Thread regarding PepsiCo Inc. (Pepsi) layoffs

PepsiCo’s Digital Gamble Faces a 2025 Reality Check

April 24, 2025 (Draft, embargoed 24 hrs for PepsiCo comment)

PepsiCo has cut its full-year profit outlook, predicting core earnings per share will fall 3% in 2025 after a rare first-quarter miss. Chief executive Ramon Laguarta blamed a mix of soft U.S. demand and fresh tariffs on aluminium and steel that will “increase our supply-chain costs.” Organic volumes slipped 2% and the shares dropped almost 2.5% on the news.

The downgrade pushes the spotlight onto the company’s other big lever for margin relief: a sweeping digital transformation led by executive vice-president Athina Kanioura.

Since arriving from Accenture in 2020, Kanioura has overseen the move of about 5,000 legacy applications to Microsoft Azure, shrinking demand-forecast cycles from weeks to hours and building a common data fabric for PepsiCo’s beverages and snacks businesses.

Internal slides shown at February’s Consumer Analyst Group of New York (CAGNY) conference still list “Digital / AI” among the company’s top capital-spending priorities for 2024-25. Executives describe the investment only as “hundreds of millions,” but with revenue momentum slowing, investors now expect clearer payback timelines.

Last month Kanioura took the stage at NVIDIA’s GTC 2025 conference to preview “digital twins” of PepsiCo distribution centres—virtual replicas that use computer-vision and generative-AI models to rehearse everything from pallet routing to robot uptime before changes hit the physical floor. The demo signalled phase-two ambitions even as phase one—cloud migration and data plumbing—grinds on.

PepsiCo says more than 27,000 employees have completed Digital Academy courses, and two Digital Hubs in Dallas and Barcelona are midway to a promised 500 new tech hires.

But not everyone is convinced labour can be added and removed so neatly. IDC analyst Craig Powers warns that “increased automation inevitably leads to some job losses,” even when companies invest heavily in re-training.

For now, Kanioura’s digital overhaul remains PepsiCo’s best shot at cushioning tariff pain and sluggish soda volumes. But with macro headwinds stiffening, 2025 is shaping up as the year the tech investment must answer for itself.

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| 7852 views | | 16 replies (last August 25) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+1jsne73yg

16 replies (most recent on top)

@ac Unfortunately you also have it wrong. It started off small in pockets by some of the Regional leaders and then EA pushed for more modernization. Seth Cohen just took credit for it. Several vendors pushed for it as well so did big name consultancy firms.
We need some fresh blood to come and clean house.

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Post ID: @hj2+1jsne73yg

finally G-yatri Narayan and hey money wasting DPA gone! one positive news in the constant flow of negative news from Pepsico these days!

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Post ID: @3wz+1jsne73yg

@pm+1jsne73yg

Reality is that tap is always open to fund AK’s pet projects. To keep that tap running needs money and that money comes from higher priced products. They don’t care about lowering prices and improving market share as that would leave AK’s funding tap dry. Add AI ML Data to any project and it becomes AK’s darling whether it delivers any value or not. Any pricing strategist can easily tell you what needs to be done to gain market share. But they aren’t part of the pet AI ML Data projects

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Post ID: @10b+1jsne73yg

North America consumers as well as North America employees have stopped expecting anything good from this company’s leadership. Both North America consumers and North America employees are getting the short end of the stick

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Post ID: @t8+1jsne73yg

Digitizing so they can off-shore more US job functions is not going to grow the north American business. Workers in Mexico and India are not going to keep PepsiCo afloat. It is American consumers with good paying jobs that keep PepsiCo profitable.

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Post ID: @sn+1jsne73yg

The same thing that happened to take-home water a decade ago (16.9 Aquafina case pack uncompetitive/ gathering dust on retailer floors) is happening to salty snacks …. Consumers might be titillated by F-L advertising but when they get to the stores they can’t justify the incremental spend .

Pigs get sla-ghtered

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Post ID: @sg+1jsne73yg

Fire Ramon and his executive team..from R&D to HR tanking the company. zero vision and poor strategy… shame on PEP Board and CEO!

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Post ID: @sc+1jsne73yg

I went to HEB in Plano today. I stopped by the chips aisle just to see the price difference between Frito-Lay and HEB brand chips. It was insane. HEB Doritos sells for $1.75 for a large bag, whereas Frito-Lays Doritos sells for $5.96 for the same size bag.

