Yum Brands CEO David Gibbs to retire in 2026

(Reuters) -KFC parent Yum Brands said on Monday that CEO David Gibbs would retire next year after more than five years in the role.

The board has established a succession planning committee to appoint the next CEO, Yum Brands said, adding Gibbs would continue to lead the company during the search process until his retirement in the first quarter of 2026.

"Yum has a deep bench of talent ... that we believe will lead the company to pick an internal hire," TD Cowen analyst Andrew Charles said.

Gibbs, 62, has been with the company since 1989, holding several senior roles, including operations head and chief financial officer, before taking charge of the company in January 2020.

Under his tenure, Yum Brands expanded its store count to roughly 61,000 from around 50,000, while annual sales at the parent company of Pizza Hit and Taco Bell surged about 25% to $66 billion.

Yum Brands, whose shares have risen about 56% since Gibbs took over as CEO, beat quarterly estimates for comparable sales in its latest earnings report as value offerings from Taco Bell attracted budget-conscious U.S. consumers to the Tex-Mex chain.

The company is seeing sales improve following efforts to digitize customer orders.

(Reporting by Anuja Bharat Mistry in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Anil D'Silva)

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