Cristiano Ronaldo snub wipes billions off Coca-Cola’s market value | Hacker News Reader

Cristiano Ronaldo snub wipes billions off Coca-Cola’s market value

theguardian.com

90 points0xedb110 comments

Perhaps the cause was that the ex-date of the latest dividend was 06/14/2021 [1]

[1] https://ycharts.com/companies/KO/dividend

Explanation: In order to be eligible for the dividend of $0.42/share, you had to be holding the stock on Friday at close. You would therefore normally expect the share price to drop $0.42 between Friday close and Monday open.

Looks like that accounts for about half of the "drop", which means KO lost less than 1% over the weekend. Hardly worth a news article.

That would acccount for about half of the drop between Friday close and Monday open, nice catch!

Journalist narratives behind stock price action are almost always wrong or misleading.

"behind stock price action" seems irrelevant to that sentence :)

wouldn't this be something already arbed out? Dividend dates are known -- one can make a quick buck shorting if one knows for sure the price will change.

Sort of. There’s taxation différences that vary based on where the account holder is based, so the drop won’t exactly equal the dividend amount, even if it was paid immediately.

The price is adjusted on ex-dividend day. You can attempt to arb dividends with options, but the algos will beat you.

It is pretty visible in most instruments. If you're calculating a simple expected price of a stock at the open it's pretty normal to take the closing price from the prior trade day and adjust it based on any corporate actions (dividends, splits, ...).

Now whether or not this is actually the price that the instrument will trade at is a different story, but it's a good initial estimate. Market data and other activity will quickly inform you as to the actual price.

No, because if you short at close on ex-dividend and buy back at open the next day, ceteris paribus you gain the stock price delta (which is exactly equal to the dividend), but you also owe the amount of the dividend to the person you borrowed the stock from. You end up netting nothing.

ah that makes sense, ty very much

If you short, you'll pay both interest AND dividends on that stock.

Additionally, Pogba did the same with Heineken yesterday. Yet that stock (HEIA:AMS [0]) went up 1.39% today, without any other clear signals that would cause the stock to go up that much.

Correlated (maybe even caused by)? Who knows, it is the stock market after all, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

[0]: https://live.euronext.com/en/product/equities/NL0000009165-X...

And with that, billions of people vote with their dollars and express their dislike of drinking Coca-Cola (and show Coke who is boss) instead by drinking Dasani, Smartwater, Topo Chico, and Aha.

Or tap water.

Yeah, like we do here in Flint, Michigan

A lot of countries have good tap water, in those countries there is no reason to buy bottled.

In places where that is not true it's probably still better to drink water than coca-cola.

Most people don't live in Flint.

Statistically, most people are living in India, Pakistan and China.

Which of those has the best tap water?

If you live somewhere that uses reservoir water rather than groundwater maybe. Groundwater tastes like shit.

Depends where you live and how good your local water treatment plant is.

Err, I say exactly the opposite myself. I hate treated water from a public water system. All those chemicals (and whatever comes off the piping) are far from tasty.

Depends on where you live. In the Netherlands, I don't think you can taste the difference or people even prefer tap water, because it tastes more neutral then some mineral waters. Sourcy and Bar-Le-Duc are even bottled from the same source as Utrecht gets its tap water from. Main difference with US is no chlorine is added.

In the US it's highly dependent on where you live https://i.redd.it/iijl9wrr6h571.png

That depends entirely on your groundwater. In Florida, absolutely, it tastes like shit. When I lived in New York, it was great. Reservoir water, of course, is full of literal shit. Fish shit, birdshit, human waste runoff, etc, which all must be removed by a treatment system prior to use.

If you mean NYC, most of the tap water there comes from reservoirs upstate.

If i meant NYC, I would have said NYC. Damn condescending of you to assume otherwise. I think I know where I lived. My water came from the Lloyd Aquifer.

Ok.

The point was that all those brands are owned by Coca-Cola, after all.

Was not clear to me.

It was the contents of the bottle that Ronaldo objected to, not the label.

I don't think so. Even if that were true, he knows is power and influence and how it works with sponsorship etc..

So he would have known it would have been interpreted one way and not the other.

Definitely moving a bottle of something aside he's not being paid for is rational in his part.

If he 'said the names' of the water companies he was not sponsored by, that would be odd as he knows not to do that, but if he just said 'water' then that would be normal.

And I’m sure a company that found a way to still sell to the Nazis won’t adapt by having this guy sponsor their new water brand for soccer-focused countries.

Side note: If you really think about the power Coke will amass in China, it feels staggering. Imagine having a quarter billion people (being conservative here) pay $1 for a can of soda. That’s $250m on a Monday. Do it again Tuesday, maybe have them buy two. It’s crazy money.