I looked around the shelves to see the stock. None of the products are empty, but....HEB stock is much less (half empty) than Frito-Lays stock (completely full). This was today (Sunday) at 1:30 pm. I could have gotten there when the Frito-Lays stock was refilled and HEB hasn't done theirs yet. I get it. But....the perception is. No one is touching Frito-Lays product at that price.

Like the company, the product is expiring on the shelves. Ramon and Steve Williams, keep it up. What is your severance package? $10 mil? $20 mil? I get served two weeks of pay per year, which is about $10k. It doesn't seem equal. I work to keep the company afloat while Steve, Maria, and you continue to sink it.

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Post ID: @pm+1jsne73yg

“ Since arriving from Accenture in 2020, Kanioura has overseen the move of about 5,000 legacy applications to Microsoft Azure, shrinking demand-forecast cycles from weeks to hours and building a common data fabric for PepsiCo’s beverages and snacks businesses.”

  • “weeks to hours” 🤣😂😂 YGBFKM

Meanwhile foodservice 3PO vending operators are currently subjected to PBC and Frito Lay out-of-stocks - they were thru the ROOF last week … my 3POs are seeing HUNDREDS of cases being cut from their orders, particularly Frito … Frito simply shrugs their shoulders …. Customers are pi---d as they’re being told they’re short on their quarterly CDA targets … Imagine the revenue if we could just fulfill the orders our customers are placing

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Post ID: @hz+1jsne73yg

I remember years ago in Plano, Frito laughed at HEB and told them to get lost when HEB asked Frito to make HEB label chips. Now HEB has a huge store two miles from Frito HQ in Plano and HEB chips are flying off the shelf because they are a better value for the consumer. Plano is a HEB town.

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Post ID: @cc+1jsne73yg

Nothing will get better until they fix the broken toxic culture and make it a meritocracy. It's been nothing but cronyism for decades and now it's showing and impacting the business. PEP is a bloated top heavy organization with way too many clueless "leaders" in positions where they don't belong damaging the business in so many ways.

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Post ID: @cb+1jsne73yg

Let's face it. Neither PepsiCo nor Frito-Lay can compete with the private labels. Both are on a slow death march right now. The opportunity to save both companies passed a few years ago when they had the chance to produce private labels, but put their middle finger up and said....."FU...we're better than that!" Ramon and the India Lady CEO before sank this company! DONE!

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Post ID: @c6+1jsne73yg

The picture she paints about her ‘impact’ on the business is about as real as that airbrushed headshot she slaps on every email she sends.

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Post ID: @c1+1jsne73yg

PEP products, especially Frito, fall into the "just not worth it" category for the consumer. They have priced and shrunk themselves out of the market.

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Post ID: @be+1jsne73yg

@OP+1jsne73yg None of the digitalization efforts can be credited to Kanioura. Moving from legacy applications to azure had started before Kanioura joined the company. It was Seth cohen who started it. Data fabric also started before Kanioura joined. It’s a mess ever since. Getting the data engineering team to do anything in a cost effective way is impossible. Ask any stakeholder on cost and budget overruns and you will know the real story, not the fake self marketing AK propaganda. Mushrooming of hubs across Barcelona, Dallas, Hyderabad, Mexico City, Cairo, Poland, Shanghai has caused power pulls and duplication of work everywhere. In addition making people work across crazy time zones has resulted in poor employee well being. OHS scores are faked and real numbers conveniently ignored. Digital academy courses are a mere check in the box. You can find much better courses on the internet.

Digital overhauls like IBP are a joke. A project running for 5 years and only markets live are two small ones in Europe. Enormous dollars poured into such initiatives where we use a vendor whose algorithms are not even being used but supplemented or replaced with data science run algorithms. Complete opposite of common sense. Not a single sane person in the company is pinning any hopes on a turnaround based on Kanioura’s digital strategy. The kind of horror stories you hear in S&T is baffling to say the least.

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Post ID: @ac+1jsne73yg

Blaming tariffs is a cop out. Pepsi hasn’t turned a solid profit in years. It’s the aggressive price hikes, coupled with the shrinkflation that has caused this nosedive. Soda has been a stagnant market, but Frito is losing more ground to competitors who have more value oz to oz. The solution is simple, cut all R&D on this cr-p innovation, ensure the core lines get prioritized, and lower the GD price!!!

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Post ID: @a4+1jsne73yg

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