麥當勞 (MCD) 2002 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Hello and welcome to the McDonald's January 23, 2003 investor conference call.

At this time I'd like to turn the conference over to Ms. Mary Healey, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Ms. Healy, you may begin.

Thank you.

Hello, everyone and welcome.

I'm joined on today's call by McDonald's Chairman and CEO, James Cantalupo and our CFO Matthew Paull.

For your information, this conference is being webcast live and being recorded for replay on the web.

Also, the language in this morning's earnings release regarding forward-looking statements applies to our comments on the call.

Our press release can be found at the website investor.McDonalds.com.

As most of you have had an opportunity to review our press release by now, we'll focus our remarks on providing additional perspective.

Matt will review the charges reflected in our fourth quarter results and discuss our capital allocation plans, and I will provide an overview of our business in U.S. and Europe.

But first, Jim will make a few introductory comments.

Thank you, Mary.

I think you'll recall that from our conference call last week I hadn't planned on participating in this call.

But I did change my schedule because I wanted to be a part of what's going on here this morning.

Because I know you're interested in what our plans are and where we're going.

As CEO, I know I'm responsible for the performance of the company.

And I recognize that in this day and age, there's no such thing as the CEO honeymoon, if there was, I probably set the record for the shortest one.

In any event I wanted to reach out to you last week because it was early in the game and I wanted to give you an idea where my head was going.

I know there weren't a lot of details.

But I hope as we move forward you'll get those.

Today Mary and Mats are going to take you through the nuts and bolts of last year, I wanted to emphasize a couple point that is came out of last week's meeting that needed further clarification or comment.

The first was really redefining what growth means for McDonald's.

I think you saw in our press release that I said that 10 to 15% range we had talked about before was unrealistic.

On the near term over the next 12 to 18 months, we're going to concentrate on foundation of our business.

And that's really reversing the sales trend and margin trend declines.

And then longer term through innovation, we're going to add on to our growth picture over the long term.

And this is, you know, the main reason I talked about trying to put that all under one individual, so that we can really have a good, innovative, long-term growth plan.

What does this end up meaning in terms of long-term growth rate?

Well, I think last week somebody asked a question of whether we're sticking to our 10 to 15% growth rate and whether it was reasonable to pursue that, or whether we should become a cash cow?

Well, my answer is, that we're not going to be a cash cow or a gazelle.

What We're going to do is we're going to likely end up somewhere in the middle of that range.

Months ahead we're going to be finalizing our business plan, and I hope to be able to define that range for you sometime early this year.

One thing is pretty obvious, though, that chasing an unrealistic growth target won't get us anywhere.

We're going to seek reasonable growth, and growth from a strict focus on our restaurants and our customers.

Second point that I wanted to underscore was achieving growth.

Near term would have been growth building sales at our existing restaurants and prudently adding new restaurants.

We're going to focus in our 30,000 existing restaurants, eliminate distractions that get in the way of restaurant focus, and rebuild our the foundation of our business.

Then we're going to innovate to achieve even more growth over the long term.

McDonald's is in business to attract as many customers as possible, as often as possible.

And that is what growth means to us.

I'm absolutely confident that we're going to get that growth.

Finally, I wanted to comment on how we're going to finance that growth.

Matt's going to discuss our capital spending in just a minute.

But I want to introduce one critical point.

We don't intend to throw capital at problems.

And while we're being very selective about where and how many restaurants we will open, again, we will only invest capital where it makes sense.

It's absolutely the guiding principal on how we're going to conduct business and why you can expect progress.

Let me turn the phone over to -- I'm going to stay around for the Q & A period also, but I want to turn the phone over to Matt now for more details.

Thanks, Jim.

While McDonald's systemwide sales topped 41 1/2 billion, 2002 proved to be a challenging year for McDonald's.

I know you all know that.

In the 4th quarter, systemwide sales increased 6%.

However, margin pressure continued in most business segments, primarily due to negative comp sales, higher labor costs to company owned restaurants, and higher financial support to franchises.

Also in the quarter, we recorded pretaxed charges totaling $810 million or 52 cents per share.

These charges were associated with significant actions taken to focus our efforts on markets and restaurants with the greatest profit potential.

Without these items, we would have reported earnings per share of 25 cents.

On an after-tax basis, the future cash outlay is approximately $100 million.

We have abandoned work on a long-term McDonald's project and decided to close additional restaurants.

These actions are consistent with our strategy of devoting resources and capital to a very few key items that provide the best near-term opportunities and of avoiding initiatives to distract from restaurant level execution.

