McDonald’s plans to release its third-quarter earnings before the market open on Tuesday, October 29th. Ahead of that, we publish part one of our two-part, proprietary McDonald’s Franchisee Survey today.
Data out today from the U.S. Census shows that restaurants’ market share (with grocery stores/supermarkets making up the other component) was 56.1% in September 2024. This 56.1% figure is only -20 basis points below the all-time monthly record. However, it’s up by only +30 basis points year-over-year. This is the second-smallest year-over-year market-share gain for the restaurant industry since it gave up -710 basis points of share in a pandemic-affected February 2021 (which lapped a pre-pandemic February 2020).
Earlier today, Domino’s reported Q3 EPS reached $4.19. This was ahead of our $3.40 forecast and sell-side consensus (according to Consensus Metrix) of $3.64. Importantly, Domino’s minority ownership stake in DPC Dash (Domino’s China; 1405.HK; Not Rated) helped pre-tax income by $26.2 million, in line with our expectations. By our math, this works out to an EPS boost of about +59 cents (matching our expectations). Thus, excluding this help, Q3 EPS would have been about $3.60 — four cents short of consensus. Please note that this DPC Dash-related EPS help was not included in our $3.40 Q3E EPS estimate, nor in consensus.
The latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) data shows that prices for food-at-home (grocery stores and supermarkets) rose by +1.3% in September — sequentially up by +40 basis points from August’s +0.9%. This +1.3% number compares with price for food-away-from-home (restaurants) that increased by +3.9% year-over-year in September (sequentially down by -10 basis points from August’s +4.0%). This marks the 19th month in a row for which restaurant pricing is outpacing grocery/supermarket pricing.
With this report, we update our data-driven Kalinowski Restaurant Industry Index for Q3 2024 to +0.8%. This is sequentially similar to Q2 2024’s +0.9% showing, not to mention Q1 2024’s +0.9% result. This is not encouraging. Excluding pandemic-hit quarters, the first three quarters of 2024 are the worst such quarters since Q4 2016’s weak +0.6% number.
With this report, we update our data-driven Kalinowski Casual Dining Index for Q3 to +2.3%. On a five-year (pre-pandemic) basis, the Kalinowski Casual Dining Index for Q3 2024 is at +20.6%. These numbers are based on our latest proprietary checks/data as regards same-store sales performance for this segment during July, August, and September.