The Hamburger Economy: McDonald’s Sales Up, Again (MCD)(WMT)
McDonald’s cannot be stopped with an elephant gun. The huge food chain announced November same store sales rose 6.2%. Premium coffee and promotional games seemed to be big contributors. US sales were up 5.1%. In Europe the figure was 8.4%.…
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.
McDonald’s cannot be stopped with an elephant gun. The huge food chain announced November same store sales rose 6.2%. Premium coffee and promotional games seemed to be big contributors. US sales were up 5.1%. In Europe the figure was 8.4%.
McDonald’s shares now trade near $44, a multiyear high.
Whether chicken sandwichs and coffee sales are an adequate explanation is really not clear. When the largest company in a field grows faster then competition, a large number of things must be going right. McDonald’s is still the premier brand, and, unlike Wal-Mart, it does not appear to have too many stores. Its basic offerings are not much different that Burger King.
Whatever it is, it works. Some bright analyst at a brokerage might make a name for himself by crafting a better explanation for the success.
Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own shares in companies that he writes about.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
