Better Buy for the Second Half: Celsius Down 36% or a 50/50 Split of Coca-Cola and Pepsi?

It's been a rough stretch for energy-drink darling Celsius Holdings (NASDAQ: CELH), whose stock has fallen roughly 36% so far in 2026 and now trades well below where it started the year.

That kind of drop tends to split investors into two camps: those who see a broken story and those who see a sale.

So here's a matchup worth thinking through for the back half of the year: Do you scoop up the beaten-down growth name, or split the same dollars evenly between two beverage giants, The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) and PepsiCo (NASDAQ: PEP)?

I come down on the side of the giants, and the reasons have more to do with what each company is doing than with the price chart.

Image source: Getty Images.

What Celsius is actually building

To be fair to Celsius, this company isn't sitting still. It has reinvented itself from a single-brand upstart into an energy-drink portfolio company, pairing its namesake line with the fast-growing Alani Nu brand and the Rockstar brand it picked up from PepsiCo. Together, that gives Celsius a serious slice of the U.S. energy category and a stronger claim to shelf space.

The problem is what's happening underneath that story. The original Celsius brand has lost momentum, with several of its product lines slowing or shrinking in recent months even as the newer brands carry the load. When a stock is priced for rapid growth, and its flagship product cools, the market punishes it quickly, which is a big part of why shares have slid.

The turnaround may well work, but it's still a bet on one category, energy drinks, and on management stitching three brands into one smooth machine.

Coca-Cola and Pepsi are chasing the same health trend

Here's what I think a lot of people miss. The functional, better-for-you wave that lifted Celsius in the first place is now being ridden by the giants, too.

Coca-Cola rolled out Simply Pop, a prebiotic soda pitched around gut health with added vitamin C and zinc. PepsiCo went even bigger, buying the trendy prebiotic brand Poppi and then launching its own Pepsi Prebiotic Cola nationwide, while quietly reformulating core products to cut sugar and strip out artificial colors and flavors.

In other words, the trend that was supposed to make legacy soda obsolete is being absorbed by legacy soda. That matters because it removes one of the main arguments for owning a disruptor like Celsius instead of the incumbents.

When the incumbents can simply buy or build the next big thing, their scale becomes an advantage rather than a liability.

The quiet edge: Diversification and getting paid to wait

This is where the 50/50 split really earns its keep. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo don't live or die on one product or one category.

Coca-Cola spans sodas, water, sports drinks, coffee, and juice across almost every country on Earth. PepsiCo pairs its drinks with Frito-Lay, one of the most dominant snack businesses in the world, so a slow quarter for soda can be offset by chips and dips. Owning both, rather than one, smooths out the bumps even further.

Both are also longtime dividend payers with decades of annual raises behind them, which means you collect a steady, growing income while the business does its work.

Celsius pays nothing and asks you to stomach real volatility in exchange for the hope of price appreciation. For a second-half horizon that could bring more market turbulence, being paid to wait has genuine value.

A takeaway for investors

There's one more wrinkle I find persuasive. PepsiCo holds a stake in Celsius and distributes its drinks, and it's the company that sold Rockstar to Celsius in the first place. So if the energy drink boom keeps running, PepsiCo captures a piece of that upside anyway, without you having to make energy drinks your whole thesis. Buying Pepsi is a bit like getting a sliver of the Celsius trade bundled inside a far steadier business.

None of this means Celsius is doomed. If its core brand reignites and international expansion scales, a stock down this much could rebound sharply, and risk-tolerant investors may find that appealing.

But for the second half of 2026, I'd rather own the 50/50 split of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. You get global diversification, growing dividends, and companies that are adapting to the health trend instead of being threatened by it.

Micah Zimmerman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Celsius Holdings. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.