The owner of Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut beat expectations on the top and bottom lines Thursday, but fell short of a key sales metric in its second-quarter earnings report.
Shares of Yum Brands slipped nearly 2 percent in premarket trading Thursday and are down 2.6 percent since January.
Net income rose 55 percent to $321 million, or 97 cents per share, up from $206 million, or 58 cents per share in the year-earlier period. Excluding items, Yum earned 82 cents per share, beating analyst expectations of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters of 74 cents per share.
Revenue fell 5.5 percent to $1.36 billion, from $1.44 billion a year earlier but still better than Wall Street’s forecast of $1.35 billion.
Same-store sales, a key metric in the restaurant industry, grew 1 percent in the quarter, less than the 2 percent growth that analysts had anticipated. While KFC posted 2 percent same-store sales growth, higher than the 1.9 percent predicted, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut missed estimates reported by StreetAccount.
Taco Bell posted same-store sales growth of 2 percent, compared with the 2.7 percent expected; and Pizza Hut reported a 1 percent decline in same-store sales, missing an anticipated 1.2 percent growth.
“We continue to execute against our multi-year transformation strategy and remain on track with our full-year 2018 guidance,” CEO Greg Creed said in a statement. “Importantly, I remain confident our actions to become more focused, more franchised and more efficient are establishing the foundation required for sustainable, long-term growth that will translate to strong returns for all Yum! Brands stakeholders.”
