The Week Ahead (6th - 10th October): The calm after the storm

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of the Week Ahead! This is going to be a short edition - apologies for that! But thankfully there isn’t too much to cover.

Brief overview

Next week should be quiet in terms of economic announcements, with perhaps the main possible sources of drama being the records from the FOMC and ECB meetings.

In terms of company news, we will have results from some well-followed shares including Beeks Financial Cloud (LON:BKS) , AJ Bell (LON:AJB) and S&U (LON:SUS). However, it should be much calmer in comparison to the deluge that we saw at the end of Q3.

On Thursday, watch out for many UK stocks going ex-dividend, for example: Tesco (LON:TSCO), Judges Scientific (LON:JDG), WPP (LON:WPP), Taylor Wimpey (LON:TW.) and A G Barr (LON:BAG).

Internationally, we’ll have Q3 results from the world’s largest luxury house, Moelis & Co (NYQ:MC), on Thursday. We’ll also get results that day from PepsiCo (NSQ:PEP).

A quick run of Stockopedia’s comparison tool suggests that Coca-Cola is currently winning in a ranking match against PepsiCo, but it’s very close:

It's a classic comparison, but not entirely appropriate, as the majority of PepsiCo's revenues these days are from food and snacks, rather than beverages!

But given its inherent quality, this valuation is low enough to make me think that PepsiCo shares could offer value here, for investors who are satisfied owning blue-chips:

I don't own PepsiCo but I do own Coca-Cola through Berkshire Hathaway (NYQ:BRK.B). For what it's worth, Coke is currently trading at a higher multiple than PepsiCo, but it also offers faster EPS growth:

Both are classic blue-chips and dividend aristocrats - the types of stocks on which many retirements have been built. Hopefully that reputation will stay intact for PepsiCo after Thursday's release!

Economic Calendar

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