(Reuters) – PepsiCo Inc raised its full-year earnings forecast on Tuesday, betting on accelerating demand for its sodas in theaters, restaurants and stadiums as they pull back crowds following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions.
The company’s shares rose nearly 2% premarket.
The vaccine-aided reopening of public venues across the United States following a year of closures or strict capacity limits helped boost sales in PepsiCo’s North America Beverage unit 24% in the second quarter.
The company said it expects fiscal 2021 core earnings per share to increase 11%, compared with prior forecast of a high-single-digit increase.
Net revenue rose 20.5% to $19.22 billion in the quarter ended June 12, above expectations of $17.96 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
PepsiCo said it would also expand a program to automate more manufacturing processes and optimize its supply chain, resulting in expected pre-tax charges of about $3.15 billion. The program’s prior cost estimate was about $2.5 billion.
(Reporting by Uday Sampath in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)
