McDonald's (MCD) official guidance

As part of this ongoing work across both the U.S. and international markets, we expect incremental company-owned restaurant divestitures, some of which occurred in the second quarter, to continue in 2026 and beyond.

Based on current exchange rates, we expect foreign currency to be a full-year tailwind to 2026 EPS, totaling in the range of $0.20-$0.30.

part of the assumptions that went into the guidance that we issued at the beginning of the year was obviously commodity inflation from a food and paper perspective, which in the U.S., we expect to be in the low to mid-single digit range and in IOM mid-single digits.

part of the assumptions that went into the guidance that we issued at the beginning of the year was obviously commodity inflation from a food and paper perspective, which in the U.S., we expect to be in the low to mid-single digit range and in IOM mid-single digits.

If you look at May and June, our expectation is that we should in our major markets be gaining share.

I think overall, we still feel confident in our ability to kinda get to about 50,000 restaurants by the end of 2027.

We remain on track to open approximately 1,000 new restaurants in China this year.

For IDL, comp sales growth in Q2, we expect to decelerate from the 3.4% in Q1, primarily reflecting a little bit what Chris was talking about earlier, just the volatility, obviously, of conditions in the Middle East and some markets in Asia, but also to accelerate slightly on a two-year basis.

We expect in Q2 that we're going to see a meaningful deceleration from the 3.9% that we put up in both segments in Q1 from a comp perspective, which reflects the soft performance in April.

We expect in Q2 that we're going to see a meaningful deceleration from the 3.9% that we put up in both segments in Q1 from a comp perspective, which reflects the soft performance in April.

For IDL, comp sales growth in Q2, we expect to decelerate from the 3.4% in Q1, primarily reflecting a little bit what Chris was talking about earlier, just the volatility, obviously, of conditions in the Middle East and some markets in Asia, but also to accelerate slightly on a two-year basis.

We also expect for each segment, comp sales to accelerate on a two-year stack basis.

We expect our capital expenditure spend to be between $3.7 billion-$3.9 billion this year, with the majority invested in new unit openings across our US and IOM segments.

Below the operating line, we expect interest expense to increase between 4%-6% from the prior year, primarily due to higher average interest rates, and expect our full year effective tax rate to be between 21% and 23%, with some volatility quarter to quarter that may cause the quarterly rate to be outside the annual range.

We're targeting G&A as a percentage of system-wide sales for the full year to be about 2.2%, reflecting our ongoing investments in our strategic growth drivers, like technology and digital, and global business services or GBS.

Below the operating line, we expect interest expense to increase between 4%-6% from the prior year, primarily due to higher average interest rates, and expect our full year effective tax rate to be between 21% and 23%, with some volatility quarter to quarter that may cause the quarterly rate to be outside the annual range.

In 2025, we almost doubled those sales, with nearly 210 million ninety-day active users across 70 markets, and we're on track to reach our target of 250 million ninety-day active users by the end of 2027.

We grew our chicken category share across our top 10 markets in 2025 and believe we're well on our way to increasing our share by at least 1 percentage point by the end of 2026 versus where we were in December 2023.

Lastly, we're targeting our net income to free cash flow conversion rate in 2026 to be in the low- to mid-80% range, which is in line with the 84% in 2025.

We expect our operating margin to be in the mid- to high-40% range and to expand from our 46.9% adjusted operating margin in 2025.

Overall, we anticipate about 4.5% unit growth from the approximately 2,100 net restaurant additions in 2026.

Overall, we anticipate about 4.5% unit growth from the approximately 2,100 net restaurant additions in 2026.

We expect to open more than 1,800 restaurants in our IDL segment, including about 1,000 in China.

In 2026, we're targeting approximately 2,600 gross restaurant openings, with about 750 of these in our US and IOM segments.

Our pace of new store openings will accelerate further as we target approximately 2,600 gross restaurant openings in 2026, which keeps us on track to achieve 50,000 restaurants by the end of 2027.

And then IDL, again, expect a sequential decrease from the 4.5% that we had in Q4.

Again, we believe we've got kind of strong and consistent underlying momentum, but we do expect Q1 to decelerate sequentially from the 5.2% that we had in IOM in Q4.

So I think we've got a good strategy on that, but certainly, the expectation for the balance of 2026 is that the low-income consumer is gonna continue to be under pressure, and there should be, you know, call it mid-single-digit growth available with the upper-income consumer. How do we make sure we're winning with both of them?

I think we would say we expect Q1 comp sales growth to decelerate sequentially from the 6.8% in Q4 that you saw.

We expect that net restaurant expansion in 2026, along with restaurants we opened in 2025, will contribute approximately 2.5% to system-wide sales growth.

We're projecting our full-year effective tax rate to be between 21% and 22%, which is tightening the range from our previous estimate.

We currently estimate that the impact of foreign currency translation on adjusted earnings per share for the fourth quarter will be about a $0.05 tailwind based on current exchange rates.

We expect that support in Q4 to be about $75 million.

Because the nature of that support is different, we expect that to be significantly less in Q1 than what we're providing in Q4 this year.

I think on food and paper in the U.S., we've said this year we expect kind of our basket of food and paper inflation to be in the low to mid-single-digit range for the year.

We're investing in the future, including adding 1,000 new restaurants this year.

I think we believe that our Q4 comp sales in each of our international segments may decelerate sequentially, but that's largely a reflection of the lapping of more difficult prior-year comparisons.

I think we believe that our Q4 comp sales in each of our international segments may decelerate sequentially, but that's largely a reflection of the lapping of more difficult prior-year comparisons.

We actually expect our comp sales growth will accelerate in Q4 versus the 2.4% that we delivered in Q3.

We expect, I think, our comp sales growth on a two-year stack base will accelerate modestly from the 2.7% that we saw in Q3 on a two-year basis.