CCH executive sells stock

A finance executive at Coca-Cola Hellenic is in for a serious windfall, having exercised a number of stock options.

The Zug, Switzerland-based bottler - Coca-Cola's second largest - has notified the market that Gerhard Seidl has exercised 10,667 stock options at £7.69 per share, and sold the same number for £15.46237 per share.

That leaves Seidl enjoying an £82,907.87 payday.

Seild is the company's Group Supply Chain Finance Director, according to his bio posted on Linkedin.

The news comes as the listed soft drinks manufacturer continues its share buyback program announced on 24 June.

In the last three days, the company has notified the market of options exercising and share dumping by executives and directors Szekely Zsolt (five shares), Stefanos Vafidis (11,380 shares) and Giovanni Rocco (350 shares) as well as Seidl.

At the same time, Coca-Cola Hellenic has purchased 122,912 of its own shares, taking the total held by the company to 1,727,837 in addition to 3,430,135 held in treasury by a subsidiary.

The stock has recovered this year from the low of 1,057p seen on 20 January, but is still some way off the dizzying heights of 1,970p seen on 18 September 2013.

In its third quarter trading statement, issued on 5 November, the firm said volumes exceeded market expectations, increasing 5.4% to 577.1m cases, though revenue was down 2.6% to €1.77m (consensus: €1.79m).

Shore Capital analyst Phil Carroll blamed the miss on FX headwinds in Russia, and expectations for the emerging markets division.

"Based on our forecasts, CCH is trading on a FY15F PER of 28.1x and 11.8x EV/EBITDA, which is up with events, in our opinion, especially given the determination in Russia despite improvement elsewhere. Therefore, we retain our HOLD recommendation," Carroll said in a research note e-mailed to clients after the trading update.

As of 16:34, shares in Coca-Cola HBC were down 0.9% to 1,540p.