Coca Cola (NYSE: KO) stock could get hit by the feedback from the Costa Coffee trans row over in the UK. One way of looking at this is that a few transphobes not using coffee shops in a minor and outlying part of the Coke empire isn’t going to make much, if any, difference. And that’s a perfectly legitimate view to have. On the other hand the markets are a bit gunshy about major brands going woke - or too far woke perhaps - on this trans issue. For Anheuser Busch managed to torch one of its major brands, Bud Light, through that association with Dylan Mulvaney.
Hey, maybe everyone should just have been cool about it but this is the grand lesson of capitalist free markets. It’s not what people should do that matters, it’s what people do do. And with major musicians performing target practice upon cases of Bud Light, sales dropped by 20% and more. This did then have a feed through effect to the BUD stock price.
And we should take that lesson further too. Sure, coffee’s a tiny part of the KO empire. The UK’s not exactly essential to it either. So, a fuss in the UK about coffee shops, well, so what? Except think again about that market nervousness. It’s what people think might happen to the KP stock price that matters, not what they should think about it.
Coca Cola stock price from Google Finance
Which does, or should, give us pause about this: “Costa Coffee has become embroiled in a diversity row after featuring a transgender person with mastectomy scars on the side of its vans. A photograph of a Costa Express van was shared on social media as it depicts a cartoon surfer with two scars visible on their chest holding a coffee cup. Costa Coffee said that the design was a snapshot of a wider mural created to celebrate diversity and inclusion, and was created last year to celebrate Pride month, which is typically held in June.” It’s reached the New York Post already: “Costa Coffee, a British coffee chain owned by The Coca-Cola Company, is facing fierce backlash over a cartoon advertisement that features a transgender man with scars on his chest after an apparent double mastectomy.” India: “Controversy Brews: Costa Coffee faces boycott calls over trans mural on van” and we’re getting the first rebuttal from Fast Company already: “Costa Coffee, England’s largest coffee chain, has become the latest victim of anti-trans backlash by conservative consumers—a fate that had struck few companies outside America until now.”
Note what the point here is. It’s not about trans or not. Nor is it about coffee in England. It’s about what stock market investors believe. Now this story has legs - international legs - is it going to affect the stock price of the parent company, Coca Cola? And note the correct form of that, If people supposedly among the world’s best marketeers can so misread the room then what other problems have we got coming down the pike?
