Okay. So everyone can find their seats, we're gonna get started. So we have Keurig Dr Pepper with us next, and we have the company's CEO, Tim Cofer. It's nice to meet you for the first time in person.
Nice.
The company's CFO and President of International, Sudhanshu Priyadarshi. So great, thank you so much for being here again this year. Plenty to do, so we're gonna sort of jump right in.
Let's do it.
Okay, let's do it. So, throughout the summer, the market became more concerned about the possibility of a hard landing from a-
Mm
... macroeconomic standpoint. Second quarter earnings season definitely felt like it featured more regular mentions of a more challenged consumer, and that's something we've been listening for, you know, a day and a quarter in-
Mm-hmm
If you will, here. So just curious to start with, what you're seeing across your categories, and what do your second half plans assume in terms of the consumer backdrop, particularly in the U.S., but if you want to weigh in on international, too?
Sure. First of all, it's great to be back at Barclays Global Consumer Staples Conference, so thanks for the invite. I do think it's fair to say we're seeing a bifurcated consumer environment, and obviously we spend a lot of time, as any great CPG company would do, in analyzing the consumer, and what you see is, you know, a little bit of Tale of Two Cities. You're seeing a low and mid-income consumer that's feeling stretched, that's seeking value, and you see that manifest in how they shop, when they shop, where they shop. Things like preference and some growth trends in certain channels, think club, think dollar, et cetera, a little less on C- store and instant consumption, favoring retailers that are really promoting value.
You're seeing also in, you know, maybe waiting a little bit more to stock up on a multi-pack deal around a holiday ad, for example. On the other side, you're seeing a premium consumer, kind of that top tertile, that remains very resilient and is interested in seeking out premium experiences and premium brands. And so for us, I think, as we put together this plan, we largely anticipated this environment. I think to your point, it's fair to say it's been accentuated a little bit, you know, in the second quarter and of late, but I think we have the right plans in place, starting with, we've got a strong innovation slate, brand activation slate. You're seeing that in things like Dr Pepper Creamy Coconut this year.
You're seeing it in, you know, Canada Dry Fruit Splash, an all-new refreshers line in our coffee business, so we feel good about our innovation and activation slate. Value is something that we are definitely working against. Everything from relooking at our price pack architecture and making adjustments. Coffee would be a great example of that, opening price point brewers, emphasizing the amazing value still on our CSD business, which offers great value in liquid refreshment beverage, and then finally, on the premium side, we're driving some great successes in premium, whether that's our higher dollar per ounce liquid refreshment beverages like energy and sports hydration, or whether that's things like super premium brands on coffee. Think Lavazza, think La Colombe, so you know, overall, we feel good about the strategies and tactics we're pursuing.
You've seen our front half in twenty twenty-four accelerate over the Q4 momentum that we exited last year, and I anticipate a further acceleration in the top line in the back half of this year relative to the front half, based on things largely within our control, those partnerships, that innovation slate as well, and that all, I think, builds the confidence that Sudhanshu and I have to continue to deliver on that MSD top line commitment and high single-digit EPS commitment on the year.
Okay, great. And Tim, as CEO, you've emphasized the importance of putting the consumer at the center of decision-making for the company. Can you just elaborate a bit on what that means in practice? You know, how it should manifest in financial results, and where's the greatest opportunity to sharpen the focus, and does that mean stepped up reinvestment?
Yeah. You know, as you know, and you joined us, we had an Investor Day in March and a chance to really recalibrate the next chapter of value creation at Keurig Dr Pepper after an amazing first five to six years since merger. And as part of that strategy, we outlined kind of five key pillars. The first, as you said, is all around championing consumer-obsessed brand building. You know, I've had the fortune of spending over three decades in CPG, and you see time and time again that success is underpinned by that strong consumer orientation. And that's what we do here at Keurig Dr Pepper, and if anything, kind of re-emphasizing that in today's challenged macro environment.
And I think it starts with really putting the consumer at the center, and for me, one of the preeminent consumer frameworks that I've used a few times in my career that we deploy here at KDP is simple but powerful framework called Demand Spaces. Really mapping consumer behavior, consumption behavior from dawn to dusk, whether you're at home or away from home, whether you're alone or with others. And those intersections create these demand spaces that generate rich insights, consumer driven, around answering the questions: who, what, when, where, why, "how"? And based on that, a lot of great things happen. You can position your portfolio for the most incrementality, that suite of brands. We have a hundred and twenty-five own license and partner brands. So how do you maximize the incrementality, really sharpen the messaging and the positioning and the advertising around our brands?
