McDonald's Corporation (MCD) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2023

April 25, 2023 8:30 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Hello, and welcome to McDonald's First Quarter 2023 Investor Conference Call. At the request of McDonald's Corporation, this conference is being recorded. Following today's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session for investors.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Mike Cieplak, Investor Relations Officer for McDonald's Corporation. Mr. Cieplak, you may begin.

Mike Cieplak - Investor Relations

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. With me on the call today are President and Chief Executive Officer, Chris Kempczinski; and Chief Financial Officer, Ian Borden.

As a reminder, the forward-looking statements in our earnings release and 8-K filing also apply to our comments on the call today. Both of those documents are available on our website as are reconciliations of any non-GAAP financial measures mentioned on today's call, along with their corresponding GAAP measures.

Following prepared remarks this morning, we will take your questions. Today's conference call is being webcast and is also being recorded for replay via our website.

And now I'll turn it over to Chris.

Chris Kempczinski - President and CEO

Thanks Mike and good morning, everyone. You know ordinarily in a global business like ours, for a quarterly earnings call, you're prepping to memorize all the different sets of numbers. What's notable about this earnings call is McDonald's consistency, consistency in the strength of our numbers, consistency in the powerful drivers of our business, and consistency in the excitement that exists across the system about the opportunities that lie in front of us. Let's start with the numbers. At the top line, you only need to know one number, 12.6%.

US comparable sales, 12.6%, IOM comparable sales, 12.6%, IDL comparable sales, 12.6%, and global comparable sales, you guessed it, 12.6%. These results reflects strong consumer demand for McDonald's that we are seeing around the world despite a challenging operating environment and historically low consumer sentiment in many markets.

It is clear that our Accelerating the Arches strategy is working and we are operating from a position of strength. Each of our MCD growth pillars is contributing to our strong balanced performance and importantly, what we've talked in the past about the noise associated with the guest count metric, it is encouraging to see guest counts grow in every segment.

In just the last few months, I have visited with our McDonald's teams in France, Japan, the Philippines, UAE and Israel. It's been inspiring to see the dedication of all three legs of the stool. Our teams are proud of what they've accomplished and are performing at a high level. For me, it's been energizing to hear their ideas for how we can do even more to take care of our customers. That's what I love most about the McDonald's system, our restless ambition. While we feel good about our current strategy, our success is driving us to do even more to lay a foundation for the future.