Yum! BrandsYUM

Is the price high or low right now, compared to what the market usually pays?

→At 19.1x earnings, the market is paying 13% less than YUM's own 11-year median of 21.9x. Pessimism is priced in - the question is whether it is deserved.

What has the market paid for YUM over the years?

→At 19.1x earnings, the market is paying 13% less than YUM's own 11-year median of 21.9x. Pessimism is priced in - the question is whether it is deserved.

What cash return does the business throw off per dollar of market value?

4.1%FCF yield today

→At 4.1%, the business is throwing off more cash per dollar of market value than its own 10-year median of 3.9% - the cheaper end of its history.

Revenue: is the business selling more than it used to?

→Revenue reached $8.2B in 2025, compounding +6% a year since 2022 though the pace has cooled. The trailing twelve months are already running at $8.7B, ahead of the last full year.

Net income: how much of that revenue becomes profit?

→Net income was $1.6B in 2025, compounding +6% a year over three years. Earnings per share moved +55% over the last twelve months. Trailing twelve-month profit stands at $2.2B.

How fast is it growing, year by year?

+9%revenue growth, FY 2025

→In 2025 revenue grew +9% while earnings moved +5% - when the earnings line runs above revenue, each new dollar of sales is arriving more profitably.

Revenue per share: is your slice growing as fast as the company?

$29.23revenue per share, FY 2025

→Revenue per share reached $29.23 in 2025, compounding +7% a year against +6% for YUM as a whole. Buybacks added roughly 1.1 points to your per-share result. Free cash flow per share stands at $5.83.

Margins: of every $1 of sales, how much survives each cost layer?

→Operating margin has held near 31% since 2022. After everything, 19 cents of each sales dollar reaches net profit. YUM doesn't tag a gross-profit line in its filings, so the chart starts at operating margin.

Earnings quality: do the reported profits turn into real cash?

→94% of reported profit shows up as operating cash - a normal gap, usually working capital absorbing some of the growth.

What does it earn on the money it uses?

→ROE of -21% on shareholders' capital (ROCE isn't meaningful for this business model).

How much of every sales dollar ends up as free cash?

→20 cents of every sales dollar became free cash in 2025, up 3 points since 2022.

What does staying competitive cost, per dollar of sales?

→The biggest claim on each sales dollar is capital spending, at 5% of revenue (stock compensation 1%, research and development 0%).

When sales grow, do profits grow faster?

→Operating profit outgrew revenue in only 2 of the last 5 years. Costs are growing roughly in step with the business, so scale isn't yet paying for itself.

Does YUM earn more on its capital than that capital costs?

→YUM earns 38.5% on the capital it employs, well above the 10% most investors treat as the cost of capital. It was 52.3% in 2022, so the trend is down, though the pace has cooled.

Could it handle its debt if things went wrong?

→Debt of $12.3B sits against $674M of cash. Earnings cover interest 5.0 times - adequate, with less room than it looks in a downturn.

Is the company's own capital growing or shrinking?

→Shareholders' equity is negative at $-7.1B: liabilities exceed assets. Usually the mark of heavy buybacks or accumulated losses, and always worth understanding which.

How much goes back to shareholders - and how much leaks out as stock compensation?

→$1.3B returned last year against $70M of stock issued to employees - the returns outweigh the dilution 19.2-to-1.

How fast is your ownership being diluted - or concentrated?

→The count shrank 1.4% last year - buybacks are outrunning stock compensation.

Is the dividend cheque itself growing?

→Up from $1.84 to $2.81 per share over 5 years - the cheque keeps growing.

What does the payout earn you at each year's prices?

→At today's price the yield is 1.9%.

Can it actually afford the dividend?

→Comfortable: 51% of profits and 48% of free cash flow go out as dividends - well inside what the business generates.

YUM has issued or retired shares - did shareholders end up better off?

→YUM has shrunk its share count -42% from 2011 to 2025, so each remaining share owns more of the business. Revenue per share is +11% over the same years.

How is YUM's trend actually behaving right now?

→YUM is in a downtrend. The price is below the band where recent trading settled and that band is still falling, so nothing in the picture has turned yet. The last two weeks have ticked up, but the price is still below where it stood a month ago, so it is too early to call this a turn. The band is unusually narrow at the moment, which makes it easy to cross in either direction.

Are the people running it buying or selling with their own money?

→No open-market buying, and $7M of selling across 8 months. Selling alone is a weak signal - much of it is pre-scheduled - but the absence of buying tells you no insider saw the price as a bargain.