You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: I'm here with James Quincey, our chairman and chief executive officer; and John Murphy, our chief financial officer.
Before we begin, please note that we posted schedules under the financial information tab in the Investors section of our company website at www.
You can also find schedules in the same section of our website that provide an analysis of gross and operating margin.
Please limit yourself to one question.
And if you have more than one, please ask your most pressing ones first and then reenter the queue.
As we continue to deliver on our transformation, we are encouraged by our results and are raising our top line, bottom line and cash flow guidance even as we are accelerating investments for the future.
At the same time, we also recognize the trajectory may be dynamic and understand that we must remain flexible to respond to changes in the environment.
Then I'll hand the call over to John to discuss our financial update, including our improved outlook for the year.
Last year, in the face of a global pandemic, we laid out a path to emerge stronger from across five strategic priorities.
We are delivering against those priorities, and this quarter demonstrates the power of our system.
We started 2021 with promising results.
Mobility and business levels improved in the first quarter, and this trend continued in the second.
Consumer mobility increased in markets where vaccination rates are reaching meaningful levels.
And our business has recovered as we're lapping last year's biggest lockdown impacts and see our strategies in motion.
Consumers have started to return to many prior routine.
And as a result, our away-from-home volumes steadily improved as a percent of our business this quarter, driving strong price mix and margin acceleration across the enterprise.
However, the recovery remains asynchronous.
And several parts of the world have dealt with further waves of infections, leading to delayed openings and in some cases, heightened restrictions.
India and Southeast Asia were our only areas that did not see sequential volume acceleration on a two year basis this quarter.
Despite the asynchronous recovery, our revenues and earnings in the second quarter surpassed our 2019 results.
We also made progress on share this quarter.
We said many times that gaining share is a key objective in our emerging stronger agenda.
And I'm pleased to report that we have achieved that objective with broad-based share gains across categories as well as in both our at-home and away-from-home channels in the quarter.
And importantly, despite away-from-home channels not having fully recovered, our value share today is higher than the 2019 levels, confirming that our effective brand building and innovation along with our advanced revenue growth management and market execution capabilities are working.
So let me dive a bit deeper into the key drivers across our geographies.
In Asia Pacific, China saw continued momentum across categories driven by both volume and improved mix with Trademark Coca-Cola.
We outpaced the overall macroeconomic recovery, led by strong performance in away-from-home channels and business-to-consumer e-commerce.
Australia and New Zealand were bright spots, performing at or close to 2019 levels, but they are currently seeing renewed lockdowns.
While Japan is struggling to come out of lockdown, there have been tangible successes with consumer-led innovation, small-pack initiatives and improved customer execution of key initiatives.
As I mentioned earlier, in India and across much of Southeast Asia, resurgence in the virus impacted further recovery.
As India's restrictions have eased a bit, we're encouraged by the level of resilience in both the business as well as our system associates as they have navigated this resurgence.
In EMEA, Europe is still being impacted by some level of restriction, but vaccination rates and consumer confidence are improving.
Because of this and our strong bottle alignment and marketing investments, we are seeing a much improved away-from-home mix even as at-home volumes continue to grow.
Great Britain and Russia, where mobility was at the highest, show notable volume outperformance relative to 2019 and sparkling soft drinks gained or maintained share in most of the top 10 markets in Europe.
Eurasia and the Middle East are performing well despite a diverse recovery landscape.
In Turkey and Pakistan, strong execution during the key Ramadan holiday and emphasis on snacking and meal occasions drove new consumers to the Coke brands.
Africa delivered a strong first half performance with affordability packages delivering good results despite tightened restrictions heading into the winter season and vaccination rates that are behind the rest of the world.
In North America, the consumer environment improved through the quarter as many states lifted restrictions and consumer mobility increased.
More frequent social gatherings and rising travel and event activity drove significantly higher demand for our brands in away-from-home channels, while at-home volumes remained robust, leading to broad-based share gains in the quarter.
Within away-from-home, eating and drinking was the strongest performing channel with travel, hospitality and at-work trailing.
In Latin America, lockdowns eased as vaccination programs rolled out in countries such as Mexico and Argentina.
And stimulus programs in Brazil and Chile also helped drive recovery.
Our results and year to date share gains in the region continue to be driven by commercial initiatives to improve execution as well as a focus on affordable packs like refillables.
Costa's U.K. coffee shop revenues recovered almost entirely to 2019 levels through the reopening phase despite ongoing capacity restrictions.
Increased consumer traffic and digital momentum are also supporting recovery as restrictions eased in other countries where we have a retail presence.
Our bottling investments group faced pandemic-related challenges, particularly in India and Southeast Asia, but managed to sequentially improve or gain share in India, Vietnam, the Philippines and South Africa.
BIG also made great progress against its growth and productivity agenda, increasing year-to-date comparable operating margin, approximately 300 basis points from the 2019 levels.