If they did, it would be a massive improvement to public health, wouldn't it?

I bet Coca Cola and Pepsi deeply fear tobacco style lawsuits.

If you think tobacco-caused disease is expensive to treat, wait until you see diabetes and obesity.

They’ve reduced the sugar of the Canadian version of coke (used to have more than US formulation). Bottles are all getting smaller (591 to 500) and smaller options than 355mL.

And the obvious push toward low/no-sugar options.

> And the obvious push toward low/no-sugar options.

It's borderline evil to formulate even sweeter versions, but with zero calorie sweeteners: people drink them freely because they don't have calories, but the sweetness could be causing insulin resistance, which can turn into diabetes.

Pushing for low sugar and moderation is better than no sugar and no moderation.

Seems like a lot of people replying are missing your joke here. Just to be explicit: Coca-Cola owns all of these brands.

I'll add to that and say Coca Cola branded water costs more that the soda lol. Business!

He held up a bottle of water and said "agua".

Why assume it's a rejection of the Coca-Cola corporation vs soda as a choice of beverages?

It's a rejection of an entity that is not sponsoring him.

These are 'businessmen athletes' who are intimately familiar with issues around sponsorship.

He's also a health nut. Someone that cares enough about their health to do something about it probably wouldn't drink carbonated sugar water.

I think that's fair. But he still knows what he is doing.

If he were sponsored by a Coke 'sub brand' (i.e. water or healthy drink) ... he would have done it more gracefully for sure.

Coca-cola has started buying all the bottled water brands in Mexico to stave off any people who won't drink soda. Tap water is dangerous to drink in most of Latin America.

Everyone talks about how awesome Warren Buffet is, but nobody talks about how the vast majority of his fortune was acquired from owning Coca-Cola, selling sugar water to the masses, fueling the diabetes and obesity epidemic.

"Do you want to sell sugar water or change the world?"

Still not clear where the smart money was.

Sugar water has probably done more to change the world tbh.

"or change the world"

"change the world for the better, right? right?"

Or that he took Gov handouts/bailouts and always says he wants to pay more taxes but never does. I guess you can't get to where he is being honest. A recent example was the fuckery he tried to pull with Texas and building new Generation Plants. Man is a shit bag...

Buffett famously stated, "I'll tell you why I like the cigarette business. It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive. And there's fantastic brand loyalty."

source: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/08/buffett-best...

Also:

>"Basically, when you get to my age, you'll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

>I know people who have a lot of money, and they get testimonial dinners and they get hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them. If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don't care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.

>That's the ultimate test of how you have lived your life.

There could be a confounding variable that led to massive demand for sugar water, of which Buffett was only capitalizing on, not necessarily contributing to.

> In part, the shift from using sucrose to HFCS was encouraged by extensive government subsidies of corn farmers, with a majority of U.S. farm policies focused on promoting increased production of inexpensive corn. One study showed that as a result of such subsidies, the consumer price of corn (and its byproducts) remained approximately 25%–30% below cost (of production) between 1997 and 2005 (19). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2746720/

> As nutrition debates raged in the 1960s, prominent Harvard nutritionists published two reviews in a top medical journal downplaying the role of sugar in coronary heart disease. Newly unearthed documents reveal what they didn’t say: A sugar industry trade group initiated and paid for the studies, examined drafts, and laid out a clear objective to protect sugar’s reputation in the public eye. https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/12/sugar-industry-harvard-r...

Most of his holdings are in AAPL these days. Making a fortune selling processed sand to the masses, fueling the diabetes and obesity epidemic.

As has been similarly said, it costs $100 to make, sells for $1000 and its addictive. What’s not to like about investing in it.

He talks about his investment in Coca-Cola all the time, and is often drinking coke during his interviews and shareholder updates. He's pretty upfront about it.

Alternative headline: Coca Cola stock dips 1.6%

Yeah I find it hard to believe that an incident that people will forget two seconds after it happens costs billions of dollars.

While I don't know if the drop is related to this incident or not, the video was wildly spread through social networks (at least in Europe) and even becoming a meme now. Even some news commented on it (local). Still no idea if it really affected the stock price, but it is 2 days now and people are still talking about it in these necks of the woods.

Did that really "cost" billions of dollars though? Isn't that just billions of _valuation_ that will not take long to recover?

That percentage is worth 4 billions of dollars, due to Coca Cola size so... it's accurate. Percentages might be misleading sometimes.

Of potential stock value, not actual money. As is touted so often when talking about Bezos, Musk, and Buffet: stock value is not real money.

