McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE:MCD) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Mike Cieplak: Our next question is from Jeff Bernstein with Barclays.

Jeffrey Bernstein: Great. Thank you very much. Just a question on the U.S. and Europe. Clearly strong double-digit comp performance. I’m just wondering as you kind of look beneath the top line, any sign of slowing macro impact in the consumer or perhaps any concern of consumer pushback on the outsized menu pricing or maybe just looking more broadly, any color on McDonald’s versus the industry in terms of market share in key markets since we know everyone is being more aggressive on price, any kind of color you could provide would be great? Thank you.

Christopher J. Kempczinski: I think overall, we’re still seeing the consumer is resilient, and it plays to our strengths as a system in terms of being well positioned on value. We lead in every market around the world on affordability and value for money. And so that puts McDonald’s in a strong position. We’ve talked about on prior calls, there is a little bit of a decrease in units per transaction that we’re seeing. We’re seeing a little bit of trade-down. But I got to say, these are probably on the margin that we’re seeing this. Overall, the consumer, whether it’s in Europe or the U.S., is actually holding up better than what we would have probably expected or maybe what I would have expected a year ago or six months ago. So I think the question is as we go into 2023, there is going to continue to be inflation.

The environment is going to continue to be challenging, I think, from a macro standpoint. And so do you reach a point where maybe it does start to materialize around the consumer. Certainly, consumer sentiment out there remains depressed in many markets. But we’re not seeing it right now. I think it goes back to what I said in the opening though, we have to be very judicious. And our franchisees have been great about the pace of pricing, where we’re just making sure that we’re keeping the customer engaged and coming into our restaurants as we’re working through the menu pricing. And we’re today still seeing flow through on pricing in line with our historical numbers. So not seeing any big resistance right now.

Ian F. Borden: Maybe I’ll just hook on to that a little bit because I think as Chris touched on, I mean, we’re laser-focused on those two consumer-facing metrics and value for money and making sure we’ve got those affordable choices across our menu. And I think, as Chris said, we’re in a leadership position across the majority of our top markets in both of those metrics. And we know that even though those metrics have probably come down a little bit over the last 12 months or so on the back of higher pricing, the gap to the competitive set that we have has remained consistent. And so as Chris talked about, I think we’ve had a good discipline around pricing and making sure we keep that strong value for money in place. I think the other thing that’s important to highlight is we know that we’re continuing to gain share across all of those key markets.

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