Coca-Cola innovation on display at convenience store conference

Yahoo Finance Live anchors discuss Coca-Cola and the brand’s innovation at the convenience store conference.

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BRAD SMITH: Coca-Cola getting high marks from its presentation and crowd sizes at the Annual National Association of Convenience Store Conference. Now, that has piqued the interest of Sozzi ahead of Coca-Cola's earnings release. That's gonna be on October 25. That's where we find his take today. Sozz.

BRIAN SOZZI: That's what we do here. We find obscure-- otherwise obscure conferences, like the National Convenience Store Conference, and like bring these reports to life. So shout out to Evercore ISI analyst Robert Ottenstein, which put together a report of what Coca-Cola did there. It looks like Robert went to the event. It was well, well-trafficked.

Let's fire off some photos here because you're looking, I think, at the next generation of Coca-Cola in many respects. You're seeing a smart coffee machine on screen right now. That is a new Costa brand that they bought a couple of years ago.

You're seeing them also innovate more with new cans. You're seeing now that Coke Freestyle machine up to now 208 different flavor options there. And then one of my faves right here, the Body Armor brand, which Coke bought, now coming in 28-ounce bottles with 140 milligrams of caffeine. Sign me up for all that stuff.

So again, I think you're seeing a more focused Coca-Cola right here. Really starting to bring or crank up its innovation engine into next year. Now, why is all of this important? Why should we care about what's happening at the National Convenience Store Conference , as it pertains to Coca-Cola?

Well, a couple of stats on the board here. Convenience stores account for about 10% to 14% of Coke's North America sales. Convenience stores account for about 15% to 20% of Coke's North America profits, a large presence there, of course. And approximately half of the US adult population shops each day at a convenience store and likely buy something from Coca-Cola, and of course its main rival PepsiCo, which will be getting their earnings out tomorrow morning.

Overall, speaking of earnings, Coca-Cola will report earnings in a couple of weeks. I whipped up a nifty checklist here for you guys to store away as you prepare for this earnings report.

The strong dollar may hammer sales and profits, of course. Coca-Cola is a global player, and they will very much likely to be exposed to that strong dollar, just like we heard from Nike a couple of weeks ago when they reported.

Constellation Brands-- we just talked to CEO Bill Newlands-- their earnings were strong. Suggests that increased mobility might have helped Coca-Cola as well. Our price increase is sticking. We saw from Conagra when they reported earnings, and McCormick last week, food companies are pushing through price increases. And for right now, they appear to be sticking. Good thing for margins.

And last but not least, any signs of inflation rolling over. I mentioned that Conagra report last week. There were signs that inflation was starting to cool down a little bit. And my take here, more focused Coca-Cola is ultimately a good things for investors into next year.

There I am holding a full calorie Coca-Cola. Now, what you don't see here is really over the past year or so, James Quincey, the CEO of Coca-Cola, has really streamlined that product portfolio, really got them focused on what they should be doing, which is a Body Armor, which is [? Quirka-Cola, ?] which is unique cans. And not selling things, I believe, like Tab that nobody really wants.

BRAD SMITH: What's remarkable is that we always had been talking about for years when there was kind of a war on sugar, if you will, and some of the more sugary drinks that were falling out of the consumer either diet, or fanfare, or just the affinity to those high-sugary drinks.

Coca-Cola pivoted. Coca-Cola is one of the only companies that has the amount of cash possible to really deploy in the beverage space to either build something out in-house or go out and acquire a brand. And I think that's really been a really good competitive positioning for them.

Of course, it does come with the size of Coca-Cola to make that possible. But that's a significant consideration for how they've been able to kind of steer the ship over these past few years, as consumer tastes trends change.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, it's interesting to see that chart we were just showing, how Coca-Cola shares have been outperforming PepsiCo. But again, we'll hear about them tomorrow. We'll be talking to CFO Hugh Johnston, a friend of our programming. Very curious to see how they did in this volatile backdrop.