Coke's Results Top Expectations

Coca-Cola Co. posted better-than-expected profit and revenue in its first quarter as beverage volumes inched up 1% during the first three months of the year.

In the latest quarter, Coke said its world-wide soda volumes and noncarbonated beverage volumes both grew 1%.

Shares of Coke, down 6.9% over the past three months, added 2.3% to $41.70 in premarket trading.

The maker of brands including Sprite soda and Minute Maid orange juice had warned that 2015 would be a challenging year as it works through a plan to cut $3 billion in costs and faces increasingly health-conscious customers.

In a move that has helped to offset declining soda volumes, Coke raised prices aggressively in the U.S. during the second half of 2014, capitalizing on a rebounding economy, falling unemployment and rising wages.

Meanwhile, Coke is seeing currency fluctuations dent its earnings. Coke generates most of its profit abroad and warned in February that weakening foreign currencies could drag down pretax profit by 7 to 8 percentage points in 2015. Since then, the dollar has strengthened further against key currencies including the Brazilian real and the euro.

Coke unveiled a $3 billion cost-cutting program in October, as the maker of Sprite, Minute Maid and Powerade warned it would miss profit targets after sales slowed across much of the world. The cost-cutting program includes a shift to zero-based budgeting, layoffs and redirecting savings to stepped-up marketing after missing revenue targets two straight years.

Overall, for the period ended April 3, the company posted earnings of $1.56 billion, or 35 cents a share, down from $1.62 billion, or 36 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding items, per-share earnings were 48 cents.

Revenue inched up 1.3% to $10.71 billion.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had projected 42 cents a share in earnings and $10.66 billion in revenue.

Write to Chelsey Dulaney at [e-mail]

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