The key components of the charges are as follows: First, we recorded about $200 million of charges in conjunction with market restructuring and closings.

These charges largely consist of asset writedowns and exit costs.

We are in the process of restructuring operations in Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, and Jamaica by transferring ownership to developmental licensees.

This is a business structure that we've successfully employed in more than 25 international markets.

In total, 170 restaurants will be affected by this change of ownership.

Also, we are ceasing operations in Bolivia, Paraguay, and Trinidad, where we operated a total of 23 restaurants.

We also recorded charges of $63 million primarily related to the elimination of approximately 600 positions and the consolidation of home office facilities.

The positions were about evenly split between the U.S. and international and include job losses associated with the terminated technology project.

Fourth quarter results also reflect charges of $292 million, related to management decisions to close, 719 under-performing restaurants and $67 million in asset impairment charges for certain existing restaurants.

I'd like to provide some texture regarding these closings.

About 200 were closed in 2002.

The remainder will be closed in 2003.

Approximately 70% are traditional McDonald's restaurants, and 25% are satellite restaurants.

Satellites are lower costs, lower volume units.

The remaining 5% are Donato's restaurants.

The 719 closings are spread evenly across all markets.

While we routinely close about 350 to 400 restaurants each year, due to relocations, lease expirations, et cetera, we further tighten our strings and accelerated our decision making process and ensure that we are focused on running the restaurants with the greatest potential.

Most of the restaurants associated with the charge have negative cashflows and/or very low annual sales volumes.

The vast majority of traditional restaurants being closed carry unit volumes well below $1 million.

In many cases they would have required significant capital investment over the next several years to remain financially viable and to reflect well on our brand.

In addition to these charges, we took a write-off of $170 million due to the termination of a technology project which was projected to deliver long-term benefits.

Yet with an anticipated systemwide cost in excess of $1 billion over several years, we determined it was not the best use of capital in the current environment.

Now I'd like to turn to 2003.

We are embarking on a turnaround; we are making many changes, changes that we believe will generate positive momentum in our business.

Yet our outlook for 2003 remains cautious, especially for the first half of the year as we need to see improved performance in our key markets.

However, we've decided not to give EPS guidance for the year and quarters, and said we are providing a perspective on key line items impacting earnings per share.

We will update you on our business results and initiatives as the year progresses.

Of course we will update you on business results as the year progresses

Let me quickly comment on two items.

First, the G & A savings from the long-term technology project is reflected in our expectation for essentially flat G & A for the year.

Second, In December we shifted a larger portion of our debt into fixed rate.

We viewed historically low interest rates, an opportunity to lock in favorable rates for the next 5 to 6 years.

This will reduce earnings volatility due to interest rates fluctuation during that period.

Now I'll turn the call over to Mary.

I'll discuss four key markets, the U.S., France, Germany and the U.K. let's start with the U.S.

Despite a positive start in 2002, growth overall in industry business declined in the second half of the year.

These trends reflect the lackluster economy and declining consumer confidence.

Our sales increased 1% for the year and 2% for the 4th quarter.

However, U.S. sales declined 1 1/2% for the year and 1.4% for the quarter.

Negative costs as well as higher labor costs hurt company operating margins, while negative costs increased financial assistance to the franchisees impacted our U.S. franchise margins.

Our U.S. business initiatives are all about improving results by giving customers what they want most.

And in the current economic environment, all retail businesses are finding that consumers are spending carefully and looking for good deals.

McDonald's was founded on value, and customers look to us for predictable every day afford an offerings, although we didn't invent dollar pricing, our dollar menu is one way in which we are meeting that demand.

It has also allowed us to advertise an international message that's getting customer's attention.

Awareness of our dollar menu is tracking historically higher than other averages for other McDonald's value programs.

Customers like the price and appreciate the variety.

However, initial results indicate that incremental transactions and add-on purchases have been more than offset by a shift in product mix to dollar offerings, and the use of the dollar menu for single items rather than meal purchases.

We're not pleased with these results.

We'll continue to evaluate what's working and what needs to be refined on our dollar menu.

And while we're committed to value, we're not married to any single product on the dollar menu.

With respect to the Big and Tasty, it has accomplished the dual objective of encouraging customers to try the dollar menu and reintroducing them to this great tasting lettuce and tomato sandwich.

As we speak, our U.S. leadership team is currently working with our owner/operator leadership to assess all of the data and determine the next step that makes the dollar menu even more effective for our owner/operators and restaurants while building on its customer appeal.

Keep in mind that the dollar menu is only one part of our customer-focused initiatives in the U.S.

