The Coca-Cola Company Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) Q1 2026 Earnings Call dated Apr. 28, 2026

Presentation

Operator

At this time I’d like to welcome everyone to the Coca-Cola Company’s First Quarter 2026 Earnings Results Conference Call. Today’s call is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. All participants will be on listen-only mode until the formal question-and-answer portion of the call. I would like to remind everyone that the purpose of this conference is to talk with investors and therefore, questions from the media will not be addressed. Media participants should contact Coca-Cola’s media relations department if they have any questions. I would now like to introduce Todd Biger, Vice-President and Head of Investor Relations. MR. Biger, you may now begin.

Todd Beiger — Vice President and Head of Investor Relations

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. I’m here with Enrique, our Chief Executive Officer; and John Murphy, our President and Chief Financial Officer. We’ve posed the schedules under Financial Information in the Investors section of our company website. These reconcile certain non-GAAP financial measures that may be referred to this morning to the results as-reported under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. You can also find schedules in the same section of our website to provide an analysis of our gross and operating margins.

This call may contain forward-looking statements, including statements concerning long-term earnings objectives, which should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements contained in our earnings release and the company’s periodic SEC reports. Following prepared remarks, we will take your questions. Please limit yourself to one question, re-enter the queue to ask follow-ups.

Now, I will turn the call over to Henrique.

Henrique Braun — Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Todd, and good morning, everyone. We are off to a good start this year. We delivered strong first-quarter results despite a complex external environment. I’d like to thank our system associates for their continued commitment. We are focusing on becoming more consumer-centric, remaining constructively discontent and leveraging our digital capabilities to create enduring value. I’m confident we are well-positioned to deliver on our updated 2026 guidance. This morning, I will provide perspective on the global operating landscape before diving into our business performance. Then I will share how we are getting closer to consumers by operating with both granularity and scale. Finally, John will discuss our financial results and 2026 guidance.

During the quarter, the external environment differed greatly across our markets. While many consumers remain resilient, others are under pressure due to persistent inflation, greater macroeconomic uncertainty and volatility driven by the conflict in the Middle-East. Against this backdrop, we operate in an expanding industry. We harness the power of our brands and our unmatched system reached to deliver 3% volume growth and we grew volume across all segments.

We also extended our strength of gaining overall value share for the past 20 consecutive quarters. Excluding the impact from six exo days in the quarter and the timing of concentrate shipments, organic revenue growth is on-track with with our full-year guidance. We also expanded comparable operating margin, which contributed to double-digit comparable earnings per share growth. We are always pushing ourselves to do even better in focusing on getting more from our markets and more from our brands to drive balanced growth. Starting with North-America.

While we benefited from slightly an easier comparison versus the prior year, we delivered solid performance. We gained both volume and value share and grew volume, revenue and profit. The softness in price-mix can be attributed to Easter timing coupled with unfavorable category mix from packaged water and constrained production capacity for Topo Chico and. We had broad-based strength across our total beverage portfolio. As trademark Coca-Cola, Fanta, Presca, Arbor, powerade, the Sunny Smart Water and minute made each grew volatile.

Trademark Coca-Cola also led the industry in retail sales growth. Innovation contributed strongly to revenue growth. For example, we are tapping into the consumer insights favoring all things cherry with Coca-Cola Cherry Float, Diet Coke Cherry and Mr, also Power Water and the expansion of Mini cans into the convenienced retail channel both had strong performance. In Latin-America, we gained value share and grew volume, revenue and profit by focusing on fewer but more impactful initiatives. Volume growth in Brazil and Central America more than offset declines in Mexico and Argentina.

Across the region, to drive resiliency, we are balancing relevance with scale and more closely integrating our marketing and commercial plans. For example, we activated Coca-Cola with the FIFA World Cup trophy tool and offered fans interactive experiences, music, games and product sampling. Consumers assess ticket giveaways by scanning our connected packaging, which allows us to gather insights to customize future offerings and content. In EMEA, we gained value share and grew volume across all operating units. We also grew both revenue and profit. In Europe, despite a cautious consumer environment, we gained value share.

We are better linking our brands to key drinking occasions, including the Coke and meals campaign and passion points like the FIFA World Cup Trophy tour and the English Previer League. Also, we are more granularly focusing on value offerings at attractive absolute price points. In and the Middle-East, we gained better share. While we grew volume for the quarter, our volume declined in March after the onset of the conflict. Our top priority is supporting the safety and well-being of our system associates and partnering closely with customers across the region. Lastly, in Africa, we are highlighting the localness of our system and sharpening our revenue management capabilities.

For example, in Egypt and Algeria, our Ramadan campaign linked our brands to the news occasion and emphasized packages. In Asia-Pacific, we grew volume across all operating units despite cycling a strong comparison versus the prior year. We also grew revenue, but profit declined driven by commodities headwinds in tea and coffee and phasing of inventory costs. In and South Pacific, despite a continued challenging external environment, we leaned into impactful marketing campaigns like the FIFA World Cup and innovations like the pineapple. We also focused on refillable packaging and driving availability.

