PepsiCo. reported better-than-expected revenue in the first quarter on strong international demand for its snacks and beverages.

The Purchase, New York-based company said revenue rose 2 percent to $18.3 billion for the January-April period. That was higher than the $18 billion Wall Street forecast, according to analysts polled by FactSet.

Pepsi reaffirmed its financial guidance for 2024, including organic revenue growth of 4 percent. The company has said it expects to return to more normal rates of growth this year after several years of inflation-driven price increases.

That may have disappointed investors who have grown used to stronger growth at PepsiCo. Last year organic revenue grew 9.5 percent, for example. PepsiCo’s shares fell more than 2.5 percent in morning trading Tuesday.

In North America Frito-Lay revenue rose 2 percent while Pepsi beverage sales were up 1 percent. Sales were hurt by a recall early in the quarter of Quaker Oats cereal, bars and snacks because of potential contamination with salmonella. Quaker Foods sales dropped 24 percent during the quarter.

But the company saw 11 percent sales growth in Asia Pacific and 10 percent sales growth in Europe.

PepsiCo. Chairman and CEO Ramon Laguarta said the company is optimistic that consumer demand will continue to rise this year in the US and elsewhere.

“The consumer, globally, we think is very resilient,” Laguarta said during a conference call with investors. “It’s basically supported by two facts: very low unemployment or quite low unemployment globally and wages growing at a good pace in the majority of the countries where we participate.”

In Europe, sales were driven by demand in Eastern Europe, Laguarta said. In Western Europe, consumers saw fewer PepsiCo. snacks and drinks on grocery shelves during the quarter. Carrefour, one of Europe’s largest supermarket chains, announced in January that it was pulling PepsiCo. products from stores in France, Belgium, Spain and Italy due to unacceptable price increases. The two companies resolved their pricing dispute and Carrefour began restocking PepsiCo. products in early April.

The company said it also saw double-digit organic revenue growth in Mexico, Brazil, Egypt, Pakistan, China and Australia.

But Laguarta added a note of caution. Consumer spending in China remains cautious, he said, and PepsiCo. is also keeping a close eye on lower-income consumers in the US, who are buying fewer snacks or switching to store brands in the face of higher prices.

“The lower-income consumer in the US is stretched,” he said. “That’s a consumer that we are emphasizing in our commercial programs and we are learning how best to keep that consumer in our categories.”

PepsiCo. has leaned heavily into price increases over the past two years to combat higher ingredient costs. The fourth quarter of 2023 was the company’s eighth straight quarter of double-digit percentage price increases.

Those increases moderated in the first quarter. PepsiCo. said net pricing was up 5 percent globally during the quarter, while volumes fell 2 percent. PepsiCo. has said some of that volume decline is strategic. The company has been shrinking package sizes to meet consumer demand for convenience and portion control.

PepsiCo. said its net earnings rose 5.6 percent to $2 billion in the first quarter. Excluding special items, the company earned $1.61 per share. That beat Wall Street’s forecast of $1.52.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will be reconstituting a committee to address the longstanding issue of “enforced disappearances,” Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar said on Tuesday, hours after the release of a US report highlighting rights abuses in the South Asian country.

Over the years, hundreds of political workers, rights activists and professionals have gone missing in Pakistan, particularly in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the southwestern Balochistan provinces, where militants have waged a war against the state for decades.

Families say people picked up by security forces often disappear for years, and are sometimes found dead, with no official explanation. Pakistani security agencies deny involvement in such disappearances.

Speaking at a press conference in Islamabad, Tarar noted the former Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government had formed a committee on the issue with the representation of all stakeholders.

“Now the work is being initiated on this again on the directives of the prime minister. A committee is going to be reconstituted, there will be parliamentary presence in that committee,” he said. “There is no lack of seriousness on the government’s part to resolve this issue.”

The minister said they visited the Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, met with stakeholders there as well as reviewed reports on the matter from the tenure of the caretaker government.

Tarar said 10,200 cases of “missing persons” had been registered in the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (CIoED), out of which around 8,000 cases had been addressed.

He, however, said the issued could not be resolved “overnight,” adding that there had been no “concrete evidence” of the involvement of state agencies in these cases.

The law minister’s comments came hours after a report released by the US State Department said Pakistan’s government “rarely” took steps to identify and punish officials who may have been involved in rights abuses in 2023, pointing out incidents of extrajudicial killings, torture, enforced disappearances, violence against journalists and restrictions on media freedom.

“The government rarely took credible steps to identify and punish officials who may have committed human rights abuses,” the State Department said, pointing out Pakistan last year had seen incidents of restrictions on freedom of expression and media, violence against journalists, unjustified arrests, disappearances of journalists, censorship and criminal defamation laws.

Pakistan’s actions in recent months to restrict Internet and mobile services throughout the country, especially on days when elections are held, have invited criticism from rights organizations and Washington.

The interior ministry last week confirmed it had banned social media platform X in February to protect national security, maintain public order, and preserve the country’s “integrity.”

The South Asian country has seen an uptick in violence, mainly suicide attacks, since November 2022 when a fragile truce between militants and the state broke down.

Pakistan has since then carried out military operations against the Pakistani Taliban or the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and a Baloch separatist militant organization, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) in the country’s two western provinces that border Afghanistan.