On June 3, 2023, Renaissance Technologies LLC announced that it had grown its holdings in Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE:YUM) by an impressive 72.3% during the fourth quarter. The company revealed this information via a recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.
According to the filing, Renaissance Technologies LLC owned 1,502,800 shares of Yum! Brands stock at the end of Q4 2022 – an increase of 630,723 shares from their previous holdings. The value of these shares equated to $192,479,000.
Following this announcement, several brokerages have commented on Yum! Brands’ performance and potential profitability. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft lifted their price objective for the company from $137.00 to $143.00 while giving it a “buy” rating in a report released on February 13th earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Guggenheim decreased its price target for Yum! Brands from $147.00 to $145.00 and set a “buy” rating for the stock in March’s research note. BMO Capital Markets increased their price target from $140.00 to $144.00 and StockNews.com upgraded Yum! Brands from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating.
In February’s research note, Cowen reiterated an “outperform” rating for Yum! Brands and issued a $155.00 price target on shares of the company.
Overall, five research analysts have rated Yum! Brand stock as “hold”, while eleven analysts have given it a “buy” rating during Q2 of this year so far.
Shares of Yum! Brands saw positive movement recently as they traded up by $1.64 on Friday (June 1). They hit $133.89 with trading volume reaching around 813k shares compared to their average volume of 1.5 million.
The fast food company currently has a market capitalization of $37.50 billion with a price-to-earnings ratio of 31.12, a P/E/G ratio of 2.06 and a beta of 1.01. Looking at its performance over the last year, Yum! Brands traded as low as $103.96 and reached an all-time high of $143.24.
Yum! Brands maintains its position as one of the world’s largest restaurant companies with an extensive portfolio that includes brands such as KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, The Habit Burger Grill and WingStreet, among others.
These recent developments, along with strong analyst ratings and noteworthy stock performance, further cement the company’s reputation in the global fast food industry and represent significant potential for investors seeking growth opportunities within this lucrative market.
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Hedge Funds and CEO Sales Create Uncertainty for Yum! Brands Investors
The world of finance and investment can be a complex one, and recent reports on Yum! Brands (NYSE:YUM) reflect just that. According to reports, several hedge funds recently made changes to their positions in the popular restaurant operator’s stock. For example, during the fourth quarter of 2022, U.S. Capital Wealth Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in Yum! Brands worth around $26,000 while Bell Investment Advisors Inc raised its holdings by over 127%. Similar trends were observed with Dupont Capital Management Corp and Marquette Asset Management LLC who both acquired new positions in Yum! Brands.” The sheer number of institutional investors and hedge funds owning shares seems extremely high at 77.54%, an indicator of the popularity of the brand amongst big investors.
But these reports go beyond the involvement of hedge funds; there is also news regarding Yum!’s CEO David W. Gibbs who sold several shares of Yum! Brands over March and April this year—a development that may suggest some level of uncertainty surrounding its future performance or finances.
Investment analysts have weighed in on YUM as well: Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft lifted the price objective for Yum! Brands from $137.00 to $143.00 with a “buy” rating given to the company back on February 13th this year. Other organizations such as Cowen reiterated an “outperform” rating for this food giant with a target price set at $155 per share.
While there is undoubtedly some market hesitancy regarding future performance, mostly due to missed earnings targets during Q1 2023 (specifically $1.06 earnings per share instead of an expected consensus estimate valuation rate of $1.14 EPS), revenue was still considered quite impressive at around $1.65 billion compared to analysts’ predictions pegged at $1.62 billion; This development translates into a 6.3% YoY uptick. Yum! Brands ended 2022 with a net margin of 17.67% and a negative return on equity of 14.97%.
Furthermore, the downside was somewhat alleviated by the impressive yield from Yum! Brands’ quarterly dividend payouts, with shareholders receiving $0.605 per share and an annualized rate of $2.42, with a DPR of 56.94%. This recent analysis should provide insights into Yum! Brand’s future direction both for those interested in investing in their securities or simply curious about a major player in the restaurant industry sector’s current momentum going into 2023 and beyond.
