Quick and cheap are two of the first words that come to mind when thinking about fast food. But some McDonald’s customers have criticized the restaurant giant over recent higher menu prices, prompting the CEO to address the issue of affordability during the company’s latest earning call.

McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski spoke to analysts on Monday morning about the fast food chain’s mixed fourth quarter results, as well as the global market impact with ongoing conflict in the Middle East and Muslim communities, and ultimately about how to re-engage lower-income customers.

After the earnings results were posted, McDonald’s shares tumbled nearly 4% on the New York Stock Exchange by closing.

While global same-store sales – meaning stores that have been open for at least a year – were up 3.4%, short of Wall Street’s expectations, Kempczinski said those earnings results were impacted by the war in the Middle East.

Domestically however, same-store sales were up by 4.3%, which was more closely aligned to previous quarters and company expectations for what the CEO called “normalized growth.”

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      In the short term. In the long term, I believe they align. Too bad the people running most companies tend to focus more on the short term than the long.

        • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yeah and even the laws consider short term trades as something held for only a year. It should be longer than that.

          Though even if the interests align and investors seek to earn money in good faith from building trust with their consumers, the investment class is still leaching off the labor of the workers.

  • paultimate14@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Crazy how just a few decades ago, announcing a plan to lower prices and sell to more customers would have been seen as desirable.

    Shows his the relationship has been changed. It’s no longer corporation vs corporation competing in a market for consumers.

    • Phegan@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s corporations against consumers, but for basic needs. Oh sorry you have to eat, that will. Be your life savings

  • Fapper_McFapper@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The last time my son and I ate at McDonalds it cost me 21 dollars.

    Here’s what we ordered.

    1 Double cheeseburger meal with a shake. 1 Big Mac meal.

    21 fucking dollars for cardboard flavored food with cheese. Fuck all that noise. And a big fuck you to every single McDonald’s share holder.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “Affordability”? No, they just noticed that people can’t or won’t pay overpriced junk food, thus leading to dropping profits in the long run.

  • lobotomo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “affordability” or as I like to call it “not gouging the fuck out of people to exploit an inflationary crisis”

    • experbia@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      also known as criminal negligence and failure to sufficiently maximize shareholder revenue! these criminals ought to be locked up for even insinuating that prices could go down. don’t they know that whole industries’ worth of valuable owner-class shareholders’ beach homes and yacht upkeeps are propped up on the mass price fixing scheme fully legal free market economy we have? the only rule is to never betray your shareholders, not even for a quarter! if the orphans need to be crushed for a better YoY then, by god, not feeding them in to the machine feet-first yourself makes you a criminal and a danger to our whole society and you damn well know it!

  • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    The stock market is broken, and is only getting more so with new AI trading models being coupled with existing High Frequency Trading.

    The goal of this, is basically to skim a veeery small percentage of the price delta between buyers and sellers as a stock/bond/instrument moves up or down. The fund might make a fraction of a penny on each trade, but if they push thousands of trades on each stock, each time the price moves, the money flows in

    And because the computer is making 100% of the buy/sell orders without human intervention, it uses these kind of low-effort “business journalism” reformatted corpo press releases to make buying decisions according to human defined limits

    So it doesn’t necessarily matter if the company is actually doing well, or has a solid growth plan, wants a stock split, etc because it’s a lot of computers trading thousands of times each second, all trying to out-scalp each other based on perception

    You can’t play that game, let alone win. Value investing and holding long is the only way left for regular people

    • IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Proof that if you can make your crimes convoluted and opaque enough, people won’t care. That money is coming from somewhere, they didn’t earn it, and they’re not entitled to it.