PepsiCo has 1.387 billion shares outstanding, with a current price of $173 per share. The conglomerate holds 8.42 billion dollars of liquid assets, including cash and cash equivalents, short-term investments, and investments in noncontrolled affiliates (investments in other companies where the company holds significant ownership with no controlling interest). In addition, there are over 39 billion dollars in long and short-term debt, which gives PepsiCo an Enterprise Value of over 270 billion dollars; if a company were to buy out PepsiCo, they must overpay by 30.6 billion dollars.

On a quarterly basis, PepsiCo made 27.996 billion dollars in revenue, up 11% from Q4 of 2021. Annually, revenue in 2022 equated to 86.39 billion dollars, making Q4 one of the best production quarters in history. Revenue has continued to grow for five consecutive years, leaving PepsiCo with a 32% increase year-to-year starting from 2017. Image one shows the total amount of revenue disbursed through each subsidiary; almost every sector has seen revenue growth over five years. Some, however, have seen higher revenue growth, including AMESA with 75% and APAC with 66%, as opposed to the EU with 21%. The EU had one of its weakest years in revenue, with a loss of 2% year to date. Despite the EU’s revenue decline, it is the third largest subsidiary inside of PepsiCo, with a whopping 15% of total revenue. Image two shows the percentage of revenue to each group inside PepsiCo. While most revenues increase per group, the percentage changes based on strategy, economics, and other factors. Pepsi and Frito-Lay make up the vast amount of revenue per division, with Pepsi having 30% of all revenue while Frito with 27%. Interestingly enough, Fritos operations are catching up to Pepsi; at the same time, Latin America is also close to passing the EU’s operations because of the effects of the war with Russia. Overall, revenue growth is healthy throughout the company’s divisions year-to-year and quarter-to-quarter.

EPS data went up in 2022 by 18%, meaning PepsiCo made $6.13 for every share outstanding. In addition, from 2017 till now, PepsiCo had a share buyback of 3%, from 1.425 billion shares to 1.38 billion, indicating that it has the capital to spend and invest in itself. As a result, model income (net income excluding one-time purchases) was reasonably aligned with net income, although the same cannot be said for a per-quarter basis. Model income was far off to net income based on the Justice Transaction and Intangible Asset Impairment that will be spoken about in more detail.

The gross margin in image 4 shows that the selling of goods, when factoring in the cost of sales, has remained relatively stagnant, decreasing just about 3% in the last five years. Operating profit margin indicates a decrease of 3%, meaning that when adding expenses, such as selling general and administrative costs and other expenses, it has taken a more significant cut than previously in terms of net profit. Return on equity (ROE) shows the company’s growth or decline in net assets. The S&P’s long-term running average of ROE is 13.29%, whereas the average for food and soft beverages combined is 21.05 ROE. PepsiCo’s ROE for 2022 was 49%, exhibiting consistency in its assets. Return on assets (ROA), on the other hand, shows the amount of profit a company can generate with its assets. PepsiCo’s ROA is 9.2% in 2022 and has been growing for three years. The debt ratio is total short-term debt plus long-term debt divided by assets. PepsiCo displayed a 42.4% debt ratio, meaning there’s over 40% of debt per asset. The average in the food and beverage industry is 22%, meaning PepsiCo is taking on more debt than other companies in its industry. Lastly, the asset turnover ratio indicates the efficiency of a company using its assets to generate revenue. Consumer non-cyclical companies have an average turnover of .72, while PepsiCo has an average of .94, which has increased by about 13% in the past five years.

Free cash flow is one of the most important metrics used to gauge the amount of money PepsiCo takes as profits due to cash inflows and outflows (cash from operating activity – capital expenditures). Since 2008, PepsiCo has been making positive cash flows and doubling its cash inflows. However, in 2016, the conglomerate lost 6% cash flows from operations based on previous years; this means that instead of bringing back 8.1 billion dollars in profit, they took 7.6 billion. In addition, free cash flow losses year to year started to accelerate in 2018, where free cash flow was down 13% year to year and is still in a downward spiral. Consecutive decreasing cash flows year to year could be concerning because PepsiCo will need more flexibility to spend the profits how they choose instead spending their money on necessities to keep the business running.

