PepsiCo, Inc.

PepsiCo, Inc. is a global food and beverage company that makes and sells the snacks and drinks that fill the middle of the grocery store — Lay's, Doritos, Cheetos, Frito-Lay, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Mountain Dew, Quaker and SodaStream among them — serving customers and consumers in more than 200 countries and territories and generating $93.9 billion in net revenue in fiscal 2025. It is organized into six reportable segments, split roughly 58/42 between convenient foods and beverages, and it earns a little over half its revenue in the United States.

This is a story about one of the most durable consumer franchises in the world facing the least flattering version of its own history. For two decades PepsiCo compounded revenue and profit on the strength of salty snacks and carbonated soft drinks; since 2023 that machine has stalled. Revenue grew 0.4% in fiscal 2024 and 2.3% in fiscal 2025, and operating profit fell 11% in 2025 to $11.5 billion as volumes slipped, commodity and tariff costs rose, and the company wrote down the Rockstar energy brand. What has changed is not the brand portfolio — it is the consumer. Value-oriented shoppers are trading down, health-conscious consumers are reshaping snacking, and the North American businesses that generate most of the profit are no longer growing volume.

The file turns on a single question: the 2026 affordability reset — cutting prices to bring volume back to North America — a durable repair, or a price investment that buys volume the company will not keep? Management is betting on the former and is being pushed from the outside to move faster. An activist campaign, a new CFO, a broadened international business and a dividend that now absorbs most of the free cash flow all hang off the answer.