Pizza Hut Sold to Two Firms for $2.7 Billion

“These transactions enable Yum to be a more focused company,” Chris Turner, chief executive of Yum Brands, said in a news release.

Yum Brands said in November that it was exploring strategic options for Pizza Hut. Excluding mainland China, Pizza Hut has about 15,500 restaurants in 108 countries and generated approximately $10 billion in annual sales.

Shares of Yum Brands were up about 2 percent at $158 in early trading Tuesday.

Pizza Hut was founded in 1958 by two brothers who borrowed $600 from their mother to open a pizza restaurant in Wichita, Kan. It became the country’s largest pizza chain when the brothers sold it to PepsiCo in 1977 for $300 million, about $1.6 billion today.

Under PepsiCo, Pizza Hut expanded in the 1980s and ’90s, the heyday for the chain. Back then, families across the country strolled into the restaurants with their recognizable red thatched roofs, settled into red leather booths and sipped soda from red plastic cups.

In the late ’90s, PepsiCo spun off its restaurant operations — which included Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC — into what would later be named Yum Brands.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/16/business/pizza-hut-yum-brands-sold.html