The Misfits: Coca-Cola Consolidated (COKE)

No, not that Coca-Cola, the other Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) has received much attention in the financial blogosphere in the past several months. Between people falling over themselves to praise Warren Buffett for his investment in Coca-Cola to the Bear Cave recently issuing as close to a short report as you can make on a solid albeit overhyped business, there is a wide variety of opinions out there.

I can’t say I have a strong opinion one way or the other on Coca-Cola. It has been underperforming the market for more than 30 years. Sure, people made money, but it hardly seems worth it to take on the additional risk of owning equity in a single company that underperforms a diversified index over such long periods.

But we’re not here to talk about that Coca-Cola.

There are lots of industries where the companies in the background are the ones that make better investments than the big recognizable companies: Automotive and airlines are two examples that immediately come to mind. Beverages and beverage distribution are, arguably, another example of this. Coca-Cola Consolidated (NASDAQ: COKE) is the largest bottler and distributor of Coca-Cola products in the U.S. and is the only publicly traded one. It has generated returns more than three times that of Coca-Cola over the past 30 years.

However, Coca-Cola Consolidated’s outperformance hasn’t always been the case, so let’s dig into what has made the beverage distributor such a lucrative business.

---

But first…

Shoutout to Koyfin, one of the best financial data platforms I’ve ever used. Koyfin has become an integral part of how I screen for, track, and analyze companies. It has made the analysis process much faster thanks to having a decade's worth of data at my fingertips instead of manually going through stacks of quarterly and annual filings.

Up your analysis process by Signing up for Koyfin. Click on the link below and receive 10% off your annual subscription.

Disclaimer: I have an affiliate partnership with Koyfin and receive compensation if you sign up via the link above. It helps me fund this endeavor. I would still recommend using it even if I didn’t have this partnership because it’s an awesome product, but I’d be stupid to turn down a revenue opportunity. You get a discount, Koyfin gets new business, and I get a commission. Win-win-win).