MCD
McDonald's CorporationEvidence as of 2026-09-18The desk's Snapshot
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Overview · McDonald's Corporation
McDonald's Corporation operates and franchises McDonald's restaurants in the United States and internationally. The company's restaurants offer hamburgers and cheeseburgers, chicken sandwiches and nuggets, fries, salads, shakes, frozen desserts, sundaes, soft serve cones, bakery items, soft drinks, coffee, and beverages and other beverages, as well as breakfast menu, including muffins, Sausages, biscuit and bagel san…
Management team
- Mr. Mason Smoot · Senior VP & Chief Restaurant Officer of McDonald's USAFind on LinkedIn
- Radek Janalik · Managing Director of McDonald's HungaryFind on LinkedIn
- Ms. Tiffanie L. Boyd · Executive VP & Global Chief People OfficerFind on LinkedIn
- Mr. Joseph Erlinger · EVP & President of McDonald's USAFind on LinkedIn
Start free to see the full management team.
Links open LinkedIn searches, not verified profiles. Team data from our market-data vendor's company profile.
Moneyta sentiment
Where the published evidence leans after the desk debated it, not a rating or a recommendation.
+0.3 on a −2 to +2 scale.
What builds the score
Solid bars are analyst rubric scores; faded bars are computed directly from data. Claims dropped in debate count for nothing; weakened claims count at half weight.
Editor's note
Written after the debate settled. The rest of the page is the evidence behind it.
Revenues rose from $ 6,517,000,000 in Q1 2026 (fiscal quarter ended 2026-03-31) to $ 7,099,000,000 in Q2 2026 (fiscal quarter ended 2026-06-30), an increase of $ 582,000,000 (≈ 8.9%), while net income increased from $ 1,983,000,000 to $ 2,362,000,000 (≈ 19.1%) and diluted EPS rose from $ 2.78 to $ 3.32 (a $ 0.54 increase) across those quarters. Operating income increased by $ 385,000,000 to $ 3,338,000,000 in Q2 2026, cash used for share repurchases rose from $ 396,000,000 to $ 856,000,000, and reported shares outstanding declined by about 2.86 million between 2026-03-31 and 2026-06-30.
Market signals are mixed: short- and medium-term momentum metrics are negative (3‑month -12.5%, 6‑month -21.3%, 12|1 -12.1%) and volatility is elevated (30‑day +17.8%, 90‑day +21.1%, volatility at the 93rd percentile), while dividend metrics show a 3‑year growth rate of +7.0% and a TTM yield of +2.99% amid a market capitalization of $ 175,834,767,623 and enterprise value of $ 214,985,767,623. Reported stockholders’ equity has trended toward less negative values (from -$ 2,760,000,000 as of 2025-06-30 to -$ 1,023,000,000 as of 2026-06-30), cash and cash equivalents declined by $ 348,000,000 in Q2 2026, and trailing twelve‑month FCF is $ 7,377,000,000 (implied FCF per share ≈ $ 10.43; price‑to‑FCF ≈ 23.8x at $ 248.48).
How this note was made
every stage ran before the note was writtenAnalyst desk
Mercer, Oakes, Nash, Ellis, Yates, Talbot and Archer. The desk: named AI agents, not people. Each reads one slice of the evidence and nothing else (no outside knowledge, no browsing), so every finding traces to a source you can open.
Reads the XBRL figures companies file with the SEC (revenue, margins, income, debt and share count, quarter by quarter) and reports which way the trend is running.
Revenues rose from $6,517,000,000 in fiscal Q1 2026 (2026-01-01 to 2026-03-31, 3mo) to $7,099,000,000 in fiscal Q2 2026 (2026-04-01 to 2026-06-30, 3mo), an increase of $582,000,000 (≈8.9%).
XBRL companyfacts · 0000063908-26-000051Net income increased from $1,983,000,000 in fiscal Q1 2026 (2026-01-01 to 2026-03-31, 3mo) to $2,362,000,000 in fiscal Q2 2026 (2026-04-01 to 2026-06-30, 3mo), a rise of $379,000,000 (≈19.1%).
XBRL companyfacts · 0000063908-26-000051Reads the filings themselves, above all the year-over-year diff of Item 1A risk factors: which risks a company added, dropped or quietly reworded since its last annual report.
Which filings the desk reads
The desk reads the annual 10-K in full: its risk factors, and how they changed since last year. Quarterly 10-Qs and event filings (8-Ks, insider Form 4s) are listed for context but not read line by line: the 10-K is where the material risk disclosures live. A brand-new company, or one we have only just begun tracking, may have no annual report on file yet; its risk analysis fills in once that lands.