In China, we activated our broad portfolio and stepped-up execution in targeted channels during the Chinese New Year. In India, we drove affordability and linked our brands to consumer special points, for instance, by connecting Thumbs Up with the T20 Cricket World Cup. We also expanded Sprite into more rural regions with content tailored to local languages. Lastly, in Japan, we gained value share by doubling down on consumer needs. We grew volume across our key brands with Georgia Coffee, we refined our package options to address different drinking occasions. In summary, we are adapting our execution as-needed and focusing on improving performance across all dimensions of our strategic growth flywheel to recruit consumers and drive balanced long-term growth.

At CAGNY, I discussed how we are becoming even more consumer and customer-centric by applying the four eyes, insights, innovation, intimacy and integrated execution. Levering data and our digital capabilities are unlock to be much more precise in how we serve consumers and customers. Here are a few examples of the action this quarter. In Europe, in select markets, approximately 60% of adult drinkers monitor caffeine intake in the evening. To capture incremental drinking occasions, we relaunched Coca-Cola 00, which offers zero sugar, zero caffeine and zero calories with a new visual identity, expanding availability and activations tied to the evening meals occasion.

Coca-Cola 00 had a strong trial, positive repeat rates and contributed to the trademark Coca-Cola growing volume in Europe. For Sprite, we recently launched our global campaign. It’s Dat Fresh, which includes partnerships across music, basketball, spice food and fashion. We’re also scaling and launching products tailored to local needs. In China, we launched Sprite prebiotics and lifted and shifted Sprite plus tea from North-America. In the Middle-East to refresh consumers during Ramadan, we are linking Sprite mint to local festivities and key drinking occasions. Globally, Sprite had strong volume growth. Finally, fuse tea, which is available in more than 80 markets appears to consumers who are looking for greater balance. While we execute few stees made of Fusion campaign globally to scale the brand, we deliver intimacy with a highly localized product portfolio tailored to taste profiles, tea types and zero sugar options.

In Turkey, for example, we accelerated growth by emphasizing beach, lemon, watermelon and Dragon fruit flavors along with strong activation during Ramadan. Globally, tea grew volume double-digit. It goes without saying that marketing and innovation do not come to life without commercial excellence. And our system is working towards mastering the fundamentals of integrated execution to drive customer value-creation. In the past year, our system added more than 600,000 outlets, which increased outlet coverage. To drive basket incidents, we increased our share of visible inventory and grew off-the-shelf points of interruption by double-digit to capture impuls purchase.

To drive transactions, our system also placed over 340,000 units of cold drink equipment. For the past eight years, we have been the leaders in customer value-creation for our industry. Overall, greater focus across each element of the resulted in both volume and value share gains, volume growth and more weekly plus drinkers during the quarter. In summary, it’s early in the year and we know the external environment remains complex and it’s quickly evolving. However, we continue to benefit from three unwavering beliefs. One, we are in great resilient industry. Two, we have a powerful portfolio as demonstrated by our $32 billion brand. Three, our pervasive yet local system is a clear advantage. Moving forward, we will continue to invest in these beliefs and leverage our all-weather strategy to achieve our objectives.

With that, I will turn the call over to John.

John Murphy — President and Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Enrique, and good morning, everyone. During the quarter, we navigated market dynamics locally to deliver on our global objectives. We grew organic revenues 10%, unit case growth was 3%. Concentrate sales were 5 points ahead of unit case sales as the impact of six additional days in the quarter was partially offset by the timing of concentrate shipments. Our price-mix growth of 2% was primarily driven by approximately 4 points of pricing actions, partially offset by 2 points of unfavorable mix, which was primarily driven by three items: one, Easter timing and category mix in North-America; two, stronger growth of value offerings from revenue growth management initiatives across Asia-Pacific; and three, geographic mix in Latin-America. Comparable gross margin declined approximately 30 basis-points, stemming primarily from commodity pressures in our tea and coffee businesses, phasing of inventory costs and timing of trade spend.

However, comparable operating margin increased approximately 70 basis-points as we’ve realized operating expense efficiencies while investing further behind our brands. Below-the-line, we benefited from a combination of higher equity income, lower net interest expense and realized security gains in our captive insurance companies, which benefited comparable other income. Putting it all together, first-quarter comparable EPS of $0.86 increased 18% year-over-year, helped by 3% currency tailwinds. Free-cash flow was approximately $1.8 billion, an increase versus prior year. Our balance sheet remains strong with our net-debt leverage of 1.6 times EBITDA, which is below our targeted range of 2 to 2.5 times. We’re continuing to judiciously manage our balance sheet as we await a court decision related to our ongoing dispute with the IRS.

