PepsiCo's market cap higher than Coke's
After 112 years of cutthroat competition, PepsiCo has overtaken Coca-Cola in market capitalisation. PepsiCo's shares rose 14 per cent this year, pushing the company's stock value to a record high of $98.4bn yesterday.

Coca-Cola shares have declined 1.2 per cent, depressing the company's worth to $97.9 billion.

This is the result of PepsiCo's successful attempts at diversifying into segments other than soft drinks as consumers have shifted towards healthier beverages.

Apart from the flagship cola, PepsiCo also produces Gatorade sports drinks, Tropicana juices, Aquafina bottled water, Frito-Lay snacks and Quaker cereals and generates more than half of its total sales through snacks and less than 20 per cent from soft drinks.

As against this, Coke relies on soft drinks for more than 80 per cent of revenue.Last week, Coke announced a new advertising slogan — "Welcome to the Coke side of Life" — and a series of new products, including coffee-flavoured cola.

Over the past five years, PepsiCo's sales have grown 7.8 per cent, outstripping Coke's increase of 2.4 per cent. A decade ago, Coke's market capitalisation was $133 billion, more than double PepsiCo's value of $59 billion, according to Bloomberg data.

Yesterday, PepsiCo's stock rose 31 cents to $59.31, while Coke's fell 36 cents to $41.15.
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China to revise economy size figures
Beijing: China is ready to announce revised growth estimates following a national economic census which found a large underestimation of the country's thriving and largely private services sector.

The revision is also expected to show the economy is less reliant on investment and more driven by consumption than previously projected two areas that the Chinese leaders have been trying to encourage.

A spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics said it would announce the findings of the census and its impact on the calculation on GDP at a press conference in Beijing next week.

The revision has been expected since the NBS completed the country's first national economic census mid-year, a survey involving millions of data collectors dispatched to register businesses not picked up by previous surveys.

In addition, the NBS may use the survey to revise the size of the economy in the mid-90s, and then recalculate growth from a larger base. The NBS has worked hard to make the figures more credible, setting up independent reporting lines to the provinces in an attempt to get around any local distortions.
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