I was just pointing out absolute numbers vs percentages, which were the core of GP comment.

Drop was something like $1 per share which from ~$56 to ~$55.

Where 3 months ago Coca Cola was trading around $50, year ago Coca Cola was trading for ~$45 per share.

That was totally meaningless event, it did not drop in a way I would start buying. There is no real consequences for Coca Cola, maybe some day traders lost money selling for $56 before that event.

There was a $0.42 dividend priced in on Monday open since Monday was the quarterly ex-dividend day for KO, so maybe half of that is from Ronaldo, but that is not verifiable so … shrug

Take a look at the company's stock price over the last year (KO). This sort of drop is indistinguishable from random market fluctuations as far as I can tell.

This pretty much sums up the press when it comes to investments or even crypto. The tiniest blip equates to the sky is falling (or fire sale!). Zoom out and it's nothing.

$KO has been on a downward slope since 6/14. This is market chatter and it will normalize out at some point.

Exactly. The next time I ditch coke for water, share price will drop by 1.7%.

All you have to do is zoom out 12 months and this looks like absolutely nothing.

I wonder when we'll finally realize how stupid we're and stop drinking liquid sugars including fruit juices, which often are worse than coke!

To be fair, I haven't met anyone who drinks as much juice as soda drinkers drink soda

Huh yeah... you can see unhealthy people put away a 2 litre bottle of something like Coca-Cola without thinking twice, but that would seem like an obscene quantity of orange juice or something to almost anyone I think.

When I was a deeply unhealthy teenager (about the same time I was regularly going through a 30-pack of Coke in a week) I would frequently also drink a gallon jug of orange juice in a day. I still (decades later) have to keep an eye on myself around that stuff; all the variants of sugar-water are reserved for special occasions these days.

Turns out people will drink more of something if you make it a little addictive. Hell, the drug of choice has changed but it's even baked into the name.

Yeah, a 32-oz juice isn't a fairly common "medium" size, and you don't usually get a juice (with free refills!) included in a combo meal

Heh, come to my primary care clinic, I’ll introduce you.

Read "Atomic Habits" by James Clear, I wonder how can we implement 4 laws to get rid of this bad habit.

Thank you for the recommendation. It's surprising how easily we're getting manipulated by taste buds and old instincts and how often our brain function is out of the picture!

Toss a big warning from the Surgeon General on there. People are blind to it now, but when they first did it for cigarettes most people weren't aware of the severity of related health issues.

We need a big "soda can make you obese and diabetic" campaign — we haven't even begun to approach the level of fervor that cut down on smoking... and we're fatter and unhealthier than ever.

I generally agree that bans go too far, but I love publicly funded advocacy.

Similarly to cigarettes, they need to show diabetics with amputated legs and blind ones. People always think diabetes is a benign condition, which is easy to manage. But tell them that many scientists call it "accelerated aging" today or that it can lead to cancer, and they will take it more seriously.

It's refreshing to see someone with a big microphone use their fame to promote something positive.

Cold Coke on a hot day is positive. Coke 3x a day every day is negative.

There's 44g of sugar in a can of coke. The recommended daily amount of sugar is 24g. Although I take issue that there would be any amount of sugar that should be recommended since it's entirely unnecessary to consume.

I wouldn't say sugar is unnecessary for us: “The brain is dependent on sugar as its main fuel” https://hms.harvard.edu/news-events/publications-archive/bra...

The body needs sugar, but you don't need to consume sugar to get it. You produce your own glucose.

Particularly since in soft drinks it is typically balanced out with salt to intensify craving and the amount you can drink without feeling like you're taking in too much sugar. Soft drinks have quite a bit of salt in there too, even if you're not washing down Doritos.

I'm not aware of any soft drinks that have significant amounts of salt added. Certainly for the most popular drinks (e.g. coke, pepsi), the only sodium in them is from the water source.

It'll end up as much as a twentieth of a teaspoon of salt per bottle, depending on the soft drink. This is not a huge dose all by itself but you don't register it as salt: it sneaks in as part of other ingredients, rather than being added by the spoonful in raw form (that said, 'natural flavorings' can cover a lot, so it CAN be just added as part of the recipe.) Leave it out and your flavor balance will be more along 'New Coke' lines.

It's not just too little to register as salt, it's too little to alter taste at all. It's incidental, not deliberately included as part of the flavor. There's as much sodium in some tap waters, and in fact the sodium content of sodas varies by location because of variations in the source water.

Never mind it being "quite a bit of salt" or enough to "intensify craving."

