Peltz stays hooked on PepsiCo fizz

Mondelez backer Nelson Peltz is nothing if not persistent.

Months after the failure of his mainly solo effort to get PepsiCo to split its snacks business from its beverage unit so it could buy rival Mondelez, the activist investor appears to be tilting at the same windmill, sources tell The Post.

Peltz’s Trian Fund Management has reached out to some of Pep siCo’s largest shareholders in the last several weeks to gauge support, these sources said, with the view that he may attempt to gain a PepsiCo board seat.

A large PepsiCo shareholder skeptical of Peltz’s plans said the 71yearold investor’s attempts to force the moves on CEO Indra Nooyi are simply a way for him to make money off his bet.

Peltz owns 2.3 percent of Mondelez, the maker of Oreo cookies and other popular snacks; he also owns 1 percent of PepsiCo.

Nooyi said during the company’s July earnings call that PepsiCo could undertake some smaller, “tuckin” acquisitions of $500 million or less but did not foresee any larger deals.

To be sure, the effort by Peltz faces many roadblocks, not the least of which are the opposition to the plan by large shareholders like BlackRock plus structural differences — like how to merge Mondelez’s unionized workforce with the nonunion workforce of PepsiCo’s FritoLay.

Since Peltz went public with his PepsiCo plan on July 17, PepsiCo shares are down 5.2 percent while the S&P 500 is up nearly 1 percent. But some feel that performance would be worse without Peltz. “If [he] says [he’s] going away, the stock could drop 9 percent,” a source said.

Peltz declined to comment. PepsiCo declined to comment specifically on Peltz.