sjAgain speaking from a long experience I believe the Pepsi...

sj

Again speaking from a long experience I believe the Pepsi thing is short term. They've tried at least twice before and failed miserably (see an earlier post of mine). Buying a market share (because that's what they are doing) hasn't worked. It's all about sustainability of discounted products irrespective of what the two big guys want. They can and do offer "loss leaders". BTW the third biggest customer is Metcash.

Pepsico's franchise in Australia is now held by Asahi (about the 4th one) who are beer people fundamentally. They are big but they still have to make a profit and quite frankly the aussie soft drink market is tiny in global volumes. So at some stage they will say "that's enough, let's go back to 10% of the market". Price setting is a complicated business and the lowest price doesn't necessarily win. An interesting aspect is that despite the discounting they never pick up more than a few percentage points of market share. They may well go from 10 to 14% that's about it. If they picked up say 15% (total 25%) they simply don't have the infrastructure to produce the volume and in case you ask, no you can't produce it off shore. It just doesn't travel.

Absolutely agree with the next couple of trading updates. I think we may be in for a shock. Even so I'm not in the business of crystallising losses and I see the coming months as a buy time.

Sorry to rabbit on but it is a very interesting and dynamic business

Good luck with your decision

Cheers