“we expect our effective tax rate for the year to be between 20% and 22%.”

In context

“the financial strength of our system enables us to invest in areas that will drive long term efficiencies for our people and for our stakeholders. We expect 2024 G&A as a percentage of system wide sales to be about 2.2%, which reflects elevated investments in technology, digital and global business services or GBS. Through these investments we'll look to run the business more efficiently over time, and ultimately free up more resource to continue to drive long-term growth. Despite headwinds throughout the P&L, we anticipate an operating margin of mid to high 40% in 2024, driven primarily by top-line growth and franchise margin performance. We're projecting interest expense this year to increase between 9% and 11% compared to 2023 due to higher average debt balances and interest rates and we expect our effective tax rate for the year to be between 20% and 22%. Transitioning to capital expenditures we plan to spend between $2.5 billion and $2.7 billion this year, more than half of which will be dedicated to new unit openings across our U.S. and IOM segments. Globally, we plan to open more than 2,100 restaurants this year, with about 500 of these openings in our U.S. and IOM segments, where we continue to see strong returns. We also expect to open more than 1,600 restaurants in our IDL segment this year, including about 1,000 in China, where we recently completed the acquisition of Carlyle's 28% stake in McDonald's China. We're excited to have increased our minority ownership to 48% in our second largest and fastest growing market and believe it will enable us to further benefit from the market's long-term potential. Overall, we anticipate about”