We’re confident in our long-term free-cash flow generation and are prioritizing a capital allocation agenda that creates optionality to both reinvest in our business and return capital to shareowners. Enabled by our all-weather strategy, we’re on-track to deliver on our updated 2026 guidance. We continue to expect organic revenue growth of 4% to 5%. We now expect growth in comparable currency-neutral earnings per share, excluding acquisitions and divestitures of 6% to 7%. Notwithstanding volatility in certain commodities like tea and coffee, we believe the overall impact on our cost basket is manageable at this time.

However, uncertainty stemming from geopolitical tensions may cause this outlook to change. Divestitures are expected to continue to be an approximate 4 point headwind to comparable net revenues and an approximate 1 point headwind to comparable earnings per share. This assumes the pending sale of Coca-Cola Beverages Africa, which is subject to regulatory approvals closes during the second-half of 2026. Based on current rates and our hedge positions, we now anticipate an approximate one to two point currency tailwind to comparable net revenues, up from an approximate 1 point currency tailwind in our previous estimate.

We continue to expect an approximate 3 point currency tailwind to comparable earnings per share for full-year 2026. Based on the latest analysis of our global operations, our underlying effective tax-rate for 2026 is now expected to be 19.9%, which is a 1 point reduction versus our previous estimate. All-in, we now expect comparable earnings per share growth of 8% to 9% versus $3 in 2025, which is an increase from our prior estimate of 7% to 8% due to the lower effective tax-rate. Finally, there are some considerations to keep in mind for 2026. As a reminder, due to a calendar shift, the 4th-quarter will have six fewer days compared to the 4th-quarter of 2025.

We estimate the shift of Easter into the first-quarter with a 0.5 point benefit to first-quarter volume. We also expect concentrate shipments to lag unit cases by a couple of points during the second-quarter. Lastly, assuming the pending sale of Coca-Cola Beverages Africa closes during the second-half of 2026, we see opportunity for more margin expansion in the latter half of this year. To sum it up, we remain focused on improving execution of our strategy and are well-positioned despite macro complexity and uncertainty. We look to drive balanced top-line growth, margin expansion, cash generation and returns over the long-term and we’ll do so with continued strong partnership with our across the world.

And with that, operator, we are ready to take questions.

Question & Answers

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, you’ll need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press star one again. In the interest of time, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question. If you have any additional questions, you may rejoin the queue. Our first question comes from Dara Mussenian from Morgan Stanley. Please go-ahead. Your line is open.

Dara Mohsenian — Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Hey, good morning. Just given the strength we saw in Q1 unit cases at the corporate-level, but also price-mix that was more subdued than recent trend for the second straight quarter. I just was hoping to get your view on the balance between volume versus price-mix in the remainder of the year, particularly in North-America and Asia, where we saw some large variances in the quarter. And on the volume front, just wondering, is consistent unit case growth reasonable in the balance of the year with the Easter Help in Q1, some potential run impact? And just on pricing, how much of the lower-growth in the last couple of quarters is due to that affordability focus that you mentioned, John, which would seem more ongoing versus just some quarterly mix variances that are less ongoing. Thanks.

Henrique Braun — Chief Executive Officer

Thank you,. Great hearing from you. Look, first of all, we are really pleased with the results of the quarter. We believe that it’s a statement to everything that we continue to say that would be a year where we would have a top-line balanced algorithm, not only the quarter, but for the full-year. More importantly, growing volume across all operating units, gaining share and also topping the EPS growth as well gives us the confidence that we are on the right track. What we will continue to see is a algo that will be balanced as we have said in the past that it’s not a coincidence that we actually got these in the quarter. We planned ahead of the curve.

We invested accordingly. We started the year with a fast-start as well. And what we’re going to see probably in the next two quarters, it varies around that balanced algorithm. But at the end-of-the year, what you see is this balanced growth about volume and price-mix playing a balance over. Whether it’s going to be to two like we have here in the quarter or it’s going to be to three variable during the different quarters, we’re going to see it. But we’re managing all the levers to continue to deliver that. Pricing is embedded into this equation as well. We are going where the consumer is, right? Affordability continued to be part of the revenue growth management architecture that we have, not only in the US, but in different parts of the world as well.

The consumers that have pressure today are the low-income consumers and we really dying up our affordability options to get closer to them. In North-America, for instance, we went into bringing options not only on the single-serve, but on the mood serve entry packs and helped us to continue to keep them in the franchise. So in a nutshell, what we are, we believe we had a great start of the year. The ARGO will continue to be balanced. We have confidence that we’re going to deliver on the updated guidance to the year and we will continue to play on our RGM capabilities.

Dara Mohsenian — Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Steve Powers from Deutsche Bank. Please go-ahead, your line is open.