It opens up innovation opportunities based on that consumer understanding. And again, here, I think the proof's in the pudding. Look at what we put up this year. Great new marketing campaigns around the Dr Pepper brand, the innovation I mentioned earlier, Canada Dry Fruit Splash, Creamy Coconut, et cetera, coffee refreshers. In addition, I think that consumer orientation helps in areas like M&A, in terms of understanding where are the white spaces, how does our current organic portfolio address that, and where are opportunities to build out that portfolio? The other thing that's often, I think, underappreciated in terms of consumer orientation, we generally think of it as a growth lever, and indeed it is, but it also can help with the cost agenda.
Sudhanshu and I are pursuing a Fuel for Growth agenda, and it can also unlock opportunities around productivity. Think design to value. What does the consumer truly value in this brand, in this liquid? Double down in those areas, and cut costs where it really doesn't matter. So I think that consumer orientation is our North Star, one we feel very good about, and one that you'll see continue to manifest in both the top line and the bottom line.
Okay. I wanna keep going on productivity, on that point. I know you talked about design to value, but, you know, you can argue that in today's environment, productivity is even more important to the industry to protect margins and keep funding reinvestment. There's gonna be presumably a lot less availability of pricing than we've seen in the last few years. So, you've highlighted productivity as a core component of this evolved strategic framework. I was curious if you could talk a bit about how your approach to generating fuel for growth is changing. Again, I know you just mentioned the design to value-
Mm-hmm.
but there's more to this, and where you see the most meaningful opportunities across the business.
Lauren, productivity is a focus area for us, but we see productivity as one component. We look at overall cost efficiency as a bigger picture, and productivity is one component of it. If you look at since we became a public company six years ago, we have seen three chapters. Our first chapter was when we brought these two businesses together and generated close to $600 million of synergy. The second chapter was pandemic, where we prioritized customer service over productivity and cost efficiency. But during that time, we also seeded three state-of-the-art manufacturing plant investments. Then the third chapter is now, where pandemic has ended, and where we're seeing more productivity and more cost-out agenda. And that's what we have been driving.
You have seen we are also having more flexibility in network optimization because of the investment we made three, four years ago about state-of-the-art manufacturing. You've seen us shut down two legacy coffee plants as Spartanburg is ramping up. So that will continue to give us benefit in going forward. And our target is gross productivity 3-4% per year. But as I said before, we look at overall cost structure. And the other thing we focus on is SG&A. We laid out target that SG&A and overhead will grow at or below the rate of sales, and there are three components of that that will drive this cost-out agenda in SG&A. One is BU-centric model. We focus on BU first. Second is lean corporate center.
You know, we have fit-out cost strategy and make sure that the corporate cost remains less, and it's a lean corporate center. And the third is indirect cost management. So we feel that all productivity, the flexibility in network optimization as the manufacturing state-of-the-art manufacturing plant ramping up, and this SG&A agenda will give us enough fuel for growth that we can continue to reinvest in the brand and expand margin going forward.
Okay, great. Let's talk maybe about the segments, so switch to revenue growth a bit. So in the U.S. Refreshment Beverage business, Dr Pepper has had, you know, standout momentum now and share gains for a number of years, and the press recently highlighted the brand reaching the number two position among full-flavor CSDs. So what are the opportunities to meaningfully grow the brand from here? You know, how do you keep this going?
Yeah. Yeah, I think our U.S. Refreshment Beverage business has had a great track record of growth over the last few years since merger, really growing at the high end of that overall guidance of mid-single digits, consistently in the mid to high single digits. And it does start with our icon in Dr Pepper, no doubt. I mean, talking about Dr Pepper, you step back, it's a $5 billion retail brand, and it's a brand that now is the number two, as you mentioned, number one flavored CSD by volume. You know, it's a business that we think this year will experience its eighth consecutive year of market share growth, as you said. And it's a brand that our fans absolutely love.
In fact, Ad Age just recently, I think it was last month, named Dr Pepper one of the hottest brands of 2024, and yet, you know, next year we'll hit our hundred and fortieth year since the founding of Dr Pepper. So this is, you know, the oldest major soda in the U.S., and yet, you know, a brand very much young at heart and one that's very dynamic. Our teams do a great job with Dr Pepper. You think about the marketing of the brand. We launched a new campaign this year that's a lot of fun around It's a Pepper Thing. Back to the Demand Spaces, you know, connecting with friends. It's a great campaign. Any college football fans out there know that we're huge into college football.
