Coca-Cola's (KO) third quarter earnings beat Wall Street expectations. The beverage giant also raised its 2023 forecast as volumes grew 2% globally—despite continued price hikes. Yahoo Finance's Seana Smith and Brad Smith weigh in on what consumer trends in the U.S. could be contributing to the decreasing demand.

Click here to watch the full interview on the Yahoo Finance YouTube page or you can watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live here.

Video Transcript

- Let's get into our movers. Coca-Cola are going to be topping, and they have topped Wall Street estimates for its third quarter earnings this morning and raising its full year outlook. Taking a look at shares, they're up by about 3.25%.

The company-- expecting earnings per share growth of about 7% to 8% on the top end. That's compared to a prior range of 5% to 6%-- a few things to break down from this quarter especially as you're taking a look at some of the actuals versus the estimates and what was expected on your screen here.

They mentioned that unit case volume that actually grew 2% for the quarter here. Some of the developed markets-- seeing that grow 2%, driven by growth in Mexico and Japan. And then for the products that are actually performing well, sparkling drinks-- sparkling soft drinks grew 2%.

I know I'm involved within that, just a little bit primarily driven by growth in Latin America and Asia-Pacific, which I am not involved in. However, trademark Coca-Cola grew by about 2%. For anybody who's drinking more of those Coke zero sugar, that was up 3% as well.

So sparkling flavors-- continuing to get a little bit more of a bid here from some of those pantries or refrigerators, however you're storing your soft drinks at home.

- Yeah, what's amazing to me is just how much pricing power some of these companies still have. When you take into account how much prices have. -- Been raised over the last several quarters the fact that they're still able to, in this case for Coca-Cola even report volume growth of volume rising just about 2% which beat the Street's expectations.

Here in the US, though, it's a little bit more interesting or interesting, I guess, when you contrast it to some of the behavior from around the world. Because in North America where prices have increased just about 5% during the quarter volumes were flat.

So we can't read too much into that just yet but it does kind of point to the fact that the consumer might be rethinking some of their purchases and thinking twice before-- before-- OK, so we're getting some comments, I believe, that the producer just said in our ear about the weight loss drugs.

And now we know that that has certainly been a topic across the board when it comes to-- consumer staples plays here-- over the last several weeks. What that is going to have the impact-- that it is going to have-- on the businesses here going forward.

And when asked whether or not they do see any impact that it will have down the line, Coca-Cola saying that I would offer if you do step above us and lock us on the thrust here of the total beverage strategy over the last few years are well positioned to provide choice, to provide options, essentially shrugging it off-- similar to the tone that we heard from Pepsi here just last week when we got their earnings results.

So again, at least for now, they're putting to rest some of those worries that we certainly did see on the street.

- Yeah, so that they continue to monitor the space-- confident of the total beverage strategy that they have. And then 68% of products have lower no calories today-- continuing to invest in innovation and choice to deal with whatever comes out of the weight loss kind of focus and the weight loss drugs that have been garnering the attention of a lot of the players in the food and beverage space here right now.

So that getting a question on the call. But as you mentioned, getting shrugged off and our own [? Brooke ?] [? DiPalma, ?] saying that this was a rather boring conference call here. I mean, it's comments that you have like this.

I mean, you ultimately want to hear where some of these CEOs, some of these executives are really passionate about, where there are risk factors that they have to not just navigate around but also perhaps lean in to some of those customers out there, too.

- Yeah, and it also stems from what we heard from Walmart initially, right? The fact that they did see a little bit of a change in behavior in terms of how consumers were spending those that were taking weight loss drugs versus those that weren't. So that was the initial commentary that sparked some of this fear that we've seen play out on the street.

But I think the big question is just what that uptake rate looks like, right, in terms of how many Americans are actually going to use some of these weight loss drugs and then, of course, the broader impact on some of these companies.