Stephe Powers — Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Great. Good morning, and thank you, everybody. I wanted to pivot a little bit to costs, if I could. John, you mentioned that you were fairly well-positioned despite the broader inflationary backdrop as you think about the year. But you also acknowledge that could change. And I guess as I think about the system broadly, I’d expect some of the pressures that we’re all thinking about to be building a bit more acutely on your bottling partners already. So perhaps can you talk about how you’re working with those borrowing partners to address the merging headwinds together and how the system overall is positioning to navigate what is likely going to be a net higher-cost environment as you look-through this year and potentially into next. Thanks.

John Murphy — President and Chief Financial Officer

Yes, Steve, thanks. Very, very important topic for all of us here and with our partners. The environment, you say is fluid. It’s difficult at this stage to say exactly how it’s going to play-out. As highlighted in our script, it’s — right now we estimate as manageable at the company-level, given we have less exposure. Our bottling partners have more exposure, predicted aluminum and PET on the back of both the oil price impact and — and just the overall supply disruptions that are likely to affect us as we go through the year. Yeah, with the — with the system, we have we have a playbook that we’ve had to use now for quite a few years for on a range of disruptions. And it’s — it’s a playbook that is working well for us.

We have our RGM capabilities, as Enrique just pointed out, we have our cross-enterprise procurement group that works with the vast majority of our system partners on both resiliency and productivity initiatives. And we have a number of playbooks, I would describe them at the at the cost management level. And yet each market is different. And so the way that we use these various levers will vary by market. And we have confidence that the decision-making at the local level will allow us to navigate as well as we can through this. As we said, the next few months are fluid and it’s important to keep agility at the center of this equation. And I guess just from the way that we’ve operated over the last three, four, five years on this front, it gives us that confidence and it’s important, I think to be able to lead forward on a range of these topics as we as we look to Q2 and the rest of the year.

Operator

Our next question comes from Lauren Lieberman from Barclays. Please go-ahead. Your line is open.

Lauren Lieberman — Analyst, Barclays

Great. Thanks. Good morning. I just had a question about Trademark Coke. So Enrique, you mentioned the relaunch of 00 in Europe. And I know that historically, I guess the system kind of struggled with how to balance time and attention and resource attributed to Diet Coke and Coke Zero concurrently, how to manage sort of a portfolio and a decision to have more of a portfolio in no sugar options is a newer drive. So how should we think about 0, zero flowing into that? And maybe what are you doing from the center, from the KO level to make sure that the system kind of has the right balance to have a portfolio as you make these moves and with 0, 0 is just being the latest example. Thanks.

Henrique Braun — Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Lauren. Also great talking to you. Look, we — it’s — first of all, we’re very pleased also with the performance of overall in the quarter we had volume growth that gives us the confidence that not only at the core of it, but all the options and variables that we bring in terms of innovation, different package sizes are playing a big role to that. To your question regarding how actually bringing this to life in the marketplace in an effective way. We have to go back and start the conversation from years ago when we started to step-up our RGM capabilities across the world working in tandem with our bottlers. And we have been doing better every day.

You remember that the was mentioning that one thing that plays in our advantage is the scale, but if we can actually gain a little bit every day, scale matters and it helps us to get there. That mindset along with the capabilities that we built over-time to execute at the marketplace, a broader portfolio helped us a lot, but there is one element that’s key to this story. It’s the connectivity to the consumer centricity approach that we have on everything that we put in the market now. The reason why 00 is working right now in Europe because it started with the four eyes that was mentioning before with a big insight that at a certain time of the — the day the consumers want to low down reduce their caffeine intake, but they want to stick to the flavors and the brands that they love.

And then by bringing that with the right packaging, the right price and right communication, yeah, we ended-up getting a really good innovation and amplifying our reach to that consumer, which then in-turn and with our capabilities to execute better, you get a successful story. And it took years. And it’s important that also on the innovation discipline that we have developed over the years, we are bringing more insights and discipline on managing innovation and the success rates over-time that gives us a better chance of success and this was the reason why we materialized that moving forward.

So we’re seeing that not only with 00, since we’re talking about Coca-Cola 3D market, let me bring it to North-America, where we had also a opportunity to amplify our portfolio with the old cherry space where we have diet Coke Cherry. If you haven’t tried, it’s one of my favorites. We got Coca-Cola Zero cherry float, which is also great. And we continue to expand that portfolio also with Mr Pivo on the cherry space, which then connects with what I was saying before, more connectivity to the consumer centricity on the platform and executing better because we built the right capabilities moving forward.

Operator

Our next question comes from Chris Carey from Wells Fargo. Please go-ahead, your line is open.