We just launched last week our seventh season of Fansville, and that continues to surprise and delight college football fans. The track record innovation, I think, is impressive on Dr Pepper. Last year, Strawberries & Cream was a $300 million success at retail. Number one CSD new innovation in the entire country. And then this year, we followed it up with Creamy Coconut. Creamy Coconut is our most successful LTO, limited time offering. Get it while you can, because at the end of summer, we're going to shut that down. But that has been an amazing success, really capitalizing. Again, back to your question on consumer orientation, on the whole dirty soda trend with that creamy coconut flavor. So, the track record is there, and yet, to your point, Lauren, I'm really bullish on the continued growth potential of Dr Pepper.
I point to three things. Number one is, we still have distribution opportunities to grow this brand. Certain sizes, flavors, in certain geographies, believe it or not, we have the right, given the velocity and the track record, to be further distributed. Number two for me is Zero. If you haven't tried Dr Pepper Zero, it's across the hall here at the Barclays Conference. This is an amazing beverage, highly incremental to base Pepper and Diet Dr Pepper, and attracting more young and multicultural. We've got a lot of headspace of growth still on Dr Pepper Zero. And then continued innovation. We've got an exciting new variant coming next year. I won't announce it tonight, but you'll see it showing up in twenty-five. And so I think we've got a lot of runway still on Dr Pepper.
And by the way, I know the question was on Pepper, but then you think about the rest of RefBev portfolio. Canada Dry, a great success there, a billion-dollar brand. Think about brands like 7UP . We completely reskinned and relaunched that brand in Lemon Lime. We've got some innovation next year, brands like Mott's. So we've got a lot of runways still in U.S. Refreshment Beverage, definitely underpinned by flagship Dr Pepper.
Okay, great. And I felt like there was actually a pretty candid discussion. I think it was last quarter's call, on the work still to be done on stills in the portfolio.
Yeah.
That was very appreciated, the transparency, and just sort of saying, "You know, here, here's where we are." So you've got the Bai restage, you had Core programming around the Olympics, Mott's back to school season. But if we take a step back and think about maybe the bigger picture behind some of these brands, are there structural factors that make competing in these categories or with these brands different than what you experienced in CSDs? You know, are they getting the support they need, given, I would guess, the first call on resources is always going to be Pepper.
Right. Right. Yeah, well, stepping back first, I'd say, you know, since merger, the last five years, we've experienced good growth on our stills portfolio and, you know, consistently driving kind of that mid-single-digit growth trajectory. It's fair to say, of late, at a category level, stills is under pressure, you know, as a collection of beverages. And I really think that is macro-driven. It is a function of what you're seeing overall. Back to your first question on the consumer dynamic and the macro backdrop. When you think about it, stills skew more to instant consumption and to single bottle relative to some other categories. And so when you're seeing pressure at things like C-store and instant consumption, it kind of connects that stills under pressure. So a lot of this is a broader kind of macro backdrop.
Within that, you cited a few of them, you know. I'd point to, very quickly, four of our biggest still businesses and how we're feeling about it. I'll start with Bai, as you mentioned. Completely relaunched the Bai brand this year, under the banner of WonderWater. Reformulated back, a clean label, great new flavors, powerful celebrity spokesperson and partnership, and kind of collab with Sydney Sweeney. Great activation in store, and we're seeing in the last quarter, incremental household penetration, new users, improving velocity, and so it's early days, but we're encouraged on what we're seeing on Bai. Next place I'd go is Core, and, you know, we placed a bet this year. The big bet was on the women's U.S. gymnastics team.
Congratulations to them on the gold medal performance in Paris, and I think that's paid off at retail. Our retailers got behind it, had some great activation in store, some good price promotion activity, and we're seeing, in particular, younger and multicultural consumers coming into the Core franchise. That's encouraging. The third is Mott's, and actually, the still portfolio, I'd say that one I'm probably most excited about this year. Big bet on Mott's for back to school. Mott's, as you'd expect, you know, mom-approved, kid-loved brand. This is a billion-dollar brand for us, Mott's. One of our purest, most unadulterated beverages. We contract with family farms in upstate New York here, and we've got our facility there in New York, and, you know, pick fresh apples, convert it into apple juice and sauce in like twenty minutes.
