Soft drink giant Coca-Cola has reported first-quarter profits on strong sales in its key North American market.
The world's largest soft-drink company reported net income of $801 million, or 40 cents a share, compared with $863 million, or 35 cents a share, a year before.
Coke said unit case volume, a key measure of financial health in the beverage industry, grew more than 5 per cent overall and by 5 per cent in North America, its largest market. Revenue jumped 3 per cent to $4.08 billion from $3.96 billion.
Although Coca-Cola conceded it faced economic challenges in many of its markets, it said its outlook of 5 per cent to 6 per cent volume growth for 2002 remained unchanged and that it was comfortable with analysts' current estimates for the full year.
But the soft drink maker continues to face several challenges, including improving its marketing for core brands and turning around its operations in Latin America. Case sales in Latin America were flat in the first quarter.
But the poor Latin American results were offset by an 8 per cent volume jump in Coca-Cola's Europe, Eurasian and Middle East market and a 9 per cent rise in Asia.
But it is the rosier outlook for Coca-Cola's home market - analysts had expected growth of about 3.5 per cent before a quarterly volume update last month - that is likely to stoke investors' immediate interest in the company.