McDonald's Earnings: Marketing Mastery And The CosMc's Legacy

2026-02-12 09:24:43 ET

Introduction

McDonald's Corporation ( MCD ) is a stock I have been cautious on recently. Although it recently started reporting strong quarterly results, as we saw six months ago when we reviewed its first half. I was surely pleased by the fact that McDonald's was resuming growth, but it was also clear that much of the improvement happened thanks to easy comparables . Moreover, some structural headwinds continued to pressure the company's operations: consumers are more cautious, and new menu items were receiving negative feedback. In the U.S., the main growth driver was price rather than volume. The valuation seemed to me in fair value territory and, given the low growth rates that MCD was expected to achieve, I considered the stock a hold. As a matter of fact, over the past two quarters, MCD is up around 5%, while the market did 10%. At the same time, MCD can play a defensive role, especially now that investors are worried about AI capex and AI disruption. Moreover, MCD could be a direct beneficiary of AI. Who knows? Perhaps, in a few years, we will see AI directly manage cooking operations and be able to serve and deliver a Happy Meal. If this is the case, quick-service restaurants will see their labor costs rapidly decrease....

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