A ruling against the industry by the California Supreme Court, coupled with continued individual (verdicts) in the $100 million range, would present a challenge for the industry.
The stocks have taken a hit over the last couple of days. Once [plaintiff's attorney Stanley] Rosenblatt asked the jury for $150 billion, we believed the jury was going to give him that.
I think Pepsi is in a great situation. Pepsi could get this done at $90 per share now and really generate some shareholder value.
The guidance is slightly more conservative than our estimate.
The idea of keeping it out of Pepsi's hands has to be outweighing the idea of being in the food business, ... After losing SOBE, you can understand why Coke is looking at this pretty hard.
Our viewpoint is that we fully expected the jury to come back with an amount of money like this. The industry will never pay a dime of this. It will win on appeal, possibly in the Florida Supreme Court or likely the U.S. Supreme Court.
A wake-up call in terms of acting quickly to get things done in a world where not only consumer tastes are changing rapidly but so is the competitive landscape.
There is concern over the quality of the earnings, over how they got there.
While the amount of damages is still uncertain, the worst case scenario is in the $200 to $300 billion range, given the administration's desire to get a 55-cent per pack excise tax.
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