0 soda or juice / day is positive

whole fruits are extremely positive on any day

Meh. I don't buy or drink soda but if the opportunity arises for a freebie I take it. I like the Dale Cooper methodology- give yourself a gift every day. Don't plan it. Just let it happen.

Whole fruits are great at any time though. That I'll agree with.

If you're just having one a day, a cold beer is healthier than a cold Coke.

There is a 100% chance that if he was sponsored by Coke, the he would have done the opposite.

There's so much discussion on this board about 'water' vs 'coke' - that is not it. This is a businessman who makes his money from sponsorship. They know what they are doing and how it will be interpreted.

The decision to 'move a bottle of something you're not sponsoring off camera' is inevitably a business decision and normal frankly.

There is a 0% chance that he would ever accept that sponsorship. We're talking about someone who is obsessed with health and performance, and the third most well paid athlete in the world. He even said recently that he is 36 years old, has been playing professionally for 20 years, and doesn't really care any more.

Yeah but look how much free marketing publicity they're getting/making from a temporary blip in stock price...

But Pogba did the same with Heineken [1] (most likely because he is muslim) yet Heineken's stock price is rising? [2] So either Ronaldo has more influence than Pogba or the whole thing (Coke's stock) has nothing to do with Ronaldo.

1, https://twitter.com/goal/status/1405076977514582018

2, https://www.google.com/finance/quote/HEIA:AMS

Most likely 2, but you can't put Pogba in the same sentence as Ronaldo when it comes to influence lol

As someone who doesn't follow soccer or soccer news, I had to Google Pogba, but I already knew who Ronaldo was.

Just a fun little aside - Heineken introduced Heineken 0.0 a few years back, and as non-alcoholic beers go, it's the only one that doesn't taste "off".

Even Athletic Brewing Company, as nice as it is to have non-alcoholic stouts and IPAs, hasn't nailed what Heineken has.

(Incidentally, it was a 0.0 that Pogba removed from the table, so perhaps it wasn't the alcohol that bothered him)

I normally don't have strong brand opinions but I have to say Athletic Brewing make the best non-alc hazy ipa and lager I've ever had. Before them I'd only have non-alc beer at events where people drink, now I'll have a few at home weekly.

> Alcohol-free beer does contain a small amount of alcohol (up to 0.05% ABV). This is because some alcohol naturally forms as part of the brewing process.

https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/facts/alcoholic-drinks-and-unit...

At the level of Heineken 0.0, which is actually 0.03%, it should be noted that the alcohol content of most unwaxed ripe fruit is higher due to natural subsurface fermentation by wild yeasts.

To my knowledge, Muslims do eat fruit.

FWIW, someone poured me a can of Heineken 0.0 a few weeks back, telling me it was a Heineken and I immediately thought something was off about it. I just assumed it was really old or something (I was at a family member's place who doesn't drink and just keeps some beer around for guests), but when I actually looked at the can and saw what I was drinking, I realized why.

> So either Ronaldo has more influence than Pogba

I am not even a soccer fan, and I know who Ronaldo is. This is the first time I have even heard of Pogba. So likely Ronaldo has more influence than Pogba.

Ronaldo is the number one by followers in instagram, I would also suspect has 10x the ad appearances and so on.

(and again, not saying it affected the price, Ronaldo actually dissed Coke by saying 'Water', while Pogba did it mostly because of his faith, which carries a different weight)

So either Ronaldo has more influence than Pogba or the whole thing (Coke's stock) has nothing to do with Ronaldo.

Definitely does not have to be an either/or thing in this scenario. I'd say both/and are likely true. :)

I wonder how an arbitrary event like this is fed into trading systems that are highly automated. Somewhere there must be a human that says "oh that is bad". Then what? How do they judge how bad it is? And how does that become input into algorithms?

Coca-Cola, it's got what plants crave!

[1] https://youtu.be/ZMHfBobgLSI?t=70

Nobody is going to drink less Coca-Cola because Cristiano Ronaldo doesn't drink it. So how can something like this move the stock price? Do stockholders watch TV and then run to their brokers shouting "sell sell sell"? I don't understand this, it seems completely meaningless. I can see the stock drop should Coca-Cola publish a document "how to be less white in workplace" for example, but someone moving a bottle away from cameras... I don't get it. Can someone who works in the financial industry explain this?

Imagine how much better society would be if there was incentive to spend billions to improve everyone's health.

Better for whom?

Psychologically healthy people aren't going to work factory jobs for 30 years to pay off a single house. You'd have to be demented and most people today are.

a movement of 1.6% is what happens on a weekly basis though...

Nothing compared to what Elon is doing to a Bitcoin price with each of his tweets

Reply on news.ycombinator.com