see those are some incredible numbers but they don’t tell the whole Coca-Cola story.

Coca-Cola Company itself doesn’t make Coca-Cola. It manufactures and distributes concentrates that are only sold to bottling companies that Coca-Cola has Licensed. Some of these bottlers are fully or partially owned by the Coca-Cola Company, while others are independent. The figures above the only count what Coca-Cola Company itself made, not the bottlers. Out of every dollar Coca-Cola Company made in 2012 $0.38 came from the sales of concentrates while $0.62 came from finished products (presumably payments from what bottlers it owns or has a stake in).

So who owns Coca-Cola?

Like many big companies, Coca-Cola is divided up between billions of small shares that just about anyone can buy. The company gives the owners of the shares a distribution of the money it makes. These are called dividend payments. After all these people are entitled to something, they do own the company. Over 4.5 Billion dollars was paid out to the shareowners this way in 2012 (3).

In concluding

Coca-Cola is one incredible company. To me it isn’t so much the amount of money they make, but that they manage to run a business that large. Imagine just how much work would go into making the bottles for just one of the companies brands. Yet they manage to smoothly operate the entire business with its hundreds of products day in and out. I have to say that I’m probably more impressed by Coca-Cola now than before I wrote this article.

Notes

(1) Information found on page 5 of The Coca-Cola Company 2012 Annual Report.

(2) Information found on page 50 of The Coca-Cola Company 2012 Annual Report. “Net Income” means net income attributable to shareholders. Figures rounded to the nearest million.

(3) Information found on page 68 of The Coca-Cola Company 2012 Annual Report.

For transparency: the author of this article does own Coca-Cola Company stock.