Christopher Carey — Analyst, Wells Fargo

Hi, everybody. I wanted to ask about gross margin. You know, this is the first-quarter in a few years where the underlying contribution to gross margin is a bit negative. I was wondering if you could just give us a sense of whether there are any timing elements associated with Q1, the inflation impacts that you might be seeing this quarter, which ease really bringing that up because you flagged coffee and tea. And then the general progression of the underlying contribution to gross margin as you would see it sort of going-forward as the costs normalize? And then just one quick follow-up, John, I think you mentioned that the timing of CCBA could dictate margin progression in the back-half of — can you just dig a bit deeper into what you were referring to with that comment? Thanks so much.

John Murphy — President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure, Chris. Let me let me start with the — with the overall gross margin profile. Q1 was somewhat anomalous given one particular item in APAC, the phasing of juice inventory costs, particularly in China. And that’s really as a one-off in the quarter. We have had commodity pressures in the tea and coffee space and that’s going to continue somewhat through the year. But at the overall level, if I take — if I take a step-back and look at the that the underlying drivers of gross margin. For the full-year, we don’t — we don’t see a big deviation from the playbook that we’ve had. We’ll — we see the revenue growth management architecture work as a very solid foundation to sustaining margins. We continue to drive a lot of efficiency throughout the P&L. But on the cost front, we’ll — we will be taking a number of measures to somewhat mitigate against some of the of the commodity pieces I talked about earlier, which I said are manageable.

So for the full — I don’t — I don’t see it as being an area that’s going backwards the gross margin trends. When I take-out that inventory issue I mentioned, we’ve got a lot of — a lot of levers to work-through and both as a company and as we alluded to earlier as a system. With regard to the CCBA piece, just it’s a mechanical — a mechanical topic in terms of the impact it will have to the margin profile of the company. If we — if we take CCBA’s numbers out, a lower-margin bottling business will automatically result in the overall company margin profile improving and we’ve highlighted — excuse me, we’ve highlighted that to be a second-half of the year topic. For ‘262, we’ve — we can say for — which is anomalous relative to other years, FX will be a slight tailwind on the margin front too. Thanks.

Operator

Our next question comes from Robert Ottenstein from Evercore. Please go-ahead, your line is open.

Robert Ottenstein — Analyst, Evercore

Great. Thank you very much and congratulations on a great start to the year and your tenure. I was wondering if you could go into a little bit more detail on the underlying drivers of your performance in APAC, particularly China and India, two years in a row of good — very strong results. How sustainable is this? Do you think throughout the rest of this year and going-forward? And what are you doing differently now than in the past to produce such strong results? Thank you.

Henrique Braun — Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Robert. Look, we in APAC, we’re pleased with the volume growth across operating units in there. We also pleased with the fact that we gained share overall in the region, but there is still a lot of work to be done. And the reason why I’m saying that is because it’s one region that we’re developing definitely for the future. And the big majority of the countries in there are still under development-stage. If you take a site like Japan, Korea, you know, Australia that are in a different stage, but everything else in a huge population in there, it’s equally important that we not only deliver on the volume growth, but we build this industry for the future. So we’ve really focused China and India, as you mentioned, on developing first the industry and the foundations of our business as we’ve learned in other parts of the world with the right price package architecture, playing where we believe we can win and then continue to expand that further.

If we drill down a little bit about China. A few years ago, we took a stand and said, we’re not going to play in every category. We’re going to play on a quality volume and categories that we believe we have the rights to win. And that is now starting to pay-back because we continue to lead on Sparkly. We gain — we are gaining share and we’re also building with our partners in better capability on how to execute the core to then expand to more. And then if you go to India, it’s equally, you know, important to build this for the long-term, place where we are fortunate to also have local brands under the portfolio that were acquired a long-time ago composing a full portfolio that gives us the opportunity to be connected with the consumers in a very unique way in that place, but we’re still far away from getting our overall architecture on RGM and our development capabilities with our to this stage that we can actually Call-IT a mature market.

So what you’re going to see also and we saw and across the region is actually in this quarter, if you go down, you see that our price-mix was negative 6 points in the region. And the reason is exactly connected to what I was just saying before. We’re investing for the future. We have, obviously in this quarter, few elements, as John point out that impacted the quarter. But on the long-term, the most important thing in this market is to invest for growth, build system health economic system that allows us to invest ahead of the curve and bring more consumers to the base. John?

John Murphy — President and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Just let me — given the previous questions on margin, I have no doubt there will be in focus on the margin numbers for the Q1. So two-thirds of the margin compression in Q1 is related to the inventory item I mentioned. We also have in APAC, as we’ve discussed in previous calls, just a structural headwind given the geographic mix of the markets, Japan versus the more developing part of the equation. So while we expect us to make progress in the course of the year-on overall margin profile. It is a longer-term play, as Enrique said, with the priority number-one is getting the consumer base even more, more closer to us. So more to come on that as we go through the year.

Operator

Our next question comes from Bonnie Herzog from Goldman Sachs. Please go-ahead, your line is open.

