Bulletin: McDonald's Corp. Reported Weaker-Than-Expected Sales In November; More Moderate Declines Expected

NEW YORK (Standard&Poor's) Dec. 8, 2014--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services said today that McDonald's Corp.'s November stores sales are were moderately weaker than expected, particularly in the U.S., where comparable storesales were down 4.6%, continuing a recent trend. This is likely behind many of its competitors and the company has outlined a number of initiatives aimed at improving traffic. As such, we expect weak sales but possibly more moderate declines over the next few quarters. The sales declines have slowed somewhat over the past couple of months in its APMEA division after a steep decline in the third quarter because of a supplier issue. We note the company's performance and unit growth was strong in the segment before

...NEW YORK (Standard & Poor's) Dec. 8, 2014--Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said today that McDonald's Corp.'s November stores sales are were moderately weaker than expected, particularly in the U.S., where comparable storesales were down 4.6%, continuing a recent trend. This is likely behind many of its competitors and the company has outlined a number of initiatives aimed at improving traffic. As such, we expect weak sales but possibly more moderate declines over the next few quarters. The sales declines have slowed somewhat over the past couple of months in its APMEA division after a steep decline in the third quarter because of a supplier issue. We note the company's performance and unit growth was strong in the segment before the supplier issue. We expect this division to be weak in the fourth quarter and into 2015, but we believe sales trends will improve and McDonald's should regain the lost profits over time. At the end of the third quarter, debt to EBITDA was near 1.9x and could...

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