In short: Answered in Q&A as a defensive name trading below the Street's bear case — and still not a buy. "It sold off because of GLP concerns… with interest rates. It was at 340 back on February 27th… it's now down to 252… probably 26%, and it pays a dividend of about 3%… it has been growing its dividend forever." The desperation tell: Spicy McNuggets back, a SpongeBob/One Piece Happy Meal on September 15th, a $2 in-app breakfast sandwich — "it looks like these guys are desperate to bring sales back," as are Starbucks, Pret, Potbelly and the rest. The Wells Fargo frame: "15 times EBITDA versus a historical 20 times… their upside case is 390, their base case is 300… McDonald's is already trading below their downside case, about 4% below that… about 19% upside" to base. The verdict: "I'm not an expert in McDonald's… I would be wary of some of the GLP-1 issues. I think a sixth of Americans are on GLP-1s… I'm not that excited personally."
McDonald's shares have fallen about 26%, from $340 in February to $252, which is the bottom of their three-year range. Two things did it: rising interest rates, which make steady dividend stocks less attractive than bonds, and weight-loss drugs of the GLP-1 type, which Singh estimates one in six Americans now take and which reduce how often people eat out.
You can see the pressure in the menu: returning favourites, a SpongeBob Happy Meal promotion, a $2 breakfast sandwich in the app — and the same cheap deals across Starbucks, Pret, Potbelly and the rest of the industry. Wells Fargo recently valued the company at $300 in its central case and $260 in its gloomy case, using a lower multiple of earnings than McDonald's historically commanded because growth is slowing. The shares are already below that gloomy case.
So it looks cheap against the analysts' own numbers, and it pays about 3% while you wait. Singh still passes: he is "not an expert in McDonald's," is wary of the weight-loss-drug effect, and says plainly he is not buying it.
Full passage: premium transcript (PDF).
In short: Held by Belski, and the least interesting of his three restaurant names by his own account. "McDonald's is a steady Eddy value play in our view. Comfort food has done well longer term, not as much as the last…" — and Wapner immediately notes the charts are hard to tell apart from Shake Shack's (down ~15–16% year to date). It then becomes the lead exhibit in Terranova's GLP-1 question: "McDonald's, Shack, Wendy's, it's universal across the board."
In short: Value misfires. Q2 revenue +4% Y/Y to $7.1B (a $40M miss) with adjusted EPS $3.38 ($0.06 beat), but global comparable sales slowed to 1.3% from 3.8% and US comps to just 0.8% — "higher checks kept sales positive, but US traffic declined." The weakness was largely self-inflicted: McDonald's replaced popular digital deals and Buy One, Add One offers with an under-$3 value menu that was inconsistently executed, and management said those changes explained roughly two-thirds of the US traffic underperformance, with too many simultaneous launches also hurting service times and satisfaction. The response: Skye Anderson named US president and operations simplified around a new "McDonald's > NEXT" strategy; beverages exceeded expectations and loyalty sales surpassed $40B TTM (+20%). International held up better — IOM comps +1.5%, developmental markets +1.9% — while the 50,000-restaurant target slipped from 2027 to 2028 as inflation raises development costs. "Q2 looks more like an execution stumble than a demand collapse."
In short: #20. Founded 1955, IPO 1965. "The corporation owns the underlying real estate and collects rent and franchise fees from operators… McDonald's is essentially a real estate company that collects rent and royalties." The Lindy case: "Food is a fundamental human need that isn't going anywhere," plus global brand and scale. Total return more than 6,000% since 1990. Ray Kroc's 1955 company was built on the McDonald brothers' 1940 restaurant.
Most people think of McDonald's as a burger chain. Financially it is closer to a landlord. The company owns the land and buildings under thousands of its restaurants, and the people who actually run those restaurants pay it rent plus a share of sales. That means its income does not depend on how profitable any individual outlet is, only on how much it sells.
The durability argument is simple: people have always eaten out and always will, and the combination of the world's most recognised fast-food brand with a property portfolio built up over seventy years is not something a competitor can assemble. The record cited is a total return above 6,000% since 1990. No price or valuation is offered — this is a case for owning the business for decades, not a call on the shares today.
In short: "Obviously been negatively affected, with a lot of consumer names, due to GLP-1 drugs and less people eating out," reporting Tuesday pre-market.
Full passage: premium transcript (PDF).
