Is it true that because of Cristiano Ronaldo, the Coca-Cola company fell by $4 billion?

Recently, a famous football player pushed aside bottles of branded soda at a press conference. Subsequently, some media reported that Coca-Cola shares fell by 1.6% because of this. We checked whether these two events are related.

On June 15, 2021, a group stage match of the European Football Championship took place between the national teams of Portugal and Hungary. The day before, the captain of the Portuguese team came to a press conference, where two bottles of soda were placed in front of him, because the Coca-Cola company is one of the sponsors of the tournament. Even before starting to communicate with journalists, Ronaldo defiantly pushed aside cola to the side and put a bottle of water in its place. The fact that because of this gesture the capitalization of Coca-Cola immediately decreased by $4 billion was written, in particular, by the Spanish newspaper Marca, The Washington Post, Business Insider, USA Today And CBS News. The news did not go unnoticed in Russia - they told their readers about it, for example, "Sport Express", Sport24, portal Inc. and St. Petersburg edition "Fontanka".

Let's start with the chronology of events. Match between the national teams of Portugal and Hungary took place in Budapest on June 15, and the press conference took place the day before, on June 14. The first messages from there were appear in the media around 15:00 Western European time. This corresponds It’s 10 a.m. in New York—that’s where Coca-Cola shares are trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

Now let's look at the trading chart for June 14th. As can be seen from the data Yahoo! Finance, by the close of trading on Friday, June 11, the price per share of Coca-Cola Company reached $56.12. This was followed by two days off, and trading on Monday, June 14, began at 9:30 am. A few hours before, the price began to fall by premarket thanks to applications for the sale of securities submitted in advance and even before the press conference in Budapest, it dropped by several tens of cents, and three quarters of an hour after the start of trading - even to $55.22. By the way, after Ronaldo’s conversation with reporters, the stock grew during the day on June 14.

It turns out that the sharp drop in Coca-Cola quotes occurred shortly before the press conference with the participation of the famous football player and much earlier than the video of his actions went viral on social networks and the media. Such a decline in share prices, by the way, is absolutely normal and understandable. The fact is that June 14 was a day cutoffs upon receipt of quarterly dividends by investors, that is, those who purchased shares later no longer participated in their distribution. The day after the so-called ex-dividend date, the share price usually falls at least by the amount of dividends. In this case, Coca-Cola paid $0.42 per share.

Although Ronaldo has nothing to do with the fall in the American corporation's stock prices, he managed to launch a kind of flash mob associated with sponsor bottles at Euro 2020 press conferences. So, on June 16, Frenchman Paul Pogba, who professes Islam, removed under the table a bottle of Heineken beer (non-alcoholic, by the way). The next day, Italian Manuel Locatelli did the same as Ronaldo, and replaced cola on water. Ukrainian national team midfielder Andrei Yarmolenko, on the contrary, decided to support soda and beer manufacturers and pushed it forward bottles closer to you. Finally, the coach of the Russian team Stanislav Cherchesov aroused real delight among foreign users of social networks - at a meeting with journalists he showedhow to open one bottle using another.

Mostly not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. V. Voronin. Cristiano Ronaldo did not deprive Coca-Cola of $4 billion. Don't believe the myths, we will explain everything
2. Snopes. Did Ronaldo's Coca-Cola Snub Cost the Company Billions?
3. Forbes. A Post-Truth World: Why Ronaldo Did Not Move Coca-Cola Share Price