Yum Brands announced on Tuesday that it is selling Pizza Hut in two separate deals worth a combined $2.7 billion. The biggest part of the deal is the sale of Pizza Hut’s business outside mainland China to private equity firm LongRange Capital for about $1.5 billion.
Pizza Hut’s mainland China business is being sold separately to Yum China for around $1.2 billion. Investors reacted positively to the announcement, sending Yum! Brands stock higher in trading. Yum Brands stock was trading near $158.22 after the news and gained almost 2% in morning trading.
Along with the Pizza Hut sale, Yum Brands also announced a new $4 billion plan to buy back its own shares from the market. Yum said it began looking at options for Pizza Hut in November 2025. The company’s leaders and board decided that selling Pizza Hut was the best way to increase value for shareholders. Yum also said that if Pizza Hut has its own separate ownership, it will be able to focus better on its own markets and long-term growth plans.
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Pizza hut struggles
The sale happened after Pizza Hut faced problems for several years and hurt Yum’s overall business results. In the United States, Pizza Hut tried to change its old dine-in restaurants and salad bars into more delivery and takeaway services, as reported by CNBC. But during this change, it found it hard to match new customer habits. At the same time, rival Domino’s Pizza kept growing and slowly took more customers away from Pizza Hut over the years.
Food delivery platforms such as DoorDash also increased competition and took away some sales from Pizza Hut. Yum expects to receive about $2.3 billion in net proceeds from both transactions after taxes, fees and other adjustments.
Details of the deal
The expected $2.3 billion figure does not include a possible additional $75 million earnout payment from LongRange Capital by 2030. Yum also expects about $85 million in one-time expenses related to the transactions during the remainder of 2026. Company executives plan to provide more details about the financial impact of the sale during Yum’s second-quarter earnings call on July 30. Yum expects both transactions to close in the third quarter of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals.
Pizza hut history
The deal ends Pizza Hut’s long relationship with sister restaurant chains Taco Bell and KFC under Yum Brands. At the end of 2025, Pizza Hut operated nearly 20,000 locations across 108 countries and territories, according to Yum regulatory filings cited by CNBC. Pizza Hut generated approximately $12.8 billion in annual system sales in 2025.
The United States remained Pizza Hut’s largest market, accounting for roughly 40% of total system sales. China was Pizza Hut’s second-largest market, contributing around 20% of total system sales. The $2.7 billion sale marks one of the biggest changes in Pizza Hut’s ownership history and gives the pizza chain a new chapter under separate owners.
