03/12 14:17 Pepsi Bottling to spend $56 mln on Y2K issues

By Amy Yuhn

NEW YORK, March 12 (Reuters) - Pepsi Bottling Group Inc. said it will spend about $56 million to address millennium bug issues, and it does not foresee significant disruption to its operations, according to regulatory filings.

Pepsi Bottling, which has filed for a 100 million-share stock offering as part of its spin-off from PepsiCo Inc. , said it spent $26 million on Year 2000 compliance in 1998 and $7 million in 1997. ,P. "We do not currently anticipate that we will experience a significant disruption to our business as a result of the Year 2000 issue," Pepsi Bottling said in an amended filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on its initial public offering.

PepsiCo has said it expects to spend about $130 million between 1998 and 2000 on millennium compliance issues. Coca-Cola Co. said it plans to spend $130 million to $160 million.

In contrast, General Motors Corp. said Thursday it expected to spend as much as $780 million to prepare its computer systems for 2000.

Pepsi Bottling said most of its exposure would be in production scheduling, inventory cost accounting, purchasing, billing and payroll systems, but it expects to complete any corrective actions by the end of the second quarter.

"Our most likely potential risk is a temporary inability of suppliers to provide supplies of raw materials or of customers to pay on a timely basis," Pepsi Bottling said in the filing.

The company said it identified 150 key suppliers, examined their millennium compliance, and identified 60 who present the greatest threat of disruption.

Pepsi Bottling said it could lower inventory or increase production at unaffected plants if it ran into problems with suppliers, according to the filing.

The company said it has reassigned 160 employees to work on its Year 2000 compliance and has hired International Business Machines Corp. to set testing strategy and complete offsite remediation.

Questions, comments, or problems Terms, conditions, caveats and small print ) copyright 1999 Reuters, Ltd.

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Gee, it looks like they are cutting it a bit tight here.

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), March 12, 1999

Answers

Yeah, they've already started raising soda prices. The stockholders are loving it.

-- @ (@@@.@), March 12, 1999.

What will America's yoof do without their daily fix - more school massacres?

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), March 12, 1999.

Too much caffeine and sugar is what is making those kids go nuts.

-- @ (@@@.@), March 12, 1999.

Actually, I think their greatest Y2K-related cost might be all the used 55-gallon syrup barrels they're giving away to people who want them for food and water storage... :)

-- Don (whytocay@hotmail.com), March 13, 1999.