PepsiCo is a ‘dividend king’; even with decreases in cash flow, PepsiCo has continued to increase its dividends every single year. This boasts strength and gives the image that PepsiCo is doing exceedingly well. Dividends are the amount of stock the company pays back to its shareholders at a given period before the ex-dividend date; they do this to provide an incentive to hold the stock by sharing profits. Another portrayal of PepsiCo’s strength is the employee numbers. In 2017, PepsiCo had 263,000 employees; today, there are 315,000 employees. The company is investing a hefty portion of its money on both dividends and employees.

The Justice Transaction was a recent addition that made Q1 earnings look better than most of PepsiCo’s quarters because it’s a one-time gain. PepsiCo sold Naked Juice and Tropicana for 3.32 billion dollars to PAI partners (another conglomerate investing in companies). Q2 and Q4, on the other hand, suffered a blow because of one-time expenses from asset impairment. The cause of asset impairment was primarily due to the war in Russia; this affected operations Pepsi had in Europe. PepsiCo lost about 2 billion dollars due to the war in Russia because of a subsidiary named Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods which controls roughly 34% of dairy products in Russia. Another necessary expense that should be addressed is the TCJ Act expense. This act was implemented when Donald Trump was president and decreased the amount companies pay in taxes, including higher income bracket individuals. PepsiCo owes 2.6 billion dollars in taxes, for which it has already paid off about 1.543 billion dollars and plans on paying off an additional 309 million by the end of 2023.

Valuation

For my analysis, I assumed that the food and beverage industry grows 5% yearly and that PepsiCo’s revenue weight compared to its competitors stayed relatively the same. I calculated that PepsiCo’s weighted average cost of capital (WACC) is 7.46%, the terminal rate is 3%, and the net present value of all future cash flows is 231,145.9 billion. With this information, I project PepsiCo’s value relative to the discounted cash flows in net present value is equal to $166.65 per share (net present value divided by shares outstanding). This means that the intrinsic value shareholders believe to be the fair value equals $166.65 per share.

PepsiCo’s stock chart for image 10 shows that it is currently in a rising wedge on a weekly timeframe. Breakouts from these types of wedges can occur in any direction, but historically, the stock price will fall 60% of the time. Image 11 also shows confluence when assessing that PepsiCo is likelier to fall than go up. This image shows a bearish divergence, meaning the stock price is increasing while its relative strength index (RSI) (in purple) is decreasing. The oscillator shows that the current trend is weakening when the price and RSI are moving in opposite directions. Putting both indicators together and accounting for the 200-day moving average (the average price for 200 days on a weekly time frame), PepsiCo could see a possible 12% decline or a share price of $151 if the price moves to the 200 EMA line. If the price of PepsiCo breaks below the 200 EMA, then the price could also reach the 1.618 Fibonacci line at a price point of $135. Putting these factors together, if the price declines to these levels, it would be below the fair value of $166.65 and could be a reasonable price point for investors.

PepsiCo continues to stay at pace with its competitors, occupying 30% of its revenue compared to large conglomerates, including Coca-Cola, Nestle, and Anheuser. Declining free cash flow isn’t a substantial concern because PepsiCo is paying higher dividends, employee salaries, and TCJ act tax, which cuts free cash flow. In addition, the revenue sources are healthy and growing; Europe is the only revenue source that has declined based on intangible asset impairment and other sources of revenue decline caused by the war in Ukraine.

This event is being compared to what happened in the US for the 2008 housing crisis where the Lehman Brothers investment bank filed for bankruptcy which was the catalyst for the whole crash in the first place. In this case, pension funds were nearing bankruptcy which caused many peoples retirement funds to be at risk, if not for the government stepping in, there could have been a worse event that may have materialized.

Pension funds need to pay their customers a fixed amount of money no matter what economic situation the country is going through. Because of this fixed amount, pension funds usually buy bonds in order to offset their liabilities of paying the fixed amount to their pensioners, so they’re able to have enough assets to cover this payment. The problem started with continuous low interest rates after the coming of COVID-19, these low interest rates made it so pension funds couldn’t pay back their customers a fixed amount because they weren’t generating enough interest themselves from bonds. To pay this fixed amount, pension funds got desperate and invested in young companies that had a lot of potential so they can sell at a profit and be able to pay their customers back using derivatives. The pension funds tried to hedge their bet using leveraged investments (borrowed money from banks) which are subjected to margin calls, telling the investor that they could get liquidated and lose all their money because the banks themselves don’t want to lose money from their investment.

