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Cadbury Schweppes plc, the beverage and confectionary company, on Tuesday reported a 65% drop in 2007 annual profit from the year earlier, when the company had a large one-time gain from selling some of its businesses.

Net profit was £405 million (€540 million, $792 million), down from £1.17 billion a year earlier when profits included a pretax gain of £631 million (€841 million, $1.23 billion) from the sales of beverage businesses in Europe, Syria and South Africa.

Profit from continuing operations was £407 million (€543 million, $796 million), down 22% from the previous year.

Revenue was up 7% to £7.97 billion (€10.6 billion, $15.6 billion). The figure included a 16% gain in revenue in the Americas Beverages unit due to the acquisition of the Dr Pepper/Seven Up bottling group.

Splitting the business Cadbury Schweppes is splitting its business into two units: Cadbury PLC, whose brands include Cadbury's chocolate and Trident and Dentyne chewing gum; and Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Inc., formerly Americas Beverages, the leading US producer of flavoured, carbonated beverages.

Cadbury Schweppes shares were down 5.7% at 577.5 pence (euro7.70 US$11.29) on the London Stock Exchange. "The driver of the shares today is more likely to be the announcement that there will be no capital return to Cadbury shareholders on demerger of Dr Pepper Snapple," said Rob Mann, analyst at Collins Stewart.