PepsiCo's earnings drop: Guess who's winning the Cola Wars?

Early today, food conglomerate PepsiCo announced that its second-quarter profit fell two percent, against a sales drop of three percent. The company earned $1.66 billion, a slight drop over last year's $1.7 billion in profits. This reflected a revenue drop of three percent, from $10.95 billion to $10.59 billion. Partially caused by a seven percent drop in North American sales, falling revenues also reflect severe foreign currency effects.

Pepsico did better than analysts expected: rather than the predicted $1 per share, it posted $1.06;. A step up from last year's dividend of $1.05, this represents a 2.5 percent drop in shares outstanding. Part of this relative success is due to the company's release of G2, a lower-calorie Gatorade substitute that had double digit sales growth. Even so, the company's expensive Tropicana and Gatorade brands have been recession victims, leading the way on its losses.