In February 2026, PepsiCo did something it had not been doing: it announced price cuts on some of its best-known products in the United States. Lay’s and Doritos, for example, would see reductions of up to 15%.
The decision came after several years in which the logic had been exactly the opposite. With inflation as the justification, major consumer-goods companies had raised prices to protect their margins. For a while, it worked. Until some consumers began buying less.
PepsiCo had already been feeling that shift. Volumes had been declining since 2021 and, over a five-year comparison, the stock had underperformed Coca-Cola. Then, in September 2025, Elliott Investment Management appeared, an activist fund that took a position of around $4 billion in the company and accompanied the investment with a 75-page presentation detailing everything that, according to its analysis, PepsiCo needed to fix.
Ramón Laguarta found himself at the center of that discussion.
He is 63, has worked at PepsiCo since 1996 and has been CEO since 2018. After nearly thirty years inside the company, he is now leading a transformation that also involves reviewing decisions made during his own tenure.
Thirty years inside
Laguarta was born in Barcelona in 1963. He studied at ESADE, where he completed his undergraduate studies and a master’s degree, and later attended the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona.
Before PepsiCo, he worked at Chupa Chups. There, he was involved in selling the Spanish candies in markets across Asia and the United States. It was an early experience with something that would appear again and again throughout his career: selling the same brand to consumers who live, shop and eat in very different ways.
He joined PepsiCo in 1996 to work in snack marketing in Spain. He never changed companies again.
In 1999, he worked in Greece and Cyprus. Two years later, he returned to Spain to lead the snacks and juices business. In 2006, he took on commercial responsibilities across Europe and later began working with developing markets.
One of the moves that ultimately gave him greater visibility inside the company was the acquisition of Wimm-Bill-Dann, a Russian dairy and juice company for which PepsiCo paid around $5.4 billion. It was the second-largest acquisition in the company’s history, after Quaker Oats.
Between 2015 and 2017, he led Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. He was then named president of PepsiCo and, on October 3, 2018, succeeded Indra Nooyi as CEO. He became the company’s sixth chief executive and the first Spaniard to lead a major U.S. multinational. The following year, he also became chairman of the board.
He speaks Catalan, Spanish, English, French, German and Greek. He has lived and worked on five continents and currently resides in the United States with his wife and three children.
On September 2, 2025, Elliott Investment Management disclosed a position of approximately $4 billion in PepsiCo, close to 2% of the company.
Elliott is one of the world’s most prominent activist funds. It buys significant stakes in companies it considers poorly managed or undervalued and then pushes them to make changes.
With PepsiCo, it arrived with a fairly specific list.
It argued that the stock was deeply undervalued, that the company was trading more like Kraft Heinz than Coca-Cola, and that its multiple had fallen to its lowest level in at least two decades.
It also questioned the complexity of the business. According to the fund, PepsiCo managed 70% more products than Coca-Cola despite having 15% lower retail sales. Much of the criticism focused on Frito-Lay North America.
Laguarta chose not to turn the conflict into a public fight. During the first earnings call after Elliott’s arrival, he described the conversations as constructive and collaborative. And he acknowledged that there was one point on which they agreed: PepsiCo was worth more than its share price reflected.
Three months later, there was an agreement.
On December 8, 2025, after a review overseen by the board, PepsiCo presented a series of measures that Elliott publicly supported.
Among them were the elimination of roughly 20% of the products marketed in the United States, a productivity savings plan, investments to improve affordability, changes to the North American supply chain and distribution system, and a refresh of the board.
Elliott did not obtain seats on the board, and there was no battle for control of the company.
By then, some decisions were already underway. In November, PepsiCo had announced the closure of three Frito-Lay plants in Orlando, Rancho Cucamonga and Liberty. Laguarta said they were part of the adjustments needed to reach the right cost structure.
That same month, a new CFO, Steve Schmitt, joined from Walmart.
The North American problem
PepsiCo’s second-quarter 2026 results, published on July 9, illustrated quite clearly the situation Laguarta was facing.
During the first half of the year, PepsiCo’s revenue grew by around 7%. Global volumes increased 3% in food and 2% in beverages, the strongest pace since 2022. The international business also continued to advance and was on track to exceed $40 billion in annual revenue.
But North America told a different story.
Food volumes remained virtually flat, even after investments to lower prices, while beverage volumes fell 4%.
During the call with analysts, Laguarta said the U.S. consumer was in a worse position than the company had expected. One of the factors he mentioned was fuel prices.
Following the conflict with Iran, the U.S. national average gasoline price reached $4.56 per gallon at the end of May, its highest level in four years. For PepsiCo, that was not a minor issue. Convenience stores and gas stations are an important channel for impulse purchases of beverages and snacks.
