Six years ago, on July 1, 2020, PepsiCo stock closed around $132. Today it trades at roughly $137. Six years. Five dollars. In that same window the S&P nearly doubled and Coca-Cola pushed to near-record highs. You could have parked your money in a savings account and slept better. The dividend got its annual raise again this month, sure, but a 4.3% yield isn't a reward when it's mostly the math of a falling stock price. That's not income growth. That's erosion with a coupon attached.
The scoreboard on the beverage side is worse. Trademark Coke owns roughly 18-19% of US carbonated soft drinks. Trademark Pepsi sits under 8%, and in 2023 Dr Pepper, a brand people used to joke about, took the number two spot Pepsi had held for four decades. Dr Pepper is still growing. Pepsi is fighting Sprite for third. Walk into a McDonald's, a Chick-fil-A, a Wendy's, a Burger King, a Domino's, and see whose fountain is pouring. The national chain map is red. The share losses aren't a bad quarter. They're a twenty-year trend line that finally got called by name.
So spare me the talk about culture and headcount protection. A company that has lost the cola war, lost the number two slot, lost six years of shareholder returns, and is watching analysts cut price targets after every earnings call does not have a people problem. It has a cost structure built for a company that no longer exists. The market has already voted, and it voted for Coke's leaner model. More layoffs aren't cruel. They're overdue. Shareholders didn't sign up to fund a jobs program; they signed up for returns, and they haven't gotten them since 2020. It's not about the people. It was never about the people. It's about the dividend.