Our category teams are collaborating with a global lens, enabling us to move even faster toward our Beverages for Life ambition; are continuously engaging consumers around their passion points and testing ideas in a coordinated and, increasingly, digital way.
We are getting even better at what we've all always done best, building love brands around the world.
For a few examples.
The Coke trademark portfolio is experiencing robust growth, led by brand Coke and driven in part by Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, which has contributed double-digit growth in value and volume year to date.
The new Coca-Cola Zero Sugar recipe has already launched in nearly 50 markets across six of our operating units, including last week's announcement in the U.S. with more to come this year.
Early results indicate the recipe and simplified packaging design are resonating strongly with consumers.
In sparkling flavors, we are accelerating our Zero Sugar offerings and executing global campaigns that focus on key occasions.
Sprite has done well globally, benefiting from the Let's be Clear campaign, which has led to improved share gains.
Likewise, the #WhatTheFanta mystery flavor campaign in Europe drove accelerated growth and improved share.
Dairy remains an opportunity for the overall portfolio with premium offerings in key brands like Hollandia drinkable yogurt and Santa Clara's flavored milk showing healthy growth.
We continue to leverage fairlife's great success in the U.S. with a recent expansion in Canada.
There are many bright spots in hydration, sports, tea and coffee.
We see momentum across brands in the U.S., including good results from our renewed focus on smart water, a new brand bundle from Gold Peak Tea, exciting flavor innovations in Dunkin' Coffee and continued growth from expanded distribution of Topo Chico sparkling mineral water.
We've had early success with Costa ready-to-drink launches in Asia with meaningful share gains in key markets in China and was already voted a hit product in Japan.
The rapid consumer traction and attractive proposition of healthy indulgence by AHA, which began as an intelligent local experiment in the U.S., led us to believe it can transition to be a bigger bet and travel internationally.
The recent launch in China with the local name of little universe has been encouraging with meaningful value share gains in a short period of time.
We continue to build on momentum with the launch of AHA's first 360-degree marketing campaign with a significant digital emphasis titled, can I get an AHA.
Finally, last summer, we announced more exploration in the dynamic flavored alcoholic beverage category with the launch of Topo Chico Hard Seltzer.
Topo Chico Hard Seltzer is now in 17 markets worldwide, and we've authorized Molson Coors the right to produce and sell Topo Chico Hard Seltzer in the United States.
Launching a global brand in markets where the category is at different stages of development comes with many learnings, and our local knowledge allows us to adapt with speed to win or, in some cases, develop this new category.
From strong performance in Europe, where available, to top two position in Mexico, to the U.S., where velocity is robust and the product has enjoyed positive consumer reactions, we are encouraged by recent trends and are gaining valuable insights along the way.
We continue to make progress with our consumer-facing digital propositions.
Internally, we were building out our platform services organization to support the enterprise as we have a sizable opportunity to become as a holistic digital leader.
Digital is of the utmost importance, and we're also building an integrated ecosystem of platforms that create value across the digital and physical worlds.
We are partnering with our bottlers to leverage the power of the system's physical footprint online, creating enhanced value for customers across the globe through a best-in-class eB2B platform.
With pockets of excellence in many regions, we are working with our bottling partners to evolve and streamline our approach.
Working together as a system allows us to improve distribution economics, solve unmet needs of outlet owners and opens new revenue streams by providing other CPG brands access to our deep customer relationships and global distribution network.
We are building a digital one-stop shop for customers, seamlessly offering most of the products they need to stock their shelves and operate their daily business.
We're also ensuring consumers get the frictionless experience they demand with more availability and assortment of the products they need and love.
On top of the initiatives discussed today, we also continue to work with our bottlers to embed RGM principles and integrate execution capabilities into our processes to continue driving basket value and incidents as the world reopens.
Through enhanced execution, we have an opportunity to win with more consumers and grow share by having the right products in the right channel at the right price, supported by the right activations.
We also continue with our sustainability agenda to create shared value for our stakeholders and the communities we serve.
In addition to integrating ESG considerations into our daily business decisions, during the second quarter, we released our business and ESG report, highlighting progress across all our goals as well as our World Without Waste report, which focuses exclusively on our work to create a circular economy for our packaging materials.
Highlights include the continued rollout of a 100% recycled PET with 30 markets representing approximately 30% of our total sales offering at least one brand in a 100% rPET packaging.
We've continued the expansion of refillables and dispense packaging and ultra-lightweighting technologies, and we delivered a 60% global collection rate for packaging in 2020.
We are proud of these achievements, and we know there is more work to be done.
Recently, we announced that we've become a global implementation partner for The Ocean Cleanup's river project, supporting the deployment of cleanup systems across 15 rivers across the world.
We will embed our marketing capabilities into this partnership to create consumer awareness of the issues and the actions we're all taking.
Putting it all together, we realize there's a range of possible outcomes when it comes to the pandemic in the second half of the year, given the asynchronous recovery.
