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Retail

McDonald’s (MCD): Blame It On The Weather

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

McDonald’s (MCD) was the greatest stock in the US until it wasn’t. Improvement in same-store sales in the US and overseas drove the stock from below $32 in June 2006 to over $63 just five weeks ago.

MCD had a yield of over 2.5% and a perfect balance sheet. The firm seemed recession-proof. How can things get so bad that people will not buy hamburgers?

Much of the excitement that built up around the big fast food chain was due to its move into the premium coffee business and its early AM breakfast results. These seemed to lift the place from just being a lunch and dinner joint. The success of the new "morning McDonald’s" also drive shareholders out of Starbucks (SBUX) shares like a herd of cattle.

Now McDonald’s has come back to earth Shares are down 8% today. It is just a bunch of restaurants with a red-haired clown as a spokesman. Why was the fourth quarter slow in the US? "Severe winter weather throughout the month and softer consumer spending resulted in December U.S. comparable sales being flat."

Blame it on the weather.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

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.

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