Coca-Cola Hasn't Sold Much More Soda in a Decade. Its Dividend Has Gone Up Every Year Anyway.
The beverage giant sells only about 16% more product than it did ten years ago, yet its payout is up 61%. What keeps funding the raises?
Overview
In 2015, Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) and its bottling partners (what the company calls the Coca-Cola system) sold 29.2 billion unit cases of its drinks. A unit case is the company's standard volume measure, equal to 24 eight-ounce servings.
In 2025, the system sold 33.8 billion unit cases. In total, the system's volume grew about 16% over those ten years, or about 1.5% a year. And soda is still most of what the company sells: sparkling soft drinks made up 69% of those cases last year.
Details
The dividend hasn't crept along like that. Coca-Cola paid $1.32 per share in 2015 and pays $2.12 today -- an increase of 61%, with a raise in every single year along the way. February's boost of about 4% marked the company's 64th consecutive annual increase.
Source
Originally published at www.fool.com.