As of June 30, 2026, the company reported 46,028 McDonald's restaurants and stated approximately 95% were franchised (fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2026).
10-Q filed 2026-08-07In a filing dated August 7, 2026, management characterized the then-new strategy introduced in June 2026 as: "McDonald's > NEXT is how the Company will meet customers' expectations for great value, great tasting food, great hospitality, convenience and affordability by elevating taste and quality, co-creating with our fans, unlocking better customer and restaurant experiences, and redefining hospitality."
10-Q filed 2026-08-07Reads the signal panel above (momentum, volatility, drawdown, relative strength and beta) and ranks each against the whole research universe rather than judging it in isolation.
Three momentum metrics are negative: 3-month momentum is -12.5%, 6-month momentum is -21.3%, and 12|1 momentum is -12.1%, and the 6-month momentum ranks in the 6th percentile of the 561-stock universe.
Moneyta signal set · 2026-09-17weakened in debateShort- and medium-term volatility are elevated versus the stock's history: 30-day annualized volatility is +17.8%, 90-day annualized volatility is +21.1%, and volatility versus its own history sits at the 93th percentile of the 561-stock universe.
Moneyta signal set · 2026-09-17Reads which funds hold the name and at what weight, plus insider Form 4 filings, to show the exposure you may already carry through index funds.
Institutional holders reported aggregate 13F holdings of "$142.48B" in the 13F report for the period ended 2026-06-30.
13F holdings · 3473 filers · as of 2026-06-30Top reported institutional holders in that 13F include BlackRock, Inc. at "$14.98B", VANGUARD CAPITAL MANAGEMENT LLC at "$12.54B", and STATE STREET CORP at "$9.75B" as of 2026-06-30.
13F holdings · 3473 filers · as of 2026-06-30Reads recent headlines that are genuinely about this company, ignoring rating chatter and market-wide stories. Findings argue in the debate but never move the sentiment score.
McDonald's Board declared a quarterly cash dividend of $1.93 per share, a 4% increase, and the company marked 50 consecutive years of dividend increases.
News · prnewswire.com · 2026-09-17A syndicated version of the dividend announcement noting the $1.93 quarterly payout and the 50-year streak appeared on Yahoo Finance the same day.
News · finance.yahoo.com · 2026-09-17Reads parsed Forms 3/4/5: who bought or sold, at what size, and whether a 10b5-1 plan was involved. Flags clustered open-market officer buying; treats plan sales as routine and never counts a fund or 10%-holder as an officer.
Aggregated insider activity in the past 180 days shows $3.4M of reported insider sales and $0 of reported insider open-market buys (net shares -11,640), per the parsed summary.
Form 4 · Elting Lauren B (VP - CAO and Corp Controller) · $0 code M · 2026-08-07Joseph M. Erlinger (President, McDonald's USA) executed multiple sales under a stated 10b5-1 plan: 5252 shares for $1.5M on 2026-06-10 (filing also shows a 5252-share $829k code M entry the same date referencing the plan), 2626 shares sold for $806k on 2026-04-10 (with a matching $414k code M entry that same date), and additional 333-share sales of $104k on 2026-03-23, $101k on 2026-04-23, and $93k on 2026-05-26 — each filing states a 10b5-1 plan.
Form 4 · Erlinger Joseph M. (President, McDonald's USA) · $829k code M · 2026-06-10Reads the implied-expectations math built from the company's own filings (the growth rate today's price would justify, and the multiples beside it) and argues whether the market's bar looks high or low for this business. Never turns the math into a target.
Trailing twelve‑month free cash flow (FCF) is $7,377,000,000 and trailing twelve‑month operating cash flow is $10,645,000,000 with cash used for capital expenditures of $3,268,000,000 (the arithmetic difference equals the reported FCF).
Valuation inputs · SEC XBRL + stored EOD closePrice/earnings (TTM) is 20.01 and enterprise value/EBITDA (TTM) is 16.13 as of the price date 2026-09-17.
Valuation inputs · SEC XBRL + stored EOD closeDebate and risk review
A bull and a bear contest the claims and the chair rules on each; the risk review stress-tests what survived.
A bull and a bear argue the analysts' claims across two rounds, then a chair rules on each one. Only what survives feeds the score. The argument is shown, not hidden, so you can judge the reasoning yourself.
