McDonald's Corporation (NYSE:MCD) Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call July 29, 2024 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Mike Cieplak - Investor Relations
Chris Kempczinski - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Joe Erlinger - President, McDonald's USA
Ian Borden - Executive Vice President, Global Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

John Ivankoe - JPMorgan
David Palmer - Evercore ISI
Brian Harbour - Morgan Stanley
David Tarantino - Robert W. Baird
Sara Senatore - Bank of America
Dennis Geiger - UBS
Jeffrey Bernstein - Barclays
Eric Gonzalez - KeyBanc Capital Markets
Lauren Silberman - Deutsche Bank
Brian Bittner - Oppenheimer
Jake Bartlett - Truist Securities
Jon Tower - Citi

Operator

Hello and welcome to McDonald's Second Quarter 2024 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. [Operator Instructions]

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

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. With me on the call today are Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Chris Kempczinski; Chief Financial Officer, Ian Borden, and President of McDonald's USA, Joe Erlinger. 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. Please limit yourself to one question and then re-enter the queue for any additional 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

Thanks, Mike, and good morning, everyone. Beginning last year, we warned of a more discriminating consumer, particularly among lower-income households. And as this year progressed, those pressures have deepened and broadened. The QSR sector has meaningfully slowed in the majority of our markets and industry traffic has declined in major markets like the US, Australia Canada and Germany.

In several markets, we also continue to be negatively impacted by the war in the Middle East. These external pressures certainly weighed on our performance for the quarter, with declines in comparable sales globally and across each of our segments. But there were also factors within our control that contributed to our underperformance, most notably our value execution.