Yum! Brands Q3 FY2026: $1.56 EPS as Pizza Hut Sale Inflates GAAP Profit
Yum! Brands beat the $1.5024 consensus EPS estimate with $1.56 excluding special items, but that was below last year's $1.58 and core operating profit fell 4% as reported. The $5.92 GAAP figure is mostly a $1.683 billion gain on selling Pizza Hut. Read the beat as a flat quarter dressed up by a one-time accounting event, with unit growth the only clean source of momentum.
1 · Expected vs. Actual
Free preview belowEPS excluding special items was $1.56, about $0.06 above the $1.5024 consensus but 1% below last year's $1.58. The $5.92 GAAP number carries $4.36 of special items, dominated by the $1.683 billion pre-tax Pizza Hut gain and $466 million of tax tied to it. Strip those out and the quarter was slightly smaller than a year ago, not 319% bigger.
Revenue rose 4% to $2.054 billion from $1.979 billion, helped by 7% unit growth and 955 gross new units in the quarter. But gross margin slipped to 66.9% from 70.3% a year earlier, and worldwide same-store sales were flat. Growth is coming from opening restaurants, not from squeezing more out of the ones already open.
Log in to read 35 analyses a week for free
Create a free account to read 35 full earnings analyses each week — all five steps: expected vs. actual, guidance tracker, money flow, balance sheet and risks. Members get unlimited access.
Figures on this page come from the company's original SEC filings. The analysis is generated automatically and checked against validation rules, but may still contain errors or omissions. Not investment advice. · Generated 2026-11-06
Answers are based on the earnings release and the analysis above. Free accounts get 3 questions a week; members get 30 a day.