It is a great product, a fresh and natural product, and we've got an all-new campaign with Spokesapples for Mott's. So look for the Spokesapples. Great activation in store. Where we've seen the early programming around back to school, we're seeing some significant share gains in sauce and pouch. So I'm encouraged about what you'll see on Mott's. Then I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about Snapple. I think, you know, to the premise of your question, I expect more from our Snapple's franchise. We have work to do in Snapple. Snapple's another icon, almost a billion-dollar brand. Obviously, the heartland here in the Northeast for Snapple. We have more to do there. It's a construction site.
We're working with our marketing team, our consumer insights team, and you will see some fresh programming, partnerships, and some innovation coming in 2025. But in aggregate, I'd say, we like our still portfolio. There is macro pressure that's consistent with the industry, but, you know, we're controlling what we can control. I think three of the four big ones are on their way, and one's yet to come.
Okay, great. Talk a little bit about DSD, right? You have a unique DSD system. You've continued to invest in capabilities since the merger, and then you recently acquired Keurig's Arizona assets, so that, you know, builds on that and it seems that you're exploring the possibility of taking back distribution in California, so I'd love to talk maybe, you know, how do you think about the relative merits of gaining further control of your distribution versus strategic partnerships with others?
Yeah. Yeah, I think to win in liquid refreshment beverage, DSD is an absolutely critical capability. And at Keurig Dr Pepper, we're very proud. We're one of three national non-alc direct store delivery systems in the United States. We cover 80% of the U.S. population with our own DSD system, and where we don't cover, we work with great partners. You know, for me, DSD is, you know, something I've had the privilege of running two DSD organizations in the past, and now here at KDP, it is truly a source of competitive advantage. And so where possible, where feasible, where it makes sense economically, I do favor controlling that last mile. I think it can be a source of competitive advantage. And, you know, one of the greatest kind of enablers of DSD excellence is scale.
And it's one of these virtuous cycles where scale begets scale. You know, you build scale as we've done at KDP over these last few years, both organically and through great new partnerships, think Electrolit, C4, et cetera. That allows you to have a larger drop size, particularly at places like small outlet, greater store frequency that improves your overall economics. You can then reinvest further into that DSD asset, and that flywheel just starts to turn. So where it makes sense, we like to do that. And as you say, Lauren, Keurig's our latest example of that. We announced that in our last earnings call. Really pleased, early days, just closed that last month, so we're a few weeks into it. But opening up all new geography, Arizona was kind of white space for us.
It's a great state, large population, high growth, multicultural, and now we've got KDP assets on the ground, two facilities, Tempe and Tucson, and we can service that entire state. So we feel very, very good about that. As I said earlier, in the places where we aren't present, we work with great partners, and certainly we've got hundreds of contracts across the country with various partners, both big and small, and we value those partnerships. I've met with almost every one of our major bottling and distributor partners. That's a really important part of our ecosystem, and, you know, we'll continue to, you know, honor the agreements we have. But when opportunities come up, where we have the opportunity to look at the possibility of taking back the rights, we're gonna look at that, and we're gonna look at it through two lenses.
One, what's best for the brand? Do we think that the brand can be enhanced, distribution, availability, et cetera, through our stewardship? And the other, obviously, is what's in the best interest of the shareholder? Will we get a good return if we make the investment like we did with Keurig?
Okay. I have to shift gears. I'm looking at the time.
Please.
I have a follow-up, so okay. Coffee. So you've been focused on turning around US coffee revenue momentum this year. There, too, you've been very transparent about adjustments, you know, needed, needing to be made. Can you just talk maybe about what's gone sort of as anticipated thus far and, and maybe what hasn't? Are you pleased with progress? Kind of key focus areas from here.
Yeah. Yeah, you know, stepping back, I joined KDP in late 2023, and as Sudhanshu and I and the coffee team were putting together the plan for 2024, I think it's fair to say we anticipated an at-home coffee category that was still very much in recovery mode. And I think when we did the initial guide, we talked about a muted, you know, an at-home coffee environment. And when you sit here today, September 2024, I think that expectation was appropriate, and I think it was prudent, and I think it's largely played out as we anticipated. You know, at-home coffee is still on the recovery mode of kind of that post-pandemic normalization. And if anything, that overall affordability concern that we talked about in your first question also plays into it.
And so, you know, for us, we are focusing on controlling what we can control, and I'd point to three key levers: affordability, premium, and cold. So on affordability, that is a big push. You know, you think about coffee, if you look at every major category in food and beverage in the grocery store, coffee is actually like a top five dollar per unit category, right? Because of its multi-serve nature. So when you think about the inflationary environment post-COVID, everything's up, call it 20%, but for a higher dollar ring category, that hits the pocketbook just a little bit more. So what are we doing about it? It's everything from price pack architecture. I think we've shared with you and others, we've down-counted our 12-count to a 10-count in K-Cups, our 100-count in club to an 80-count.
