Apollon Wealth Management LLC Purchases 512 Shares of Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE:YUM)

Apollon Wealth Management LLC boosted its position in Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE:YUM) by 7.1% in the 4th quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The firm owned 7,738 shares of the restaurant operator’s stock after buying an additional 512 shares during the quarter. Apollon Wealth Management LLC’s holdings in Yum! Brands were worth $1,038,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other institutional investors have also added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its stake in Yum! Brands by 1.5% in the third quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 7,441,170 shares of the restaurant operator’s stock worth $1,038,775,000 after purchasing an additional 111,147 shares during the last quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. lifted its stake in Yum! Brands by 0.4% in the third quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 1,632,862 shares of the restaurant operator’s stock worth $228,127,000 after purchasing an additional 6,537 shares during the last quarter. Cantillon Capital Management LLC lifted its stake in Yum! Brands by 3.8% in the third quarter. Cantillon Capital Management LLC now owns 1,428,040 shares of the restaurant operator’s stock worth $199,511,000 after purchasing an additional 51,690 shares during the last quarter. Swiss National Bank lifted its stake in Yum! Brands by 0.3% in the third quarter. Swiss National Bank now owns 835,800 shares of the restaurant operator’s stock worth $116,770,000 after purchasing an additional 2,800 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group Inc. lifted its stake in Yum! Brands by 1.0% in the fourth quarter. Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group Inc. now owns 696,714 shares of the restaurant operator’s stock worth $93,471,000 after purchasing an additional 7,083 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 82.37% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several analysts have recently weighed in on YUM shares. Loop Capital decreased their price target on shares of Yum! Brands from $143.00 to $140.00 and set a “hold” rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, November 6th. Argus raised shares of Yum! Brands from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $155.00 price target for the company in a research note on Tuesday, December 31st. TD Securities lifted their price target on shares of Yum! Brands from $140.00 to $151.00 and gave the company a “hold” rating in a research note on Friday, February 7th. Sanford C. Bernstein downgraded shares of Yum! Brands from an “outperform” rating to a “market perform” rating and decreased their price target for the company from $140.00 to $135.00 in a research note on Wednesday, January 22nd. Finally, TD Cowen reaffirmed a “hold” rating and set a $140.00 price target on shares of Yum! Brands in a research note on Thursday, February 6th. Thirteen research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and six have assigned a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $147.37.

Yum! Brands Trading Down 1.0 %

NYSE YUM opened at $146.62 on Wednesday. The firm’s fifty day simple moving average is $132.55 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $134.08. Yum! Brands, Inc. has a 12-month low of $122.13 and a 12-month high of $148.20. The firm has a market capitalization of $40.92 billion, a P/E ratio of 28.09, a P/E/G ratio of 2.36 and a beta of 1.11.

Yum! Brands Increases Dividend

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, March 7th. Stockholders of record on Friday, February 21st will be issued a dividend of $0.71 per share. The ex-dividend date is Friday, February 21st. This is a positive change from Yum! Brands’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.67. This represents a $2.84 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.94%. Yum! Brands’s payout ratio is 54.41%.

Insider Activity

In other news, CEO David W. Gibbs sold 3,815 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Monday, December 16th. The shares were sold at an average price of $137.06, for a total transaction of $522,883.90. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 149,385 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $20,474,708.10. The trade was a 2.49 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. Corporate insiders own 0.31% of the company’s stock.

About Yum! Brands

Yum! Brands, Inc, together with its subsidiaries, develops, operates, and franchises quick service restaurants worldwide. The company operates through the KFC Division, the Taco Bell Division, the Pizza Hut Division, and the Habit Burger Grill Division segments. It also operates restaurants under the KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and The Habit Burger Grill brands, which specialize in chicken, pizza, made-to-order chargrilled burgers, sandwiches, Mexican-style food categories, and other food products.