MAAT INDEX

CLAIM #39021 · McDonald’s Corporation (MCD) · 2023Q1 earnings call · Apr 25, 2023 · due Dec 31, 2023

Certainly believe inflation is front half versus back half-loaded and certainly believe as we get into the back half of the year, we'll start to see inflation moderate down but still really elevated in Europe.

Ian Borden · CFO

PENDING
graded after results covering Dec 31, 2023 are reported

In context

on for the year, I'll kind of break that into a couple of pieces. I think if you look at the U.S., we certainly believe we're on a downward trend, although inflation remains elevated. So if you look at commodity inflation on the food and paper front in 2022, we were in the mid-teens level in the U.S. This year, we think it will be mid- to high-single-digit. I think labor inflation will still remain elevated just on the back of a really continued strong labor market. And then I think if you move to Europe, from a food and paper commodity standpoint in 2022, we were in the mid-teen levels in Europe, and we expect to be in the mid-teens again in 2023. So I would say Europe, we still feel is kind of working through what I'll call the eye of the storm, so to speak, from a headwind perspective. Certainly believe inflation is front half versus back half-loaded and certainly believe as we get into the back half of the year, we'll start to see inflation moderate down but still really elevated in Europe. So I think if you go back to operating margin for the first quarter, we finished at 46% on the back of that really strong top line. And I think as we've said pretty consistently in the past, we certainly continue to expect that if we can drive strong top line growth, we should get leverage on operating margin from a percentage perspective as we go forward. Certainly, don't necessarily believe that will be necessarily linear. And I think there's a lot of headwinds for us to continue to work through both from an inflationary standpoint, but just as Chris talked about earlier, just from that macro uncertainty that we know we need to navigate. So I think certainly, you can kind of see a path forward where operating margin could come up a little bit from where our guidance is today if we conti

Verify independently

SEC filings for MCD · Claim quote is verbatim from the 2023Q1 earnings call.