The provided claims jointly support a favorable operational and cash-generation read: sequential revenue, operating income, net income and diluted EPS all rose meaningfully between Q1 and Q2 2026 (fundamentals-0, fundamentals-5, fundamentals-1, fundamentals-2), while the company materially stepped up share repurchases and reduced diluted and reported share counts (fundamentals-4, fundamentals-3). Trailing twelve‑month cash-flow metrics show substantial operating cash flow and free cash flow (valuation-0) and EBITDA is large relative to depreciation (valuation-4), supporting liquidity to fund dividends and capital deployment; the board raised the quarterly dividend and the company maintains a 50‑year increase streak (news-0). A predominantly franchised model with ~95% franchised restaurants (filings-0) helps explain margin resilience and cash flow conversion, and large institutional ownership and ETF inclusion indicate continued investor interest and capacity (ownership-0, ownership-1, ownership-2).
Chair's verdict, claim by claim
Fragility · computed, not argued
balanced0.32
38 surviving claims rest on 19 distinct sources; the heaviest analyst carries 24% of them, and 99% of what the desk raised survived the debate.
The evidence set rests on a moderate breadth of sources but a meaningful share of surviving claims trace back to a small number of contributors, so individual analyst perspectives carry noticeable weight. The very high debate survival rate suggests the desk’s checks preserved most assertions, but source concentration and a single analyst supplying nearly a quarter of claims reduce how much confidence one should place in any single, novel inference from this read. Treat these findings as informational signals that are relatively robust at the claim level but somewhat fragile to shifts in a few key sources or analyst inputs.
Peer context · computed, not argued
12-1 momentum ranks 4th of 5 in Restaurants (as of 2026-09-17).
90-day volatility ranks 5th of 5 in Restaurants (as of 2026-09-17).
dividend yield ranks 1st of 5 in Restaurants (as of 2026-09-17).
Disconfirming evidence · base rates · falsifiers
Context
Outside consensus, and where this name already sits in your own portfolio.
Third-party consensus shown for context. It never enters Moneyta sentiment. When the two diverge, the debate above is where the why lives.
What this was built from
Every figure on this page traces to one of these. The desk reads only what is listed here (no outside knowledge, no browsing), and each card shows who read it and what it contributed to the score.
9 filings· 2 cited
SEC XBRL filings
Quarterly figures as filed with the SEC, read straight from EDGAR's structured data, not retyped or estimated.
Read by Mercer+0.8 to the score
9 documents· 2 cited
SEC filing documents
The filings themselves, including the year-over-year comparison of Item 1A risk factors.
Read by Oakes+1.0 to the score
1 signal set
Moneyta signal set
Computed from our own end-of-day price history and ranked against the whole research universe. No AI involved.
Read by Nash−0.2 to the score
3 holdings records· 1 cited
Fund holdings
Which funds hold this name and at what weight, plus insider Form 4 filings.
Read by Ellis+0.8 to the score
8 headlines· 2 cited
News coverage
Recent headlines about this company, rating chatter excluded and nothing published after the report date.
Read by Yatesnothing survived
7 filings· 2 cited
Insider filings
Parsed Forms 3/4/5 from EDGAR: named insiders, share counts, prices, and 10b5-1 plan state, with stated and inferred flags kept apart.
Read by Talbot−0.7 to the score
1 computation
Valuation inputs
TTM cash-flow figures from the company's own XBRL filings, priced with the stored closing price. Implied growth and multiples only; no fair-value dollar figure reaches the desk, by design.
Read by Archercontext only
1 record· 0 cited
Company profile
Sector, industry and company details.
1 record· 0 cited
Analyst consensus
Third-party consensus, shown for context only; it never enters Moneyta sentiment.
Read means we pulled and handed it to an analyst; cited means a claim on this page points at it. Reading twelve quarters to state one trend is normal; the gap is shown rather than hidden.
Written by AI, checked against sources
The analysts, the bull–bear debate and the editor's note are AI agents reading only the evidence listed on this page. They can misread a filing or a headline, which is why every claim cites a source you can open and check yourself. The sentiment score is arithmetic over the claims that survived the debate, not a language model's opinion.
Educational analysis of published data. Moneyta does not give investment advice or make recommendations. Past patterns do not indicate future results.
The full terminal on MCD Gold
Who holds it, who's buying, what the Street thinks: live behind the lock, updated as filings land.
Institutional holders
Net institutional flow, Q/Q
Largest holder position
Insider buys, 90 days
Clustered insider value
Street target range
The real figures are for members. Educational analysis, not advice.
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