Yum! boxes up Pizza Hut to go

Kim Khan· Host0:01

[instrumental music] Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action, news, and analysis. Good afternoon. Today is Tuesday, June 16th, and I'm your host, Kim Khan. Our top story so far, Yum Brands is selling Pizza Hut for $2.7 billion, shedding a once dominant pizza chain that has steadily lost market share to rivals. Pizza Hut's operations outside mainland China will be sold to private equity firm Long Range Capital for about one point five billion, while Pizza Hut China will be acquired by Yum China for roughly one point two billion. Yum CEO Chris Turner said the transactions will allow the company to focus on accelerating growth across its remaining brands. Pizza Hut traces its roots to Wichita, Kansas, where brothers Dan and Frank Carney borrowed six hundred dollars from their mother to open the first location in 1958. By 1971, it had become the world's largest pizza chain, and PepsiCo acquired the company in 1977 before later spinning it off alongside Taco Bell and KFC into what later became Yum Brands. Pizza Hut's peak came in the late 1980s when system-wide sales reached four billion dollars and products such as the personal pan pizza and stuffed crust pizza helped define a generation of fast food dining. Among other active stocks, Dave & Buster's is tumbling after Q1 results missed Wall Street expectations as comparable store sales remained under pressure. But the company did reaffirm its full year outlook and said it still expects to generate more than one hundred million dollars in free cash flow this year. AI infrastructure provider