Yum! Brands Forecasts Growth in India

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (TheStreet) -- Yum! Brands (YUM) sees strong growth potential for its restaurant concepts in India next year.

The chief of Yum's Indian operations said Monday he expects revenue to grow between 35% and 45% in 2011.

Comparable same-store sales, or sales at stores open at least one year -- a closely watched metric in the restaurant industry -- should increase in the mid-teen percentages, Niren Chaudhary told Reuters at the World Economic Forum's India summit.

Chaudhary expects Yum's Indian operations to break even next year.

"We feel that we have laid the foundation in terms of our business strategy, people capability, in terms of our processes and so on," Chaudhary told the newswire.

"So 2011 is going to be a transformational year in which I personally expect that we will beat all of the metrics of 2010. So we will grow faster, we will build more stores and hopefully get more recognition for the brand," he said.

Fast food behemoth McDonald's (MCD) did not specifically underscore its own success in the subcontinent, but said earlier this month that comps in its Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa region grew 5.3% in October, after pushing up 8.1% in the third quarter.

Yum!, which operates fast-food chains under the KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell brands, recently posted a 2.9% increase in quarterly earnings to $2.86 billion, or 74 cents per share, on revenue of $357 million.

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