The company then began working with those retailers on cross-promotions: using fuel purchases to encourage customers to also buy a beverage or snack.
Laguarta prefers to focus on the trend. His argument is that some categories that had been declining returned to growth and that PepsiCo began regaining share where it had previously been losing it.
One million decisions a day
When Laguarta talks about technology, his tone tends to change.
He acknowledges that five years ago PepsiCo still did not treat data as a strategic asset in the way it does today. The process, moreover, did not begin with artificial intelligence or major announcements. It began with cloud migration, systems, infrastructure and training.
The more sophisticated tools came later.
The company decided to work with a fairly centralized model. Tests can take place in different areas and markets, but a central team analyzes the results. Only when a tool proves that it works and generates returns is it scaled.
One of the most visible initiatives is the partnership with Nvidia and Siemens to develop digital twins of PepsiCo’s plants, of which there are more than a thousand worldwide. These virtual models make it possible to test changes, improve processes and anticipate maintenance needs without having to wait for a production line to stop.
But Laguarta often explains the impact of technology with a much simpler calculation.
PepsiCo has around 300,000 employees. If each one manages to make four better decisions per day thanks to better information, the company adds up to more than one million better decisions in a single day.
It is a fairly clear way to understand how a company of that size thinks. It is not just about automation. It is also about getting information to the person who has to make the decision, without everything having to move up through the organization to the CEO’s office.
Fifty crops
Sustainability is another subject Laguarta returns to frequently, although he tends to explain it less through environmental rhetoric and more through PepsiCo’s own operations.
The company depends on around fifty different crops spread across several regions of the world.
And although Pepsi is the brand most closely associated with the group’s name, PepsiCo is now larger as a food company than as a beverage company.
That is why Laguarta connects soil health, water availability and agriculture’s ability to adapt with a fairly basic issue: being able to keep producing.
If a company is thinking fifteen or twenty years ahead, he argues, agricultural resilience stops being optional.
He also believes PepsiCo has enough scale to influence what happens beyond its own plants. With revenue close to $100 billion and a presence in virtually every country, its decisions also end up affecting farmers, suppliers, distributors and customers.
At an international forum, he framed it in those terms: transformations of that magnitude do not happen simply because every company does a small part. They require coordination, leadership, resources, accountability and discipline.
Consumers started paying more attention
Laguarta argues that the food industry is going through a particularly interesting moment. In part, because of the same consumer who is currently making the numbers more difficult in the United States.
People have more information and pay closer attention to what they buy. They look at ingredients, compare products and want to understand better what they are eating.
Among the demands PepsiCo identifies are more protein, fiber, prebiotics, nutrient density and better hydration options.
But that coexists with another reality: people still want indulgent products.
The company is trying to work on both at the same time.
Lay’s and Tostitos were relaunched with messaging more focused on their ingredients. Prebiotic beverages also appeared, along with versions of products from brands such as Doritos with fewer additives.
Added to that is another change that has been growing more quietly: more consumption is taking place away from home.
Retail remains important, but out-of-home consumption is growing three to four times faster. That is why it is part of PepsiCo’s strategy toward 2030, together with the recovery of the North American business and international expansion.
Internally, the plan has a name particularly suited to a company that sells food and beverages: hunger and thirst for growth.
The youth academy
When the conversation moves away from numbers, Laguarta often talks about football.
He grew up playing in Spain and today, he says, does much more walking than playing. He is a Barcelona supporter.
What interests him most about the club, however, is not the titles or the star players. It is the youth academy.
He likes the idea of developing players inside the system instead of going out to buy them once they are already established. And he uses that comparison to explain how he thinks about talent development at PepsiCo: identifying people with potential, helping them grow and giving them opportunities.
In his case, the story fits the argument quite well.
He joined in 1996 to work in snack marketing in Spain. He later moved through different countries, regions and functions. More than twenty years later, he ended up sitting in the top office.
Of course, that long-term view now coexists with less pleasant decisions.
The same executive who talks about developing people from the ground up is leading a reorganization that includes eliminating around one-fifth of the products in the U.S. catalog and closing plants.
In June 2026, shortly before the quarterly results were released, Laguarta appeared in a television interview. He was asked about the World Cup match between Spain and Brazil.
He said he was nervous. That he was going to watch it with his children. That friends would be at his house.
And he also said what they were going to eat and drink.
Lay’s and Pepsi.
Two of the products on which, just a few months earlier, PepsiCo had made a decision that for years had seemed unlikely: selling them for less.
