S&P's Take on Coca Cola (2)

WALL STREET SMARTS, THE BLOG, IS NOW WALL STREET SMARTS, THE BOOK.  FULLY EDITED AND REVISED WITH NEW MATERIAL ON AMAZON

We will pick up with page four of the the August 27, 2011 Standard & Poors (S&P) report on The Coca Cola Co. (stock symbol - KO).  Let me repeat that I am neither suggesting that you consider this company as an investment nor recommending that its stock is a buy.

Page Four  This page is devoted to the soft drink business, which is referred to as a sub-industry of the Consumer Staples category of business.  Analyst Esther Y. Kwon, CFA discusses the soda business in her Sub-Industry Outlook.  Accompanying her analysis is the Stock Performance for soft drinks, comparing it to Consumer Staples and the S&P 1500 Index, which shows month-end price performances of KO from 2007 through July of 2011.  Below this is data on Coke's peer group, which includes several Coca Cola bottling companies, Dr. Pepper, Pepsico and others.

Page Five  This page contains what is termed S&P Analyst Research Notes and other Company News, which includes reports and announcements about Coke going back to February, 2011.

Page Six  This page is devoted to reports on the way Coca Cola is viewed by the Wall Street analysts who cover the company.  The page starts with a review of Analysts' Recommendations of Buy, Buy/Hold, Hold, Weak Hold and Sell going back to 2009.  It lists the number of analysts covering Coke and its stock price.  The page also contains the Wall Street Consensus Opinion of Buy/Hold and a list of the research companies in addition to S&P offering coverage of Coke.  The page also includes Wall Street Consensus Estimates for earnings for 2011 and 2012.

Page Seven  On this page S&P provides a Glossary of various financial measures contained in the previous pages, including S&P Stars, S&P Core Earnings, its Qualitative Risk Assessment, S&P Quality Rating and more.  This page describes S&P's proprietary modeling systems such as the S&P Fair Value Rank, Fair Value Calculation and Investability Quotient, among others.

Pages Eight, Nine & Ten  These pages contain what could be called the "fine print", S&P's disclosures and disclaimers concerning its report on Coke.

The fundamental investor will find in this report most, if not all, of the investment data and financial statistics on The Coca Cola Co. he or she might need in order to analyze the company.  Based on this information, the individual investor can decide if KO's stock meets the investor's qualifications for a good investment opportunity based on the investor's personal investment strategy.  To make an investment in a stock without reviewing a report such as this one is the same as embarking on a cross country car trip without maps or GPS; in either event, the person ends up lost.

S&P reports, like this one on Coke, provide the individual investor with the same sort of data used by Wall Street analysts.  It goes a long way toward providing a level playing field for individuals when they compete against Wall Street professionals in the market.


Comments are always welcome.