While we overdelivered relative to our expectations in the first half and have raised guidance for 2021, we are biased toward a growth mentality, and we'll invest behind this momentum going into the rest of the year.
Our network organization is beginning to help us move faster to capture opportunities and create value for our stakeholders.
As a system, we are increasingly equipped to win and we're excited about the future.
In the second quarter, we built on the momentum from the beginning of the year, and our business mix improved as consumer mobility increased across many markets.
Our Q2 organic revenue was up 37%, comprised of concentrate shipments up 26% and price mix improvement of 11% as we lapped the biggest pandemic impacts of 2020.
Unit case growth was 18%.
Our shipments outpaced unit cases in the quarter and year to date due to cycling the destocking we experienced last year and certain timing impacts this year, including five additional days in the first quarter.
Improvement in the away-from-home channels and positive segment mix from higher growth in our finished goods businesses positively impacted our price mix.
Channel and package mix also affected comparable gross margin, which showed significant improvement relative to last year, even with certain inflationary costs like transportation coming through.
As we said throughout the pandemic, our goal is to emerge stronger, and we are investing ahead of recovery as markets reopen.
As a result, we have doubled our marketing dollars year over year, cycling the significant pullback from the same period last year.
Even with the step-up in those investments, we delivered a 170-basis-point improvement in comparable operating margins driven by the strong top line.
Below operating income, we saw a benefit from improvement in our equity income as our bottling partners also emerged stronger, as well as reduced interest expense on a comparable basis.
As a result, second quarter comparable earnings per share of $0.68 was an increase of 61% year over year.
We also delivered strong year-to-date free cash flow of approximately $5 billion, double last year's results.
Our cash flow performance has also driven the return of our leverage to within the targeted range of two to two and a half times.
Since we reiterated guidance last quarter, the operating environment and our business have clearly improved.
Given the improvement year to date and the increased visibility, we are raising our outlook for the full year.
We now expect to deliver year-over-year organic revenue growth of 12% to 14% and comparable earnings per share growth of 13% to 15% in 2021.
Our steady focus on cash generation continues to yield progress, and our updated guidance for free cash flow of at least $9 billion implies a dividend payout ratio significantly improved from where we began the year and is edging closer to our targeted level of 75% over the long term.
So as we think about the remainder of the year, a few things to keep in mind.
The recovery phase continues to be asynchronous, creating a dynamic demand environment, in addition to causing many parts of the supply chain to experience tightness as a result.
While experiencing some isolated pressure points, our team is navigating the challenges well through supplier diversification and inventory management.
Despite recent upward pressures in many commodities driven by the pandemic-related disruptions, we feel good about the rest of the year.
And as we anticipate hedges rolling off in 2022, we are working with our system to take appropriate action in the back half of this year to manage the ongoing volatility using revenue growth management capabilities and supply chain productivity levers.
With regard to marketing investment, we have three priorities, increase consumer-facing marketing spend toward levels similar to 2019, improve the quality of that spend and allocate the spend in a more targeted manner.
Our currency outlook continues to contemplate a tailwind of 1% to 2% to the top line and approximately 2% to 3% to comparable earnings per share in 2021 based on current spot rates and our hedge positions.
That said, the currency markets remain volatile and dependent on recovery from the pandemic as well as macroeconomic factors.
We will also have some additional timing considerations with the leveling out of our concentrate shipments that are running a bit ahead year to date as well as six fewer days in the fourth quarter.
With our network organization up and running, we're on a path to operate more efficiently and effectively and to unlock the enormous potential we have in our brands and across our markets.
As James mentioned earlier, we remain clear-eyed as we look at the rest of the year with many markets continuing to face obstacles, such as the spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant, while others continue to see the benefits of reopening.
Overall, we are pleased with our progress in the first half of the year, and we're grateful for the commitment from the stakeholders across our ecosystem that contributed to our results.
With that operator, we are ready to take questions.

user
compname reports q2 non-gaap earnings per share of $0.68.
q2 non-gaap earnings per share $0.68.
qtrly global unit case volume grew 18%.
qtrly organic revenues (non-gaap) grew 37%.
company expects to deliver organic revenue (non-gaap) growth of 12% to 14% in 2021.
sees q3 2021 comparable earnings per share (non-gaap) to include an approximate 3% to 4% currency tailwind.
q3 comparable net revenues (non-gaap) expected to include about 2% currency tailwind based on current rates, incl.
impact of hedged positions.
expects to deliver comparable earnings per share (non-gaap) growth of 13% to 15% in 2021 versus $1.95 in 2020.
coca-cola - qtrly global unit case volume benefited from recovery in many markets, partially offset by impact of resurgence of coronavirus in several markets.
coca-cola - markets such as china, brazil and nigeria grew volume in quarter ahead of 2019 levels.
coca-cola - other markets, including india, continued to be under pressure in quarter versus 2019.

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