Purchase, N.Y. ? PepsiCo Inc. will close four Frito-Lay plants by the end of the year, as it moves to streamline production, the company said Thursday.

The snacks and soft-drink maker will shutter plants in Allen Park, Mich.; Council Bluffs, Iowa; Beaverton, Ore.; and Visalia, Calif., it said.

Purchase, N.Y.-based Pepsi said about 250 of the 780 jobs to be lost would be added to other Frito-Lay sites. The company operates a Frito-Lay plant in Topeka.

The move will leave Pepsi’s Frito-Lay North America unit with 39 plants in the United States and Canada. Production will increase at 24 of the locations, Pepsi said.

Frito-Lay’s U.S. staff level will remain at 45,000, Pepsi said. Pepsi employed about 143,000 people as of the end of 2003.

Pepsi will take a pretax charge of about $160 million, most of it in the fiscal fourth quarter, for the closings.

Also Thursday, Pepsi reported net income of $1.36 billion, or 79 cents a share, for the third quarter ended Sept. 4. In the same quarter last year, it earned $1.01 billion, or 58 cents a share. Tax benefits contributed 13 cents a share to the latest quarter’s results.

Frito-Lay’s revenue rose 4.8 percent to $2.33 billion, as Quaker snacks continued to hold back volume growth and revenue. However, Pepsi said Quaker snacks’ performance has improved since the second quarter, helped by the introduction of Quaker Q-Smart low-carbohydrate bars.

Shares of Pepsi rose 55 cents, or 1.1 percent, to close Thursday at $48.65 on the New York Stock Exchange.