McDonald’s is set to report its fourth-quarter earnings before the bell on Monday.
Here is what Wall Street analysts surveyed by LSEG are expecting the company to report:
- Earnings per share: $2.83 expected
- Revenue: $6.44 billion expected
The fast-food giant had a rocky quarter. Sales were picking up again after a summer slowdown, due to its value meal and the permanent addition of its Chicken Big Mac in early October.
But several weeks into the quarter, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention linked a fatal E. coli outbreak to its Quarter Pounder burgers. McDonald’s switched suppliers for its slivered onions, the ingredient fingered as the likely culprit for the outbreak. In early December, the CDC declared the outbreak officially over.
However, in the days following the news of the outbreak, traffic to McDonald’s U.S. restaurants fell steeply, particularly in the states affected. Customers have slowly been returning. Still, analysts are expecting the company’s U.S. same-store sales to fall 0.6% in the quarter, according to StreetAccount estimates.
McDonald’s overall same-store sales are projected to have fallen 1%, which would mark the third straight quarter of same-store sales declines for the burger chain.
Shares of McDonald’s have risen just 2% over the past year, raising its market cap to roughly $211 billion.