Tuesday April 23, 2019, 00:00:00
By Mark Kalinowski
So far this year, McDonald’s (MCD; Buy) U.S. same-store sales seem to be meaningfully outpacing those of its quick-service burger rivals. Why is this? How sustainable is it? While there are multiple reasons for McDonald’s success so far this year — for example, we believe fresh-beef Quarter Pounders and Quarter Pounder line extensions have sold rather well — this report focuses on improvements that we believe have been made in terms of average speed at the drive-thru. We believe there is room for significant improvement on this front, those improvements have started, and there’s plenty more to be had over time — all of which is good news for future same-store sales trends. We reiterate our Buy rating on MCD and note the following:
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Sunday April 7, 2019, 00:00:00
By Mark Kalinowski
We briefly note the following tidbits regarding pizza-sector market-share trends in the U.S., McDonald’s (MCD; Buy), and privately-held Luckin Coffee:
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Monday April 1, 2019, 00:00:00
By Mark Kalinowski
Based on our latest proprietary, data-driven checks, and what appears to have been a better-than-expected March, we tweak our full-Q1E same-store sales forecast for McDonald’s (MCD; Buy) U.S. business upward by +20 basis points, to +3.2%. This places us 30 basis points above the current sell-side consensus of +2.9%. In March, we believe core menu items — including fresh-beef Quarter Pounders (both with and without bacon) — sold quite well. Toward the end of March, McDonald’s U.S. began promoting a Quarter Pounder with Cheese Deluxe (as well as the Quarter Pounder with Cheese Bacon). One aspect we like of these burgers is that they are relatively simple operationally, with (for example) SKUs that are already found in the restaurants.
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