These pension funds were forced to sell off a lot of their gilts in order to not get liquidated and add on to their derivatives gamble which caused the gilt market to take a huge stumble down. If the pension funds were to let their derivative trades get liquidated they could face insolvency and go bankrupt so there wasn’t much room that these funds had to work with. With no one buying gilts, the government was forced to intervene and buy up 65 billion pounds worth of gilts that were being sold to stop the crash of the economy.

Instead of the government continuing with quantitative tightening which is the process of the governments selling gilts on the open market and getting rid of money circulating from the public in order to battle inflation, its hand was forced to require quantitative easing. With the buying of gilts to ease the economy comes bad and hefty long term implications for the economy. For one, this will only continue the rise of inflation and give banks a tougher time to catch up on interest rates to lower inflation down.

The Bank of England declared that it expects the UK to be in a recession (the situation with the pension funds only sped this process). UK’s prime minister Liz Truss announced that the government would freeze energy prices for households for about two years, costing the government 89 billion pounds. The energy will be funded through government bonds which at a time like isn’t the best option, this is because borrowing gilts while trying to bring inflation down will increase debt due to companies losing money from interest rates. More borrowing at a time of burgeoning debt isn’t good for an economy in the long run.

It also didn’t help that the government announced that they would cut taxes for the rich in order to stimulate the economy and then last minute reverse their decision to do so. Decreasing taxes for the rich may restore prices in the economy but it isn’t a popular option among the people, therefore this caused for a reversal in decision. It seems as if the government doesn’t know what the correct course of action should be leaving citizens in distress and uncertainty.

CBDC’s are possible because of the use of blockchain technology cryptocurrencies use, although there is a major dichotomy between the two, cryptocurrencies are decentralized and CBDC’s are centralized. The BIS wants a centralized system so that central banks can stay in control, the problem is they are currently being threatened by cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and big tech companies. The BIS boldly states that cryptocurrency’s can’t be used because of money laundering and energy footprints, meaning it doesn’t comply with Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) terms. Stablecoins attempt to be a credible source by being backed by real currencies, the argument for why they’re not needed according to the BIS is because in simple terms, the backers aren’t trustworthy like the central bank is and there’s no innovation because “stablecoins are ultimately only an appendage to the conventional monetary system”. Big tech is by far the most threatening option for central banks because of the amount of users that they house and the data that’s collected which isn’t shared. The BIS argues that big tech has an advantage when it comes to bringing in users onto their platform and creating their own currency, if many people flock to a specific platform, others will follow. They say that these big tech companies have created a problem with their monopoly of owning the majority of market shares in their specific sector, they’re able to abuse their payment systems by making “fees that are even higher than those charged by credit and debit card companies currently.” BIS sees big tech as a threat and believes that most citizens would pick to trust their government over big tech.

The general public are left to ponder about three main choices of monetary integration, either with governments CBDC’s, big tech or cryptocurrencies. All these payment systems except for crypto are stripping people of their privacy so many individuals are inclined to make crypto currencies like Bitcoin or alt coins the main financial payment system. The problem with this is governments will never integrate cryptocurrency’s like bitcoin because of decentralization and are instead trying to figure out a way to get people to flock to CBDC’s the way big tech does so. The implications that come with CBDC’s will cause a huge economical shift to the current system so it will have to be rolled in slowly. What can be expected is because the central bank has control over how much CBDC they can allocate, they will start small and slowly get rid of the supply of fiat and possibly limit the purchase of cryptocurrencies. Once the CBDC system is fully established, the government will be able to control supply and demand to a greater extent by limiting the amount each person can purchase and when they can purchase, this will decrease the likelihood of long term inflation and fiat capitulations. There is a big debate on whether long term monetary outlook for nations are more important than the privacy and security of the individual, the question is how will people react to CBDC’s once they are integrated for the first time in developed countries.

