Peter Saleh, senior research analyst covering restaurants at Telsey Advisory Group, discussed McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) lower-than-desired earnings, and their claim that a wobbly economy is causing their costumers to pinch pennies, on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Monday morning.
McDonald’s EPS came in at $1.38 for Q2, missing analysts’ estimates of $1.40 by $0.02 cents, and revenue for the quarter came in under analysts’ estimates of $7.09 billion at $7.08 billion.
“We’re seeing kind of broad-based weakness in the restaurant space despite the fact that we’ve had some job growth that really just hasn’t translated quite yet,” said Saleh.
Related: UPDATE: McDonald’s Posts Downbeat Q2 Profit
Saleh said that it’s the same globally, with growth going slow industry-wide, “if at all,” but he also included that McDonald’s outpaced their competitors in terms of unit volumes.
When addressing McDonald’s increasing prices, as well as their product standard, Saleh said that most restaurants in their market raise prices yearly by “somewhere between two and three percent just to offset commodity inflation.”
“The good news is commodity prices have been coming down, that should translate into some marginal relief in 2014, and, you know, the push back of [health care reform] by a year, hopefully, that can give them benefit as well,” said Saleh.
Saleh believe that certain promotional contests, like moving the Monopoly prize-game from the fall to the summer this year, would have benefited the stock before the Q2 results were released.
“I’m interested to see what they’ve run in the fall in replacement,” said Saleh.
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