Computing Bottom-Up Betas For Companies In The Soft Drink Industry

Abstract

In this paper, we decompose the CAPM equity beta for Coca-Cola and Pepsi (KOPEP) to show the industry component and the operating leverage and the financial leverage components for the period from 2004 to 2012. We compute the CAPM equity betas using a standard five year, sixty month, regression between returns for KOPEP using the S&P500 as the market index. We adjust for financial leverage using the Hamada (1969) methodology and we adjust for operating leverage using the degree of operating leverage (DOL). The average business beta for Coca-Cola is 0.1882 and the average business beta for Pepsico is 0.1369. Over the period of this analysis, Coca-Cola has had a business beta slightly higher than the business beta for Pepsico.