Coca-Cola's profit dips; weather, flat sales blamed

Coca-Cola is struggling to sell more soda in the U.S., and it can't seem to catch a break.

The world's largest beverage maker Tuesday blamed a confluence of factors including unusually bad weather for its disappointing second-quarter results. It cited cold, wet conditions at home and flooding in parts of Europe for weak volume growth globally. Profit declined 4 percent.

The temporary setbacks clouded the underlying challenge the company faces in North America and other developed markets, where soda consumption has been declining for years amid criticism that sugary drinks fuel obesity rates.

In the latest quarter, for example, Coca-Cola said soda volume in North America fell 4 percent. The figure has declined in 20 of the 26 quarters since the start of 2007, including a 2 percent slide a year ago.

It was flat in four quarters and rose by just 1 percent in the other two quarters.

Still, executives expressed confidence they'd be able to return to growth with greater investments in marketing, new packaging and other tactics.

"I hate to use the weather, but a lot of it was the weather," Chief Financial Officer Gary Fayard said in an interview on CNBC, apparently acknowledging the frequency with which companies cite the weather when they deliver disappointing results. "We are an industry that's susceptible to weather," he said.

Looking ahead to the second half of the year, executives expressed confidence that the weather would even out and that business would improve, including in key markets such as India, China and North America.

In the meantime, Coca-Cola and rival PepsiCo Inc. have been trying to come up with a soda that uses a natural, low-calorie sweetener to reverse the slide in U.S. soda consumption. The challenge is that such sweeteners often have a bad aftertaste.

Executives at both Coke and Pepsi have expressed optimism that natural, lower-calorie sodas can get soda sales on the path to growth.