By Mark Kalinowski
Published on April 1, 2019 at 12:00 AM
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.
Read More
By Mark Kalinowski
Published on March 6, 2019 at 12:00 AM
This past September, McDonald’s (MCD; Buy) announced that it would reorganize its business into three segments (U.S., International Operated Markets, and International Developmental Licensed Markets). Much more recently, McDonald’s provided some historical information — including same-store sales information — about these new business segments. Armed with this new information, with this report we introduce our same-store sales projections for 2019E and 2020E for the International Operated Markets and International Developmental Licensed Markets segments. As of this writing, there appear to be no sell-side consensus numbers available for these business segments, due to a lack of enough sell-side analysts having published such forecasts.
Read More
By Mark Kalinowski
Published on February 25, 2019 at 12:00 AM
Based on our checks related to January and the first half of February, we tweak upward our U.S. same-store sales forecast for Q1E by +30 basis points, to +3.3%. This places us 40 basis points above sell-side consensus (according to Consensus Metrix) of +2.9%. We are encouraged by what we hear about Q1 so far, particularly given that weather has been a challenge at some points over January/February. McDonald’s initiatives — including fresh-beef quarter-pound beef patties (amongst other menu improvements) and the recent Big Mac Bacon, Quarter Pounder Bacon, and Cheesy Bacon Fries promotion — appear to be resonating well with guests. We do caution that the quarter is not over yet, and in particular we still have March to go, so of course our updated +3.3% forecast for Q1E U.S. same-store sales remain subject to change depending on our checks related to the back half of the quarter.
Read More