On the product front, we will roll out our new line of premium salads towards the end March just in time for the arrival of spring.

Customers will be able to choose from Caesar, California cobb and Bacon Ranch salads topped with cheese their choice of warm crispy or grilled chicken breast meat.

Then in June we'll create more food excitement at breakfast with the national introduction of McGriddle sandwiches.

This tasty variety of sandwiches includes favorite breakfast foods such as sausage, egg, and cheese sandwiched between two hot cakes with the taste of maple syrup baked right in.

I know I'm making you hungry.

We'll also continue to focus on improving operations, and we know it's critical to get the basics right for every customer every time.

So we continue to monitor our restaurant's performance from the customers' perspective.

Since our mystery shop program began in February 2002, independent evaluaters conducted more than 183,000 restaurant visits.

And our scores demonstrate we're making progress.

But we're not satisfied.

One encouraging note is that of everything of that we're monitoring, our service scores at the important peak lunch hour show the greatest overall improvement with the vast component of service up nearly 5 points in this department.

We attribute this increase to our 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. peak staffing initiative which is all about maintaining the proper staffing to maximize sales during peak periods.

With have also had success at company-operated restaurants with extended hours during 2002, with evening hour comparable sales at these restaurants showing at double-digit increase for the year.

The results of these various initiatives demonstrate that we're beginning to make a positive difference in our customer's experience, yet we have a lot more to do.

We need to continue to focus on things that matter most to customers, and we must deal with owner/operators and managers of poor performing restaurants in an expedient manner.

We will continue to work with them to improve restaurant operations.

And when and where warranted, we'll encourage them to leave the system.

On that note, 68 under-performing operators representing more than 160 restaurants, left the system in 2002.

More importantly, we plan to grow with only the very best of our operators.

Now, I'd like to turn to Europe.

In Germany, rising unemployment, declining consumer confidence and new taxes have taken their toll on our results.

The weak economy has manifested itself in declining retail sales and the shrinking eating out market.

Our sales reflected the difficult operating environment.

And we slightly increased our share of the informal eating out market.

Comparable sales were high single digit negatives during the quarter against positive comps a year ago, and the pressure continued primarily due to wage decreases and negative comp.

To continue to attract customers, we are reinforcing the affordable of our menu.

In November, we began featuring hamburger Happy Meals at an attractive Euro $2.99 price point.

We're also highlighting affordability in our advertising and in-store merchandising, and we're currently featuring a game tied to extra value meal purchases.

In addition, for a limited time, the McChicken and FishMac extra value meals are being offered in Euro for $3.99.

Moving on to the U.K., comparable sales in this market were mid single digit negative for the quarter against solidly positive comps a year ago.

Higher wages and insurance costs, and negative comps put pressure on margins.

The growth in the informal eating out sector in the U.K. slowed significantly during the first half of last year.

Yet we increased our share of the QSR segment, despite the fierce competition.

We attribute this to our customer focus and our on-going commitment to increasing our relevance among our U.K. consumers One initiative designed to achieve this goal involves re-energizing our Happy Meal program.

We are planning to expand a variety of our Happy Meal entrees and beverage offerings, with products such as chicken filets and a no-sugar-added fruit drink.

And for a small extra charge, customers will be able to add a dessert such as a fruit cup to their Happy Meal purchase.

What better way to increase the appeal of Happy Meals among moms as well as the kids?

In France, our business outpaced the spending experienced by the informal eating out market during the first nine months of the year.

Comparable sales continue to track positive throughout the fourth quarter against a solid quarter last year and margins improved.

For the year, France recorded mid-single digit positive comparable sales.

We continue to focus on making McDonald's a destination in France with our upgraded decor and relevant foods such as the , with the addition of breakfast croissant sant sandwiches in Nouveau 280 sandwich and the addition of breakfast croissants sandwiches at some locations.

On that note, I'd like to turn the call back to Matt.

Thanks, Mary.

Now I'll review capital allocation.

We announced in October the capital expenditures would be about $1.9 billion in 2003.

Yet as we said in today's press release, we intend to review the returns on these investments to determine if spending should be reduced.

This applies to the discussion of capital spending on both new and existing restaurants that follows.

While the current plan for capital expenditures is essentially flat with last year, our allocation of those dollars is intended to be very different.

Consistent with our intense focus on improving the existing business, we plan to increase spending on existing restaurants, and we will concentrate those efforts only on restaurants with strong operations that will benefit most from the enhancements.

More importantly, we will closely monitor our reinvestment spending.

