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McDonald's

MCD on NYSE. McDonald's sells food and drinks to customers through its restaurants. Market value $164.9bn.

Watch this stockFree. We tell you when something changes.

Price checks use the past 12 months to June 2026. Quality checks use five annual reports, the latest for the year to December 2025.

Should I look at this?

Worth a closer look

Why it could be worth it

What to watch out for

Nothing big in our quick check. See what could go wrong below.

Read what could go wrong

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

Compare with another stock

Cash yield
past 12 months to June 2026
4.7%fair

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $4.72 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

Price to profit
past 12 months to June 2026
15.9×full

You pay 15.9 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.

Return on capital
five annual reports to December 2025
27.1%five-year median

Each dollar kept in the business earns 27 cents a year. Above 10 is good.

Quality score: 80 of 100. Price score: 82 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$232.45 a share, at its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $229.20 to $341.75.

Dividend: 3.1% a year

Paid every year for at least 5 years

Prices from Tuesday’s close (6 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

7.1
5.5
7.3
6.7
7.2
7.8
2021202220232024202512 monthsto Jun '26
Revenue
$23.2bn$23.2bn$25.5bn$25.9bn$26.9bn
Operating margin
44.6%40.4%45.7%45.2%46.1%
Debt to equity
n/an/an/an/an/a
Shares outstanding
0.73bn0.73bn0.72bn0.71bn0.71bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive5 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Not enough data
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)4 of 7 checks we could run
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
  • DebtUnknown
  • Revenue growth, five yearsSlow, 7.0% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesYes, 3% fewer since 2021

The quarter to June 2026

How the business did, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.

  • Sales: $7.1 billion last quarter, up 4% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $2.4 billion, up 5% on a year ago.
  • It keeps 46 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, about the same as a year earlier.
  • Spare cash over the past 12 months: $7.8 billion, up from $6.9 billion.
  • 1% fewer shares than a year ago. Each share owns a bit more of the company.
  • Debt is $39 billion more than cash, down from $39.5 billion a year ago.
  • Sales grew on a year ago in each of the last 4 quarters.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$6.9bn
December 2024$6.4bn
March 2025$6.0bn
June 2025$6.8bn
September 2025$7.1bn
December 2025$7.0bn
March 2026$6.5bn
June 2026$7.1bn
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$2.3bn
December 2024$2.0bn
March 2025$1.9bn
June 2025$2.3bn
September 2025$2.3bn
December 2025$2.2bn
March 2026$2.0bn
June 2026$2.4bn

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
4 November 2026
Last annual report (10-K)
24 February 2026
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
6 November 2026

Who owns it

21 long-term investors we follow own it, up from 20 last quarter. 3,459 funds in all.

Jun '25
Dec '25
Jun '26

Sold out this quarter

Largest holders overall

From 13F filings for the quarter ended 30 June 2026.

Big holders and activists

2 investors own more than 5%.

From Schedule 13D and 13G filings: anyone owning more than 5% must file one.

What insiders did

No insider bought shares on the open market in the last 12 months. 8 sold $41m, $37m of it under preset trading plans.

  • Erlinger Joseph M.
    President, McDonald's USA
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    10 June 2026
    Shares
    5,252
    Price
    $284.32
    Value
    $1m
  • Ralls-Morrison Desiree
    EVP, Chief Legal Officer
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    28 May 2026
    Shares
    2,763
    Price
    $278.36
    Value
    $769,109
  • Erlinger Joseph M.
    President, McDonald's USA
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    26 May 2026
    Shares
    333
    Price
    $280.11
    Value
    $93,277
  • Erlinger Joseph M.
    President, McDonald's USA
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    23 April 2026
    Shares
    333
    Price
    $302.72
    Value
    $100,806
  • Erlinger Joseph M.
    President, McDonald's USA
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    10 April 2026
    Shares
    2,626
    Price
    $307.00
    Value
    $806,182
  • Erlinger Joseph M.
    President, McDonald's USA
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    23 March 2026
    Shares
    333
    Price
    $313.47
    Value
    $104,386
  • Baroni Dario
    President, IDL
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    18 March 2026
    Shares
    600
    Price
    $323.77
    Value
    $194,262
  • Erlinger Joseph M.
    President, McDonald's USA
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    10 March 2026
    Shares
    2,626
    Price
    $328.34
    Value
    $862,221
  • Banner Jonathan
    EVP - Chief Impact Officer
    Sold
    Date
    23 February 2026
    Shares
    6,201
    Price
    $333.29
    Value
    $2m
  • Erlinger Joseph M.
    President, McDonald's USA
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    23 February 2026
    Shares
    333
    Price
    $330.43
    Value
    $110,033

From Form 4 filings: insiders must report trades in their own company's shares within two days.

Warning signs in its filings

Problems the company itself reported to the SEC, in its own words.

None of the warning signs we check for were found.

We look for five warning signs: doubt it can keep going, weak checks on its own accounts, a notice that its past accounts can't be relied on, a change of auditor, and one customer bringing in a big share of sales. We don't check lawsuits, investigations or debt yet.

We checked the auditor's report, internal controls, restatement notices, auditor changes and big customers in the 10-K filed 24 Feb 2026, plus the 10-Q filed 7 Aug 2026 and 5 later 8-Ks.

A 10-K is the yearly report every US company files with the SEC. An 8-K is a short notice of a big event.

What could go wrong

  • It owes more than it owns on paper (negative equity). Often that's from borrowing to buy back shares.

Whether the price already reflects the risks is what the deep dive is for.

The deep dive

Everything above is arithmetic on public filings. The deep dive reads the last ten years of annual reports, the proxy statements, and the earnings calls, then argues the case the way Buffett, Klarman, and Hohn would, and checks every claim against the source.

  • What the business is worth, as a range, and the margin of safety at today’s price
  • Prices to start buying, buy, and buy hard
  • The three things that would make this a mistake
  • Every number footnoted to the filing it came from
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What a finished deep dive looks like

Not advice. Numbers on this page come from SEC filings and are updated each night; prices are updated again after the US market closes. The five-year figures are rounded.