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Yum Brands is a US-based restaurant operator featuring a portfolio of four brands: KFC (29,900 global units at year-end 2023), Pizza Hut (19,866 units), Taco Bell (8,564 units), and The Habit Burger Grill (381 units). With $64 billion in 2023 systemwide sales, the firm is the second-largest restaurant company in the world behind McDonald’s ($130 billion), ahead of Restaurant Brands International and Starbucks ($29 billion). Yum is 98% franchised, with the largest franchisee, Yum China, spun out in 2016 (after which Yum China agreed to pay 3% royalties to Yum Brands in perpetuity). Yum is the newest evolution of Tricon, formerly a division of PepsiCo, and generates the bulk of its revenue from franchise royalties and marketing contributions.

Wayfair engages in e-commerce in the United States (87% of 2023 sales), Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Ireland. At the end of 2023, the firm offered more than 30 million products from more than 20,000 suppliers under the brands Wayfair, Joss & Main, AllModern, Birch Lane, and Perigold. Its offerings include furniture, everyday and seasonal decor, decorative accents, housewares, and other home goods. Wayfair was founded in 2002 and began trading publicly in 2014.

We are raising our 2Q24 GDP forecast to 1.9% from 1.5% and are reducing our full-year 2024 GDP forecast to 1.8% from 2%. The U.S. economy is chugging along, but persistent inflation is delaying the interest-rate relief that many consumers need to finance home renovations and other big-ticket purchases, such as furniture and automobiles. We saw evidence of this in last week's advance estimate of first-quarter GDP released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. U.S. GDP expanded in 1Q at an annualized rate of 1.6%. That was well below the 2.5% consensus and 3.4% growth in the fourth quarter of 2023. As we discussed in our April webinar, the all-important consumer economy is "mixed," but it is still driving the train. Consumer spending, designated as Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) in the GDP report, contributed 1.68 points of the 1.6% growth in 1Q (offset by lower inventory investment and the trade deficit). PCE grew 2.5%, but the consumer category was carried by the huge services component, which was up 4.0%. Consumer spending on goods declined 0.4%, which should worry the Fed. Within goods, nondurables were flat but durables were down 1.2%. Our 3Q GDP estimate remains at 1.8%. Our 4Q estimate is now 2.0% down from 2.3%. One potential headwind to our 4Q estimate is that the Purchasing Managers Index for services (reported last Friday) came in at a contractionary 49.4 in April, ending a run of 15 months above 50. Our forecast is for GDP to grow 2.0% in 2025, with an acceleration to 2.3% in the second half of the year. One concern is that the one-percentage-point drop in the 10-year Treasury yield at the end of 2023 likely stoked growth in 4Q23 and 1Q24. The benchmark's 70-basis-point yield increase in 1Q could slow the train in 3Q and 4Q, particularly with the yield curve still inverted. While economic growth may be uneven in 2024 and 2025, we believe the Fed has the ability to bolster growth if needed.

The Vickers Top Buyers & Sellers is a daily report that identifies the five companies the largest insider purchase transactions based on the dollar value of the transactions as well as the five companies the largest insider sales transactions based on the dollar value of the transactions.