Ramon Laguarta
Analyst · Bank of America
I think, Bryan, your two hypotheses are valid. I think there is a lapping effect especially AMESA last year suffered a lot given its geography, so India, Pakistan, Middle East, and Africa clearly were challenged last year. They are coming back, is a very beverage-focused business so clearly it was more impacted by the COVID mobility restrictions, so we're seeing those businesses coming back, and we have high scale and we have high share in many of those markets, and our advertising and marketing is doing very well. So part of that is lapping. Your second question on scale, yes, scale is getting -- obviously, every year, you see the growth level on the top-line. We're getting to scale levels that are pretty good in many of the critical markets in that region, and that's giving us obviously the opportunity to do better in the marketplace and the flow-through is also stronger. I think the two are relevant. If you think about the business going forward, those are very strategic markets for us going forward. And we continue to invest in everything from technologies so we can expand the portfolio, talent. Obviously, there is a war for talent in that part of the world. I think we're a scale Company that does a good job with developing talent in that part of the world. And then obviously our go-to-market being very strong, we have very good bottlers. And wherever we have our own operations, especially in the food business, we're also investing in digitalization and everything that goes with being more precise and more agile. Hopefully, I'm answering both the short-term, but also more especially for me, the long-term of how we see that part of the world, yeah.