Ben Gilbert: disagreement

Transcript context

…And Bill. I think it could be. Now, there have been great, incredible CEOs in Coca-Cola’s history—Candler, Woodruff, Goizueta. All of them have added on to what the Coca-Cola company is, I think. But if you took just Coca-Cola, yeah a ham sandwich could run it. In fact, it’s proven by the New Coke debacle. All right, I disagree. I think there were definitely periods in history, yes, but in 1985, no. Coke had been losing share to Pepsi for 15 straight years. They did actually need active management to do something. The same thing with the obesity crisis in the 2000s. Coke effectively bumped up against the edge of the market of humans that it could possibly expand to, and they did actually need a different company strategy. Now, whether that has been executed well is a different thing. It’s only grown 3%–4% over, whatever, the last 27 years. If the criteria is run a high-growth, successful, great place to put money versus all the other places you could put money company, no, they haven’t succeeded in doing that. But you do have to do something rather than just be flat to anemic growth or decline. Those are very fair points. Points taken. I would still pose the question to you. What is the single biggest revenue driver within the Coca-Cola company today?…

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