Stocks mentioned in this article: KO MCD GE V PG NKE UA PEP MA AXP
The world’s best athletes won’t be the only ones on display when the Olympics begin in Rio. Some of the most recognizable companies on the planet have also been waiting eagerly for the games to start, and with billions of dollars on the line, who can blame them?
One might think the biggest Olympic sponsors are obvious: Massive international athletic companies such as Nike (ticker: NKE) and Under Armour (UA) would fit naturally as the top sponsors of the world’s greatest athletic showcase, right?
Perhaps, but both are notably absent when we look at the short list of the top corporate sponsors for Rio 2016. Instead, we find five publicly traded companies — all members of the Dow Jones industrial average — with a sprawling international reach.
The Summer Olympics in London in 2012 reached a record 3.6 billion people, according to Olympic.org. This year, that number should be even bigger, much to the delight of shareholders in these five blue-chip stocks.
The Coca-Cola Co. (KO). Being an Olympic sponsor makes a lot of sense for Coca-Cola, which earned less than half of its revenue in North America last year, with the rest coming from Coke’s overseas operations and bottling investments.
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Believe it or not, Coca-Cola could actually use some promotion to help juice its business: Overall revenue fell 4 percent last year despite 1 percent higher worldwide volume and a 2 percent bump from a more favorable pricing and geographic mix.
A negative 7 percent impact from currency fluctuations erased any hint of revenue growth.
With carbonated drinks at or near saturation levels in the U.S., Coca-Cola’s only recourse is to continue targeting overseas markets and hope that volume and price adjustments make up for currency headwinds.
The company, which lowered its full-year sales forecast in its most recent earnings report, has chosen not to diversify into snacks like its rival PepsiCo (PEP), a decision that may come back to bite the beverage company in the long run.
McDonald’s Corp. (MCD). In 2015, just 33.7 percent of McDonald’s revenue came from the U.S., making MCD stock one of the most overseas-dependent blue-chip stocks on Wall Street.
“Nothing says global quite like the Olympics,” says Bob Johnson, president and CEO of The American College of Financial Services. For consumer goods heavyweights like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s — two of the top 10 most valuable brands in the world, according to Forbes — they “simply can’t afford to bypass the games.”
McDonald’s, a longtime sponsor of the Olympics now, “wouldn’t keep coming back if it didn’t think it was getting value for its sponsorship dollars,” Johnson says.
One could argue that the Rio Olympics are the most meaningful on record for McDonald’s, which, for the first time in more than 40 years, closed more U.S. restaurants than it opened in 2015.
Whether shareholders like it or not, Mickey D’s must increasingly look overseas for growth. So don’t be surprised to see the Golden Arches going for gold every four years for the foreseeable future.
General Electric Co. (GE). General Electric is re-inventing itself as a digital-industrial company as it enters a post-GE Capital world. A global Olympic sponsorship campaign may be just the opportunity GE needs to get that message across worldwide.
“With the push to expand their markets globally and with the rise of countries like Brazil and continents like South America in the world economy, sponsoring a mega-event like the Olympics in Rio is a great investment,” according to Gail Bower, president of Philadelphia-based Bower & Co. Consulting.
While McDonald’s wants to push its food and promote its work environment with the McDonald’s Olympic Champion Crew program, GE is looking to “engage users with the experience of their products and services; GE is providing technology and infrastructure” for the Rio games, Bower says.
After stripping the bulk of its financing operations from its balance sheets, GE is once again looking like one of the most well-diversified companies in the world. Nine business segments each account for at least 5 percent of revenue, and none accounts for more than 21 percent of sales.
Not surprisingly, GE’s business is also diversified geographically, with 55 percent of overall revenue coming from outside the U.S.
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Visa (V). Rio Olympics sponsor Visa is the largest electronics payment network on earth. With payment volume of $4.76 trillion in 2014, Visa commands nearly a 50 percent lead over rival Mastercard (MA), which logged payments volume of “just” $3.28 trillion that year.
In the incentive-heavy payments industry, card networks are always trying to come up with the hottest new deal or promotion to sign up fresh accounts, and despite Visa’s ubiquity, it’s still roughing it in the trenches with Mastercard, American Express (AXP) and others, fighting for market share.
Part of that battle will be waged at the Olympics, where Visa’s launching a payment wearables program that allows customers to pay with, among other things, Visa’s new payment ring that slides right onto a finger.
Sponsorship doesn’t just give Visa a platform to launch a series of cool wearable payment devices — it also means that Visa, other than cash, is the only payment that’s accepted at the games this year.
Procter & Gamble (PG). Only 37 percent of Procter & Gamble’s revenue came from the U.S. during the last fiscal year. On this list, only McDonald’s derives less revenue domestically.
K. C. Ma, professor of finance at Stetson University, notes that the company’s “Thank you, Mom” campaign has done a good job of painting P&G in a good light and showing the personal side of soon-world-famous athletes.
The first such ad was “released 100 days ahead of the first starting pistol to celebrate athletes’ mothers and hone in on their strength,” Ma says, which helps to emphasize P&G’s family-focused brand.
That said, Procter & Gamble isn’t promoting itself globally to give you the fuzzies.
For P&G, Olympic sponsorship has translated directly into higher revenue: The company estimates its sponsorship of the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver — the first Olympics for which Procter & Gamble was a major sponsor — resulted in $100 million in incremental sales.
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Sponsoring the summer games in Rio de Janeiro six years later? The take-home for P&G might be just a little juicier.
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Olympic Stocks: 5 Companies Betting Big on Rio originally appeared on usnews.com