Not changing the price per pod, but a lower dollar outlay. We're also pursuing value price brewers. And I think you asked this question on our last earnings call, we're also pursuing value messaging. It's out there now as of second quarter, seeing good ROI on that. Very simple, telegraphic, digital messaging that puts the quality and convenience of Keurig coffee in a broader frame of at-home coffee... Simple messages like, for the price of your Monday coffee shop coffee, you can have Monday through Friday with Keurig. We're seeing, you can imagine on the value-conscious consumer, low and mid-income, pretty resonant messaging there. So that's value. On premium, we're seeing great traction. We announced the expanded relationship with Lavazza. I'm meeting actually with our Lavazza partners tomorrow from Italy, who are making a trip over here.
Lavazza La Colombe, a fantastic brand with a great super premium offering. And then finally, cold. You know, at away-from-home coffee shops, up to 70% of beverages are sold cold or iced, and yet at home, that behavior is less than 20%. We have a huge opportunity as the preeminent pioneer in single-serve coffee to bring coffee at home. This year is our largest push ever into cold coffee. The new Keurig Brew+ Chill, which is now available, brews a cold cup of coffee to the touch in two to three minutes. New iced and cold brews and refreshers. That's our big news this year. Under The Original Donut Shop, we've launched a line of refreshers. That's double our expectations so far, so feel very good about.
So I think controlling what you can control. I'd speak to, while the at-home coffee category is still muted, as expected, three quick green shoots. Number one, pod volume momentum is sequentially improving. If you look at back half 2023, front half 2024, it stepped up, and we would expect to step up again in back half 2024. So pod volume momentum, sequentially. Second, our owned and licensed market share is also improving on the back of that innovation slate, brand activation slate, PPA, price pack architecture moves I referenced. And, you know, the third is brewers. We're seeing growth in brewers, which is very good and obviously a leading indicator of what's yet to come. And we're seeing growth of the Keurig brewers in the overall universe of total coffee brewers. So encouraging green shoots on coffee.
Okay, great, and just sticking with coffee, you know, costs are now once again inflationary for coffee. So, you know, how are you thinking about balancing top-line progress against protecting margins? And then maybe a little bit longer term, do you see potential for further expanding margins, particularly with the new disruptive innovation that's on the horizon?
This is a great question. In the short term, obviously, we're seeing highly inflationary green coffee prices, and but we normally hedge for six to nine months, so we have already factored that in in our outlook for 2024. The guidance, which Tim just reaffirmed this morning, has factored that in. In the long term, we are the steward of Keurig coffee, and therefore, the goal is to create sustainable growth in our single serve. The way you do it is with a balanced top line and bottom line growth in the long term, with an attractive margin that allows us to keep reinvesting money in the business. You have seen this green coffee was this high three, four years ago. It comes, goes up and down. We look at four factors that drive margin.
One is obviously inflation, pricing, productivity. I talked about Spartanburg and how it's ramping up, that allowing us to have better cost per pod, and fourth is mix management, where you're launching a creative mix and premium brands, so all of those factors still gives us the confidence that we will continue to expand margin in the long term, and that allows us to reinvest money in the system. Regarding the short term, we said it's already been factored in, and as I've said before on the call, in 2024, for the full year, we are expecting margin expansion versus 2023. Obviously, it was more first half-paced, but the full year, we will expand margin versus 2023.
Okay, great. And I just wanted to focus again on the disruptive innovation.
Yeah.
Right. So you announced the next generation coffee system, the new consumable plastic-free K-Rounds, reverse compatible brewer, Keurig Alta. So why now? You know, and how are you sizing the opportunity for that system and maybe key milestones between now and commercial launch?
Yeah. Yeah, you know, at Keurig Dr Pepper, we talk about a challenger mindset as central to our culture. And, you know, when you think about what does it mean to be a challenger, it is about disruption, and that includes being willing to disrupt ourselves. And I think a great example of that is this new Keurig Alta brewer and K-Rounds. And this has been a labor of love for the last many years in our R&D group at Keurig, and really addresses everything a consumer would want in their brewer. Right? So this new brewer starts by providing all types of beverages, the traditional drip long, you know, black coffee, but also a high-pressure espresso, your lattes, your cappuccinos, and cold coffee.