Sources

https://www.bis.org/publ/arpdf/ar2021e3.htm

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/central-bank-digital-currency-cbdc.asp

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpwps/ecb.wp2713~91ddff9e7c.en.pdf

ASML went public on the New York stock exchange in 1995 and was seen by big tech companies as the future of science and technology. In 2012, ASML wasn’t able to create EUV machines that it had its eyes on because of monetary deficiencies so the company was able to give away a quarter of its shares to the big 3 chip manufacturers, Intel, Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Now, with the creation of EUV, there are supply issues because only one company is creating these machines. Chip creators like TSMC and Intel have Semiconductor fabrication (fabs), these are the factories that use ASML’s machines to create the semiconductor chips. The problem with this whole system is that there is a huge monopoly that makes it so no new businesses are able to join in on the profit by virtue of the machines themselves, costing up to 300 million dollars and the factories, that can take billions of dollars to not just build but manage. TSMC is the biggest player right now with over 40% of ASML’s supply in EUV machines, big companies like Intel and Samsung are even falling behind to ASML’s reining monopoly.

Apple gets all their chips from TSMC, making up 25% of TSMC’s revenue which is a staggering number. If this didn’t make things worse, TSMC is branching out into the US to build fabs in Arizona where the production will start in 2024. This is possible because of the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 that President Biden announced, providing 52 billion dollars in subsidies to the semiconductor industry. While all the pressure of competing with demand from fabs is stuck with ASML, a conglomerate company named SEMI predicts there will be about 72 new fab machines built around the world by 2024; this creates further pressure for ASML and chip manufactures. So what are the implications for everyday people? Having fabs can be a good thing for a country because it increases revenue and trade, but the catch is that every fab needs about 4.7 million gallons of water a day to support its operation. Water is a necessity because it cools down equipment and cleans silicon wafers that makes production of chips possible. The amount of water for one fab is equivalent to nearly what 25,000 residents in Arizona will use in a day.

Taiwan itself is already seeing the worst droughts its had in 50 years, they now rely on getting water to keep their fabs running by going to the south-side of the island with trucks. If droughts like these were to hit other countries because of the current chip war, it can have negative effects on agriculture. Prices of food will most likely skyrocket because there isn’t enough water to grow specific amount of crops due to allocating most of the water supply to chip production. Furthermore, the growing demand of fabs can lead ASML to capitulate from the inside and slow down their research on building new machines because they’re stuck supplying so many other machines to countries around the world. There are both positives and negatives to the semiconductor industry and while it’s seen mostly in a positive light, there are growing concerns on what this CHIPS act has entailed for the future of not just the US, but the world.

Sources

https://www.asml.com/en/products/euv-lithography-systems#:~:text=EUV%20stands%20for%20’extreme%20ultraviolet,a%20wavelength%20of%2013.5%20nm.

https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shortage-arizona-drought

https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/sa_presentations/919/84919/original.pdf

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/06/28/tsmc-arizona-construction-subsidies/

Quantitative tightening is used by selling bonds to the open market in return for taking money out of the economy. This leads to the Fed taking out billions of dollars out of the economy at a time for months on end in order to increase the value of the dollar. While the price of the dollar is increasing, the central bank increases interest rates for commercial banks so that the price of overnight lending between these banks becomes exorbitant. Commercial banks are then able to not lose money by increasing interest rates for everyday citizens which incentivizes others to not spend as much money as they would have in the past. By slowing down the way people spend their money, the Fed is able to decrease inflation, furthermore leading to a stable economy with no long term bad monetary outlook. It’s the Fed’s job to keep the economy healthy at all means, even if there are people struggling to buy goods and services with interest rate hikes.

With two 75 basis point hikes most people are leaning to inflation going down significantly in the next coming days. While there is a high chance that inflation does go down because of these hikes, others are holding on to the fact that it may be possible inflation is still stable or even increases, leading to securities on the stock market to increase in price. Some signs that may point to a higher inflation number that could come out the next days is by looking at both the dollar index and the government bond yields. Over the past 6 weeks, 10 year government bond yields have increased going from 2.5% to 3.37% meaning that a large majority of bonds have been sold off with no interest rate hike happening while these bond yields have increased. In addition, the dollar index has went from 104.7 to a high of 110.7, this connotes that the price of the dollar when paired against a basket of other currencies is still rapidly increasing. Taking all this into consideration, it’s still very possible that the unexpected of inflation going higher can still be valid, especially when paired up with a short term increase in price of securities on the market.