Bonnie Herzog — Analyst, Goldman Sachs

All right. Thank you. Good morning. I just had a question on your business in Asia. Your top-line growth was good, but your op margins contracted almost 10 points. I know,, you touched on this a bit, but just hoping to hear a little more color on what drove this and really how we should think about profitability in that region going-forward? Thanks.

John Murphy — President and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, Bonnie, just what I just said in the last question, the margin profile in Q1 was impacted by an inventory item, which is unique to-Q1. And we do have plans in the course of the year and indeed into next year to address this. Priority number-one is, is the consumer franchise getting volume growth back into the range of markets that we have and investing appropriately behind them. So as Enrique said, APAC is a land of opportunity. We’ve both lived and worked there and appreciate that it doesn’t happen overnight. And we’re very — we’re bullish on the way the year has started on the on the volume front. And we were fortunate to have a global portfolio that will allow us to invest as we need to in the short-term while we get the margin profile where it needs to be longer-term.

Operator

Our next question comes from Andrea from J.P. Morgan. Please go-ahead. Your line is open.

Andrea Teixeira

Thank you. Good morning. Hey,. Obviously, the resilience has been nothing short of impressive, both in terms of like your ability to sustain volumes and pricing. But you did call-out that volumes understandably turn negative in March in the Middle-East. I was just hoping to see if you can give us some sort of color for EMEA and obviously from two standpoints, right, the conflict and also the fact that as you go into a situation where inflation will be more pervasive in the region and broadly in EMEA for obviously fuel, for gasoline prices. And then also for the bottlers to be able to pass-through. So I was hoping to see if you can help us with that. And then in terms of the US, we saw Fair Life and again, you had explained to us, but in terms of the category and shape category deceleration, competition in the category, anything you can help us with as you pass more capacity into the system this year? Thank you.

Henrique Braun — Chief Executive Officer

Sure. Good. Thank you, Andrea, for the question. Look, in the EMEA as a whole, right, that encompasses Europe, Euros, Eurasia and Middle-East and Africa, we had a good overall performance. We grew volume and profit and continued to gain share, which was great result. If you dial that up a little bit the conversation on Eurasia and Middle-East as you wanted to know, yes, we grew volume actually in the quarter and March was the month that got more impacted by the conflict and we continue to work with our partners to support, number-one, the safety of our associates and the business continuity. And it is a playbook that everyone in the region has learned from past, you know, situations similar to these and try to focus on what we can control and continue to drive and being closer to the consumer. If you look at the outlook from the region itself, we are confident that we can manage the complexity in there.

We will continue to be focused on the balanced growth, which is important for us, as we said, not only in the region, but globally, having volume being a key driver of this balanced growth, but it’s going to be a composition that in the year, we will leverage the whole more than ever in a world that’s going to be very dynamic. And so-far, we believe that we have everything in-place to continue to thrive there and we’re going to continue to pivot with a playbook that has worked for us in years in the region. Since you asked — I’ll give a chance to answer also the Fair Life here, it’s fantastic, Brand, as you know, we are excited that as planned, the Webster capacity is going to start to get online in the Q2 and we’re going to ramp-up through the year. So that’s the latest on that and we are very excited also about the fact that we’re investing for the next chapter of growth there on the business itself.

Operator

Our next question comes from Filippo Falorni from Citi. Please go-ahead, your line is open.

Filippo Falorni — Analyst, Citi

Hi, good morning, everyone. I was hoping you can touch a bit more on the North-America business, solid performance on volume to start the year. You have the FIFA World Cup coming in a couple of months. So just any thoughts on like potential opportunities there in terms of accelerating volumes and activation at the brand level? And obviously, both for the US and Canada, but also if you can touch on Mexico and the opportunity there and maybe even give some color on like the performance of the business post the sugar tax in Mexico? Thank you.

Henrique Braun — Chief Executive Officer

Okay, Filippo. Look, North-America, we’re definitely very happy with where we landed on the volume growth 4%. It indicates that the strategy and also how we’re showing up as a system is in the right place. We had a broad-based growth across different categories and brands, which is ensuring that we executing with the right impact right in the marketplace. And FIFA World Cup, look, we actually started to execute that in Q1, which was another great decision by our operators with the bottlers in North-America and Mexico that you mentioned as well in Latin-America, both of these regions decided to go head-on and start the activation of FIFA World Cup in the Q1.

And now in Q2 is when we’re going to realize that in there. I want to bring a point here that it’s also very interesting in the execution of the World Cup for us and you heard me at saying as well that we are not only getting closer to the consumer, but bringing digital at the core of everything that we do. And if you find our packages in the market now in US and you’re going to see Mexico as well, you can actually interact with that package with the right content. Actually, in US, you do that for the 250 celebration as well. It’s that interactivity, you get the content of the campaign, you also engage the consumer on a reward experience and you have a chance to connect even with the retailer on transforming engagement of the consumers all the way down to transactions, which is what we believe we should continue to drive-in our campaigns and bringing the whole digital space into doing better what we do best. So that’s about North-America. And since you asked about Mexico, let me talk a little bit about what we’re doing there.