So every form of coffee you'd like in one brewer, and on top of that, as you say, it does it in a pod that is completely plastic-free and completely aluminum-free. So, we're really excited about this. More importantly, since we unveiled our intent on this, our retail partners are really excited. So we've met with, as you'd imagine, all of our retail partners. They're excited to bring this to market with us. And, the timing is really later this year that we're gonna go into a beta consumer test. We've actually got a number of investors and analysts, I think you might be one, that have raised their hand and said, "Hey, I'll be in the beta test," and we look forward to sharing that with many of you. And we really want to get this right. Right?
This is a disruptive technology. And we wanna be sure that we learn in this beta test, consumer preferences, consumer usage, consumer friction points. We also, since this is a new technology, like a lot of technology, there's going to be a, a, an adoption curve that we need to better understand. That's why, as you said in your question, we've made it reverse compatible. So this brewer will brew both your traditional K-Cup and this new K-Round, plastic-free and aluminum-free. And so we wanna understand what that migration arc looks like. We're excited to do that. I think, you know, as you think about the impact to our results, it's not gonna be a material impact to 2025, because we're gonna use this time to get it right.
But really, after that, as you think 2026 and beyond, it's gonna show up, and I think it can show up in a big way.
Okay, great. International, so you've characterized the international business as an underappreciated asset, and we've certainly seen that in the results of late. Could you maybe just shed some light on how you've been driving outsized growth in those international markets? You know, where do you focus the investments, and where do you see as the most promising expansion opportunities?
Our international business has doubled since the time of the merger, which was roughly a $1 billion business when we merged Keurig and Dr Pepper, and now it's close to a $2 billion business. It has high single-digit top-line growth, and we believe it will remain an outsized growth driver in the future, too. As our algorithm is mid-single-digit for the company, and we believe this international business will continue to drive high single-digit growth in the near future. Currently, we have two $1 billion businesses. One is in Mexico, plus LAB, and second is in Canada. Both these businesses have a solid foundation. We have attractive categories, we have leading brands, we have a strong route to market, multi-channel route to market.
In Mexico, we have company-owned DSD, and there, we have a local team, experienced team, that really knows the business very well. The growth, most of the growth is mostly driven by Mexico, and Mexico is like US, where we have company-owned DSD. DSD is important in Mexico because there's a lot of traditional trade, so it's critical for driving that growth. That allows us to reinvest in coolers, reinvest in more, adding more routes. The second thing, we have a great portfolio. We also do lift and shift from US to Mexico, and the capabilities like RGM, price management, mix management, we use these from US and in Mexico, and that's driving growth. We have a lot of room to grow there also in terms of portfolio.
So similar like U.S., we have these built by partner brands. We have Red Bull on our truck in Mexico. Canada is. It's more like U.S. We have a preeminent coffee system where we are driving growth, similar install base growth, household penetration, pod innovation, brewer innovation, also signing new partners. And we in our CSD, we're driving similar like U.S. innovation. That's driving our share. And we also have low- alc and non-alc portfolio in Canada, that's growing faster than the LRP. So these are the businesses that gives us confidence that this will remain an outsized growth driver for KDP.
Okay, great. In our last minute, sorry. Free cash flow generation is accelerating, balance sheet leverage is reasonable, gives you more optionality. So how are you thinking about investing for growth versus returning cash to shareholders? And is the preferred model for portfolio evolution still partnerships versus out-
Mm-hmm. So we cash flow generation is strong hallmark of our business. We have generated a lot of cash flow during last five, six years. And if you look at it, the way we have invested it may be different by year, but overall, you know, 50% of the investment went to internal business, M&A partnership, and 50% went to returning money to the shareholder through dividend, through opportunistic share buybacks. So we are very happy the way we have allocated our capital to date. Regarding M&A and partnership, that's. So our number one priority is internal investments. That has the best payback. Number two is M&A and partnership, and lately, you have seen us doing more partnership with equity ownership, but we are not wedded to one model.
It depends on, first, we want to be in the white space to continue to expand our portfolio. Then we decide what's the right model. Is it build, buy, partner? And then it comes to what the valuation is. Are we better off taking majority control versus doing a minority control and adding distribution? Because this also gives you another, a profit pool. So it's, it depends on the asset, it depends on, what are the other attractive opportunities we have to invest in. You know, whether when the stock price was down in beginning of the year, we purchased more than $1 billion of the share buyback. So we do all of that and look at different investments at different times, but in the long run, we are not wedded to one partnership model, and it's more asset by asset.
Okay, great. We are out of time, so please join me in thanking the KDP team for being here, and we're gonna go to a breakout session after this.