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Coke edges past forecast
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April 18, 2000: 11:36 a.m. ET
Soft drink leader will keep 800 employees previously slated for layoff
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Coca-Cola Co. edged past forecasts for the first quarter, and said it will keep 800 more employees than originally projected in its current downsizing efforts.
The company still anticipates cutting 5,200 jobs as part of the restructuring which, along with the write-down of some assets, dropped the company into the red for the quarter.
The Atlanta-based soft-drink company posted earnings from operations of $542 million, or 22 cents a diluted share, compared with a forecast of 21 cents a share from analysts surveyed by earnings tracker First Call.
The report, a day ahead of expectations, sent shares of Coke down 1-1/4 to 47-1/4 in morning trading Tuesday.
 Charges for corporate restructuring cost the company $275 million in the quarter, or 8 cents a share. Writing down a variety of assets cost another $405 million, or 16 cents a share. Those two charges resulted in a net loss of $58 million, or 2 cents a diluted share, compared with net income of $747 million, or 30 cents a diluted share, a year earlier.
Coke also said a reduction in inventories by its bottlers cost it another 10 cents a share in the period, so it reported income from operations of $790 million, or 32 cents a share. But First Call said that charge is not excluded from analyst estimates.
Sales slipped $9 million to $4.4 billion in the quarter. The company said sales were slightly better than expected in late March, first-quarter worldwide unit case volume gained 2 percent on a comparable basis with year-ago results, and that the addition of the Schweppes brand, acquired last year, added another 1.5 percent to volume gains. 
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Coca-Cola
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