Yum!… When Raised Guidance Isn’t Really Raised (YUM)

Outside of items, it sees 12% earnings per share growth for the year.  That comes to $2.43 EPS versus its earlier $2.39 forecast.  Unfortunately, Thomson Reuters is at $2.48 EPS for the year.

The company’s China system sales rose 15%.  The gain of +4% for same store sales in China was under our forecast of 5%.  The U.S. same store sales were unfortunately flat, and that is said to be from a 7% decline at KFC.

Yum! closed up 2% at $41.71, but shares are down under $40.50 in the after-hours session.  This is probably not going to be viewed as awful in tomorrow’s analyst upgrades and downgrades, but there is nothing here to be excited about.

Update at 4:46 PM EST: Yum is down 3.3% at $40.32 on over 700,000 shares in the after-hours trading session.

JON C. OGG