According to the corporation’s financial documents, Multon Partners LLC, the Russian business of Coca-Cola HBC Holdings B.V., earned 10.25 billion roubles (a bit more than $111 million) in 2023, over four times the amount of its profit in 2022 (2.3 billion roubles).
The increase in profits is enormous, even when compared to the corporation’s earnings before Russia’s war against Ukraine started in February 2022, with a 150% increase expected in 2023, The Insider reported.
In March 2022, shortly after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Coca-Cola announced that it would halt operations in the country. PepsiCo, its main competitor, released a similar comment. However, abandoning the Russian market proved more said than done.
Coca-Cola did, for a while, sell off its remaining product inventory in Russia. However, despite CEO James Quincy’s prediction that the corporation’s business in Russia will “disappear completely at some point,” this did not happen in real life.
In Russia, the corporation no longer produced Coca-Cola products but instead introduced “Dobry Cola,” which means “Kind Cola.” While investments were halted and focus on the production of standard Coca-Cola HBC products was no longer available, the company’s Russian business began purchasing raw materials from the local market.
By the end of 2023, Russian customers will rank “Dobry Cola” among the top ten most popular daily-use brands, according to a study by the research firm NTech. “Dobry” also became the market leader in the sweetened carbonated drink category, surpassing “Chernogolovka” and Cool Cola.
In an August 2022 response to Reuters, Coca-Cola HBC stated that “Dobry Cola has nothing to do with Coca-Cola or the Coca-Cola Co.”
Although the company, formerly known as Coca-Cola HBC (Coca-Cola HBC Eurasia LLC), has changed its name to Multon Partners, the Dutch Coca-Cola HBC Holdings B.V., a subsidiary of the multinational Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company, still owns it.
Coca-Cola maintains a significant 23.2% stake in Coca-Cola HBC AG.
Multon Partners’ revenue has not grown in proportion to its success in the Russian market, increasing from 72.3 billion roubles in 2022 to 77.3 billion roubles in 2023. The write-offs in 2022 likely affected the increase in net profit in 2023.
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