Top Dividend Stocks To Watch For 2015

Top Dividend Stocks To Watch For 2015: Pepsico Inc.(PEP)

PepsiCo, Inc. engages in the manufacture, marketing, and sale of foods, snacks, and carbonated and non-carbonated beverages worldwide. The company operates in four divisions: PepsiCo Americas Foods (PAF); PepsiCo Americas Beverages (PAB); PepsiCo Europe; and PepsiCo Asia, Middle East, and Africa (AMEA). The PAF division offers Lay?s and Ruffles potato chips, Doritos and Tostitos tortilla chips and dips, Cheetos cheese flavored snacks, Fritos corn chips, Quaker Chewy granola bars, and SunChips multigrain snacks in North America; Quaker oatmeal, Aunt Jemima mixes and syrups, Cap?n Crunch cereal, Quaker grits, and Life cereal, as well as Rice-A-Roni, Pasta Roni, and Near East side dishes in North America; and various snack foods under Doritos, Marias Gamesa, Cheetos, Ruffles, Emperador, Saladitas, Sabritas, and Lay?s brands in Latin America. The PAB division provides carbonated soft drinks, beverage concentrates, fountain syrups, and finished goods under Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Gatorade, 7UP, Tropicana Pure Premium, Electropura, Sierra Mist, Epura, and Mirinda brands; ready-to-drink tea, coffee, and water products through joint ventures with Unilever and Starbucks; and sells concentrate to authorized bottlers, and branded finished goods directly to independent distributors and retailers. This division also manufactures third-party brands, such as Dr Pepper, Crush, Rock Star, and Muscle Milk. The PepsiCo Europe division offers Frito Lay Snacks, Pepsi-Cola beverages, Gatorade sports drinks, Tropicana juices, and Quaker foods in Europe. The AMEA division provides snack food under the Lay?s, Kurkure, Chipsy, Doritos, Smith?s, Cheetos, Red Rock Deli, and Ruffles brands; Quaker-brand cereals and snacks; and beverage concentrates, fountain syrups, and finished goods under the Pepsi, Mirinda, 7UP, and Mountain Dew brands. PepsiCo, Inc. was founded in 1898 and is h! eadquartered in Purchase, New York.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By WWW.DAILYFINANCE.COM]

  Barry Lewis/Alamy A flat soda is bad, but for Coca-Cola (KO) investors, a flat stock chart is even worse. The world's largest beverage company's stock is trading marginally higher in 2014, and while that's enough to keep an impressive streak alive -- six consecutive years of higher closing prices -- it's undeniable that Coca-Cola's business is in a funk. Sluggish soda sales that are being barely offset by growth initiatives in new beverage lines are taking a toll on Coca-Cola. Revenue and gross profit declined through the first nine months of 2014, and the former market darling is now cutting costs to keep its profitability on track. Coca-Cola will be laying off as many as 2,000 employees in the coming weeks, sources are telling the Wall Street Journal. The days of shuttling execs around in fancy limos and springing for lavish Wall Street parties are being set aside for now. The stock may be on a six-year winning streak, but Coca-Cola's going to have to bounce back if it wants to stretch that record to seven in 2015. Taking Names We're not drinking soda in this country the way we used to, and that's a problem for more than just Coca-Cola. Industry watcher Beverage Digest has been reporting shrinking consumption in the U.S. for nine consecutive years. An occasional gimmicky rollout blurs the trend. For Coca-Cola, we saw that earlier this year with its "Share a Coke" campaign, which featured cans bearing names or terms of endearment. However, even with that kind of spike, we saw Coca-Cola's case volume shrink 1 percent in this country during the third quarter relative to the same period a year earlier. Coca-Cola may consider itself lucky. Rival PepsiCo (PEP) saw its carbonated-soft-drink volume slip 1.5 percent in North America in its latest quarter. A couple of years ago the concern could've been that folks were bypassing soda in bottles and cans to make carbonated beverages at h! ome, but ! no one's making that argument now that SodaStream (SODA) is getting

• [By WWW.DAILYFINANCE.COM]

