PepsiCo reported sales of the Gatorade brand grew double-digits in the fiscal third quarter ended September 9 as increased prices offset a mid-single-digit decrease in unit volume.
In prepared remarks, PepsiCo said Gatorade benefited from investments in innovation, including the launch of Twitch Fast, Gatorade’s first caffeinated energy drink formulated for athletes.
PepsiCo also noted that it continued to broaden its presence in the sports nutrition category by launching electrolyte-infused Gatorade Water and the recent launch of Gatorade Zero and Propel Immune Support tablets to extend the company’s reach into powders, supplements and gummies.
Gatorade Zero, Gatorlyte, GFit, and Propel also benefited from extensions in the fuel category.
Asked by an analyst about Gatorade’s performance, Ramon Laguarta, PepsiCo’s chairman and CEO, said the company is “very pleased” with Gatorade’s move to direct store delivery (DSD) for large format stores over the summer. He said, “We’re seeing sequential improvement in the performance of the brand, better performance in August than we saw early in the summer, etc., inventory on display, and number of secondary locations, etc. So that move is working.”
Laguarta said the emergence in the sports drink category of Prime, the energy drink brand founded by the YouTube personality and boxer Logan Paul, “took some share” from Gatorade, but he estimated it was “less than other brands in the category or less proportionally to the size of the brand.”
He added, “I would say Prime impacted Gatorade in a way in some transactions during the peak of the season. We’re seeing the size of Prime in the category getting smaller as we go into the fall, which gives us very good optimism that, with the new infrastructure we have with our DSD business, some of the innovation with GFit, Gatorlyte, G Zero, our powders and tablets that are being very well received by consumers, that we’re going to have a very good 2024 for Gatorade. So, we have a stronger foundation to go into next year with potentially weaker competition.”
Photo courtesy Gatorade