In short: Simpson owns it (lowest since Aug '24): a ~$300 "Mendoza line" floor it likes to hover at. The $5 meal drove traffic (the numbers look good) but inflation pressured the margins/guides; "operating amazingly well" with the real-estate model, but "I don't know that you need to rush into it."
Simpson owns McDonald's but isn't excited here. He half-jokingly calls $300 its "Mendoza line" — a baseball term for a floor level the stock keeps drifting back to. The business is running well: the return of the $5 value meal pulled lots of customers into stores, so sales look good. The problem is profitability — those cheap meals plus inflation squeezed margins, and management's guidance (its forecast for future profits) disappointed. He likes the company's real-estate-driven model long-term but sees no urgency: "I don't know that you need to rush into it."
In short: Not a buy call — the worked example for Peter Lynch's "100% correlation" between EPS growth and stock price. The 1985→2026 chart overlays MCD's diluted EPS on its price; they track 1:1 long-term, detaching only briefly (e.g. the 2020 Covid dip, which "recovered faster than EPS") — those detachments are where the alpha is.
McDonald's isn't a buy recommendation here — it's the proof picture for Carlson's core lesson from Peter Lynch: over the long run a stock's price tracks its earnings almost perfectly ("100% correlation"). A chart from 1985 to 2026 overlays McDonald's earnings-per-share on its share price, and the two move together for decades, separating only briefly (like the 2020 Covid crash, where the price dropped then bounced back even faster than earnings). Those temporary gaps between price and earnings are exactly where a patient investor can buy great companies cheap.
In short: With restaurants "getting really hammered," McDonald's ~20% off — proof growth expectations for the real economy are coming down even as inflation stays sticky.
McDonald's, with Lowe's and Harley-Davidson, is off roughly 20% — even cheap-eats brands are buckling. The squeeze on ordinary households is why growth expectations are falling at the same time inflation is re-accelerating: the stagflation mix that traps the Fed and powers his hard-asset rotation.
16:38But the bottom 60% of consumers are in a lot of pain and that's why you're seeing these wacky divergences. Restaurants getting really hammered this year. Same thing on the next chart with Home Depot. I mean, Home Depot almost 30% off. Think of these brands. Lowe's, Home Depot, McDonald's, all these stocks are essentially close to 19 to 20% off.
In short: Poster child for K-shaped consumer pain — down ~30% vs the S&P; the Big-Mac/fries inflation hitting families isn't what CPI shows.
McDonald's is the fast-food chain — and his poster child for the squeezed consumer. The stock is down about 30% versus the S&P. His point: the real inflation families feel (a pricier Big Mac and fries) is far worse than the official inflation figures show, so even cheap-eats names are hurting as ordinary households pull back.
6:06It's like a I call it like an 8% 10% nominal GDP grower over that side. But then if you look at McDonald's, look at Darden restaurants, look at Home Depot, look at Nike, the divergence on the consumer side, the restaurants, the retailers are all in flames. Uh we did a little look this morning where conversation the suppliers to Home Depot are all down 10 20 40%.
In short: "Rolling over" with the other consumer-facing names — ugly technicals.
McDonald's, the fast-food chain, is another consumer bellwether he flags as "rolling over" — its stock chart is breaking down along with the other consumer names.
It's part of the same evidence base: even cheap, everyday-spending companies are weakening, a sign the consumer is strained under the inflation bounce.
6:35So this move was really orchestrated by a lot of very clever financial engineering. And that's why, if you look behind the scenes, like if you look at new lows or if you just look at the market breadth, you got Home Depot that's down 26% off the highs, McDonald's, Darden Restaurants, they're all rolling over.
In short: ROS short candidate — "#4 on the list," the "American obesity export model" at 25x 2025E on an 8% EPS CAGR ("watch out if the whole world goes on Ozempic"). The Nifty-Fifty analog: MCD grew EPS ~4x from the 1972 peak to 1982 yet fell a third as its multiple contracted from 60x to 10x.
McDonald's is a classic "safe" blue chip, but Paulo flags it as a short candidate because its chart has stalled right on its 200-day average (a line traders watch — sitting on it after a long run often precedes a decline) and it looks expensive: ~25x earnings for only ~8% profit growth. His historical warning: McDonald's was a darling of the 1970s "Nifty Fifty," and even though its earnings quadrupled over the next decade, the stock fell a third because investors stopped paying up — the valuation collapsed from 60x earnings to 10x. The risk is a repeat de-rating, especially if weight-loss drugs (Ozempic) dent fast-food demand.
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