As you know, we had the sugar tax at the beginning of the year that had an impact. The system has a strong resilience in a playbook on how to deal with this situations. It happened in 2014 as well. The impact is there but with the right RGM capabilities and granularity, as I was explaining using everything that we already had plus the personalization connection with consumers and our customers, we continue to do better than we expected, but still having in Mexico playing a geo-mix effect in the overall price-mix volatile. Over-time, during the year, we’re going to continue to dial-up the campaigns, our local and global brands, which is a strength that we have also in the region to continue to engage the consumer and to overcome the impact that we have on taxes in there. Since we’re talking to Mexico, I think I should say as well that Brazil and the Central America actually offsetted the impact of volume declines in Mexico and Argentina.

Operator

Our next question comes from Peter Galbo from Bank of America. Please go-ahead, your line is open.

Peter Galbo — Analyst, Bank Of America

Hey guys, good morning. Thanks for the question. I wanted to pivot to the away-from-home business a bit. I know that you’ve had maybe a more offensive-minded effort there recently with the Anda Coke campaign in the US John, I think you mentioned the coconut meal in Europe campaign. Obviously a pretty big win in the hospitality space that we’ve heard about. So maybe you can just dig in a little bit more on kind of the double-down efforts on the away-from-home channel, just given it’s a part of the business we often don’t hear a lot about. Thanks very much.

Henrique Braun — Chief Executive Officer

Yes, great, Peter. So first of all, globally, we’re seeing a channel-wise, not a significant change, but a better performance on a away-from-home than at-home in the US was actually the opposite in the quarter. But nevertheless, this strategy remains the same, which is connecting the consumer on every occasion and need states that we have. And what we are doing actually very consistent in the foodservice in North-America is to work together with our customers on understanding that in detail in granularity, their consumer profiles and how we can actually bring not only our core offerings, but other choices that they started to innovate within that category. So what we’re seeing is that there is an opportunity to continue to expand the beverage occasions. And we think that being the preferred partners for the majority of, you know, the foodservice partners, we believe that we have a great runway actually to continue to develop that category and continue to drive. Our focus is always-on driving more incidents on that channel. And to that element, everything that I said that we’re building the right capabilities in-house with RGM and being closer to the consumer helps us to continue to thrive in there. So more to come.

Operator

Our next question comes from Michael Lavery from Piper Sandler. Please go-ahead, your line is open.

Michael Lavery — Analyst, Piper Sandler

Thank you. Good morning. Enrique, I wanted to just maybe zoom out a little bit and see if there’s any new learnings in the first few weeks just seeing the company through the CEO lens? And it doesn’t have to be marketing specific, but I know you’ve talked about a step-change in recruitment, especially converting younger drinkers at the point-of-sale. And just curious if you could maybe lay out a little bit of some of the changes you might anticipate to the marketing approach to improve that and how quickly it might evolve?

Henrique Braun — Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Michael. Look, it’s — it has been very smooth transition. And you heard me at, there’s so many things that we’re doing, right, over the last few years that I would not be the one to touch that and change the trajectory because I fully believe in that. And it’s very important to remind what those beliefs were. Number-one, it’s this belief that we are in the best industry to be in, not only ourselves here at the top of the house on the company, but our bottlers share the same belief. They continue to invest accordingly. That’s very important. The number two is what I said also that this unrivaled portfolio that we have, the $32 billion brands, bringing more to the family and making the $1 billion brands become multi-billion over-time, that’s where I believe that the consumer centricity and bringing the four eyes can help us to actually even do better over-time.

And the third one was about this unmatched system reach is with our bottlers, we know we have a very pervasive distribution system. But if we dial this up with what I mentioned before, bringing digital to do better what we already do best, scale will help us to actually unlock further growth and a bigger headwind — sorry, headroom on how to bring more consumers to the base, how to bring more value to our customers and how to work as a system in a more integrated way. So that’s what we’re focusing on, but a lot of that continues to be very consistent of the way we have been working with our bottlers, our partners and you can expect that that’s going to be the way moving forward as well.

Operator

Our next question comes from Kamil Gajrawala from Jefferies. Please go-ahead, your line is open.

Kaumil Gajrawala — Analyst, Jefferies

Hey, everyone. Good morning. If we can dig in a little bit on the United States and Peter’s question on the away-from-home and specifically, there’s for the first time this emergence of what seems like an entirely new channel with the Dutch and Seven Brews of the World and these sorts of things. So McDonald’s is obviously doing the same sort of thing. So I’m just curious, are you evolving your foodservice strategy to figure out how to participate better in this evolution of retail? And then maybe if you want to talk a little bit more about the McDonald’s relationship, of course, the news of them using Red Bull is, I think surprising to many of us outsiders given the depth of your relationship over such a long period of time. So just curious how you’re thinking about that as well. Thanks.