  Mark Lennihan/AP PepsiCo (PEP) thinks that protein drinks and low-calorie sparkling beverages to counter the slow growth of the U.S. carbonated beverage industry. "Expect to see from us an interesting number of mid- to low-calorie sparkling beverage platforms," in 2015 said Simon Lowden, Pepsi's chief marketing officer of Pepsi Beverages North America, in an interview with TheStreet. Lowden said that "Tropicana will see news around sparkling juices and waters," while "you will see protein as an ingredient come in across more and more beverages." Protein could be added to Gatorade, which will come out with more energy chews and bars. Year-to-date volume for Gatorade sports drinks have increased by a mid-single digit percentage. Coconut water, an industry that ballooned to $400 million in U.S. sales last year, according to research firm Euromonitor, is being targeted in a larger way by Pepsi aside from it leveraging its majority stake in O.N.E. coconut water. O.N.E was third in terms of 2013 annual sales in the coconut water category, behind the privately held Vita Coco and Zico, which is owned by Coca-Cola (KO). "You will see more news from us on coconut water next year as an ingredient across brands like Mountain Dew," said Lowden. A Focus on Health The healthy theme that underlies Pepsi's innovation push next year, and also recently at Coca-Cola with its Life product that has 35 percent fewer calories than a typical cola, is meant to counteract demand shifts in the carbonated soda industry. "In the last 18 months, the conversation in the U.S. has gone from 'How many calories am I taking in?' to 'Is it artificial?' " Pepsi has jumped ahead of Coca-Cola in the race to reignite consumer interest in soda by entering the emerging craft soda industry with its new brand Caleb's Kola. The naturally sweetened soda in a brown glass bottle is named after Pepsi's founder, Caleb Bradham. A! vailable ! at Costco (COST) locations in Maryland, New York, Virginia and Wa

• [By WWW.DAILYFINANCE.COM]

  www.youtube.com The latest Papa John's (PZZA) television commercial features pizzeria founder John Schnatter and Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning talking up the Fritos Chili Pizza. The chain's latest specialty pie substitutes chili sauce for marinara. It is topped with beef, tomatoes, onions and -- more important -- a handful of PepsiCo's (PEP) Fritos corn chips. "I can't believe it took me 30 years to put Fritos on a pizza," says Schnatter. Three decades may be a long time, but the only real surprise here is that Yum! Brands' (YUM) Pizza Hut didn't beat Papa John's to the punch. All in the Family Papa John's is a friend of PepsiCo, the food giant behind the namesake soda and Frito-Lay empire of salty snacks. Papa John's is one of the few national pizzerias to stock Pepsi products, choosing to offer Pepsi, Sierra Mist and Mountain Dew instead of the more popular Coca-Cola (KO) line of carbonated beverages. The same can be said about Pizza Hut. It's been choosing Pepsi over Coke for ages. However, Pizza Hut's affiliation with PepsiCo runs deeper than the association between PepsiCo and Papa John's. In fact, Pizza Hut and Fritos parent Frito-Lay are siblings. PepsiCo owned Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell before spinning off the three quick-service chains in 1997. Pizza Hut reportedly has a lifetime contract to serve Pepsi's beverage products. It would have only made sense to roll out a Fritos-topped pizza through Pizza Hut. It's not as if Yum! Brands is a stranger to the magnetism of PepsiCo's Frito-Lay. It leaned on another Frito-Lay staple -- Doritos -- to introduce the Doritos Locos Tacos at Taco Bell two years ago. The offering has been a colossal and crunchy hit. Yum! Brands announced earlier this year that it has sold more than 825 million of the tacos served on Doritos-flavored shells, making it the most successful launch in the fast-food chain's history. Thinking Outside ! of the Pi! zza Box The runaway success of Doritos Locos Tacos should have

• [By WWW.DAILYFINANCE.COM]

  www.funnyordie.com Funny or Die, a website that attracts A-list celebs to skewer hands-off topics, has hired a financial adviser to investigate options, which could include a sale. "We've received unsolicited interest from a number of companies," Bloomberg says CEO Dick Glover told employees in a memo. "We are NOT trying to sell Funny or Die, but we thought it wise to engage some experts to help us evaluate the situation. In the meantime, if any of you mistakenly receive a briefcase full of cash, please bring it to my office immediately." Hahahahaha. "The asking price is $100 million to $300 million, people with knowledge of the matter said," Bloomberg reported. Satire in Short Doses Funny or Die -- the brainchild of Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Chris Henchy -- uses short-form videos to satirize popular topics. Its first video, "The Landlord," has been viewed 82 million times. "Porn Stars Explain Net Neutrality" riffs on a current controversy. Its popular celeb-grab, "Between Two Ferns," features Zack Galifianakis asking the super-famous super-embarrassing questions. Most notably, Galifianakis interviewed President Obama, apologizing to the leader of the free world for cancellng three times. The president tried gamely to match Galifianakis' wit, but it was like watching a kitten try to out-roar a lion. As the president promoted his then-new Affordable Care Act, Galifianakis checked his watch, shifted in his seat, then asked, "Is this what they mean by drones?" Although the site is irreverent, it's not exactly anti-establishment, at least when it comes to money. Time Warner (TWC) is a minority stakeholder and Sequoia Capital has delivered funding; and Under Armour (UA), General Motors (GM) and Pepsi (PEP) have hired it to produce entertainment videos, Bloomberg said. More from Lisa Kaplan Gordon
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source from Top Stocks For 2015:http://www.topstocksblog.com/top-dividend-stocks-to-watch-for-2015-3.html