April 26/Atlanta/24/7 Wall Street-- The Coca-Cola Company has turned in its first quarter earnings for 2011.  The beverage giant said earnings rose to $1.9 billion, or $0.82 earnings per share (EPS). On an adjusted basis, the earnings came to $0.86 EPS.  The numbers a year ago were $1.61 billion in earnings and $0.69 EPS, and Thomson Reuters had estimates for this quarter of $0.87 EPS.

Revenues at Coca-Cola were up over 39% year over year to $10.52 billion against Thomson Reuters estimates of $10.57 billion. All in all, case volumes were up 6%. The huge gain in revenues is due in part to the numbers now including its bottling roll-ups.

One issue the company has brought up is hedging activities on exposure to commodity prices at the new CCE operating units. The hedging would have added $0.01 to EPS, while the company said that the impact of Japan probably took off $0.01 from the reported EPS figures.

From the April 26, 2011, Prepared Foods' Daily News.