Henrique Braun — Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Thanks, Tomil. So first of all, I’ll start from there. It — we have a fantastic and very longstanding partnership with and that’s intact, right? We continue to be very happy with that partnership. And in terms of how they are also looking into creating these craft beverage offerings, and you alluded to also the fact that other players in that segment is working on. We are totally embedded into the conversations about how to be part of that. In McDonald’s specifically, we have our Sprite brands being very — doing very well with that space of the craft beverage offerings. We have two flavors, Sprite Berry Blast and Lunar splash with them that continue to perform really well. And that expands actually the beverage occasions and the opportunity within the outlets.

The way we see this at the end-of-the day, the beverage space continued to be vibrant and more opportunities to play within that. And we believe that being part of this with our customers and being the number-one value creator for them, we’re going to have an advantage over-time. We do respect the decisions on other choices about their relationships with other companies, but the most important thing is that we’ve been very consumer-centric about how to bring innovation to each customer and we continue to have expanded footprint, not only bringing more to the — to our pool of customers, but getting more out of that relationship on a daily databases.

Operator

Our next question comes from Carlos from HSBC. Please go-ahead. Your line is open Carlos Laboy from HSBC. Please go-ahead, your line is open.

Carlos Alberto Laboy — Analyst, HSBC

Sorry about that., can you please expand on the four eyes in a slightly different direction? To get all four of these to optimally work, you’ve put in a lot of effort into establishing the right incentives and the long-term clarity of what each side you and the bottlers are supposed to do and allow it to keep over the long-term. Can you speak to the — to how this is reinforcing the loops between you and the bottlers so the trust can allows these insights and innovation to more easily for better demand creation. And also related to that, how do you drive trust formation, this effort and this philosophy throughout the company as well?

Henrique Braun — Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Thanks, Carlos. Good to hear you too. Look, at the end-of-the day, I think what we have today and all of us that have been in this business for years, I’ve been here for 30 years, John and myself and James that have been around the same tenure. We — we believe that we have an unprecedented trust level of our and a great relationship that we don’t take for granted. We nurture these every day. And the most important thing to your point about how we connect the four eyes to generate value on this trust level that we have of our bottlers comes down to having a — those three beliefs that I mentioned before that if we are faithful to the consumer centricity of everything that we do from a portfolio view, how we engage with them and we bring value to our customers, understanding what are the levers that we have and they have to make that occasion work, the pie is going to be bigger for everybody. And that’s what we have been doing in the last few years. The trust brings agility. The trust brings a bigger value for the ecosystem, but you never take for granted, it takes years to build it and a second to lose it and we nurture this every day. So on the four eyes, it’s the same with the consumer. We need to honor the choices that they want and we need to be there every day and we are humble that we know we can do better every day at-scale and that’s how we’re focusing moving forward.

Operator

Our last question today will come from Robert Moscow from TD Cowen. Please go-ahead, your line is open.

Robert Moskow

Hey, thanks. You might have touched on this, but I was wondering about the mix headwinds in first-quarter. How sustainable are those headwinds during the course of the year? Do they fade? And what I’m trying to get at is what’s the underlying price that we should expect for the company and maybe even if we can drill down to LatAm, which was unusually low in first? Thanks.

John Murphy — President and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Thanks, Robert. So just the quarter was at 3 volume, two mix, two price-mix, cycling 1 and 4, 1 and 5. And so the name of the game for us this year and we’re going to be very consistent in talking about it is to have a more balanced algorithm driven from the top-line throughout the year. So starting out with a 3 and 2 is pretty close to where we expected. In the first-quarter, there were a couple of points of mix-related to — in the North — in the area of North-America, some category mix, which was a little stronger headwind-wise than we expected. We would not necessarily expect that to repeat going-forward. And Enrique talked about Mexico and been at the revenue line offset with strong performance in Brazil and Central America, but that too has a geographical mix and feature there that accounts for maybe a slightly lower PMO than people were expecting. For the full-year, our guidance and our guidance, we remain committed and we remain very much focused on delivering that balanced algorithm and the outlook for the rest of the year, we’re confident we can we can meet it. So 3.2%, 2.5%, 2.5%, 2, 3 we will take — we’ll take any one of those.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the call-back to Enrique Bronz for closing remarks.

Henrique Braun — Chief Executive Officer

Thank you everyone for participating. To close us out enabled by our strategy with prioritizing agility, remaining consumer-centric and partnering closely with our customers. While the external environment is dynamic, we are using the capabilities to drive continued growth and create enduring value. Thank you for your interest, for your investment in our company and for joining us this morning. Thank you so much.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.