For example, we have identified 200 U.S. restaurants for remodeling in the first quarter.

We plan to conduct research before and after these remodels to measure the sales performance of these restaurants relative to their markets.

Let me assure you that if we don't see a significant sales improvement we will rethink our strategy.

Our franchisees will provide an additional check and balance in this matter.

Clearly they will not support these reinvestments if they do not realize the sales benefits for doing so as they are effectively financially responsible for 70% of the investments.

With the 400 traditional restaurant closings we expect for 2003, our plans currently reflect the addition of 450 traditional McDonald's restaurants.

We also plan to add about 180 satellite and about 150 partner brand restaurants in 2003.

Our partner brand additions will primarily be Chipolte restaurants, which is continue to post strong comparable sales and unit economic sales.

Now, I'd like to make four important points about our 2003 openings.

First, we plan to add about 40% fewer net traditional McDonald's restaurants this year than in 2002.

Second, the openings will be concentrated in a few strategic markets; only nine countries will add more than ten traditional restaurants.

Third, we've significantly reduced capital allocated to Asia Pacific and Latin America, as the returns in these two segments have been the most dramatically affected by deteriorating economies.

Fourth, our focus on returns is intense; if we have any doubt at all in the ability of these openings to build shareholder value, we will make adjustments.

That concludes our prepared remarks.

Thanks, Matt.

Now we'd like to open up the call for your questions.

Press star one if you have a question, and press star two if you want to remove yourself from the queue.

We ask that you try to limit yourself to one question so we can get to as many people as possible.

Our first question from Corely Witter at Goldman Sachs.

Our first question from Corely Witter?

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, go ahead, Corely.

Okay.

I don't know if the first part was heard, I may have been on mute.

The question was on the U.S., and on how many under-performing restaurants you have identified in the U.S.

You mentioned a few have left the system already; how many are still under-performing and how do you encourage them to leave the system?

Can you buy back the restaurants and sell them off to your better performing franchisees?

And then a clarification on the guidance, an easy questions here.

The SG&A would be flat, did you mean in dollars or as a percent of revenues?

And then if you could run through the net openings by region for '03, that would be helpful.

Let me take the second question real quick, because that's an easy one.

We're saying flat in terms of dollars, not as a percent of revenues for SG&A through April '03.

Of course, that's excluding any current impact.

I think Matt may want to touch on your first question.

Corely, on the issue of how many under-performing stores are there in the U.S., you know, we don'thave an exact number.

We've gone through a process where we've shared mystery shop information with the operators, and they understand where they rank relative to stores in their regions.

And it's a way of putting pressure on the underperformers so that they understand we're not going to provide financial assistance, and we're not going to reinvest with them, we're not going to rewrite them unless things get a lot better.

They've qunintiled the U.S. stores.

But I don't want to say that any particular percentage is under-performing.

In terms of the way we turn those stores over, the first choice is always to improve them.

And by identifying how the store is doing, that's the first step towards seeing improvement.

If things don't improve, the ideal way for a store to turn over is by an operator-to-operator transaction, that's much better than us step in and buy and then spin the store out to somebody else.

And in the majority of cases where there's under-improvement that doesn't show improvement by identifying the issues, that's what will happen.

We may come back to your question on the openings.

I'm not sure if we have all the satellite's nutritional data together.

I'll take a look at that.

We have the next question from Howard Penny of SunTrust.

Thanks very much.

I applaud the Titan screens because I like Titan up, but that's not my question.

First, I still struggle with management's assessment with the problems you're facing and, really, the strategies to fix it.

Last week, I think Jim disagreed with the comparison that incremental investments and that does not include -- that did not increase incremental profits, and that conclusion points to the fact that new units are not the problem.

That operating existing units are really the problem.

But why is it that a new unit when it's opened is run differently than the existing units?

And why don't you still have the same issues at the front counter that you have with the system that's already open.

And I guess that kind of further goes along to when is an old unit a new unit?

When you look at your strategy of adding value or creating value for the customer by using the dollar menu and using price points to draw in the business, why is it in today's world that that still is a good strategy?

Because the costs are rising, your labor costs are rising, food costs -- you know, there is food inflation over time, yet you've continued to lower prices, and you can't bring the cost structure down quick enough to bring your margins up.

So part of your strategy is improving margins at the store level, yet you're bringing your prices down.

So I'm a little unsure as to, again, the conclusion, why new units are still performing well and how can you bring the margins up when you use lower prices as a way to drive the business?

Let me just make some comments about the new versus old, where the problems are.

In the context of what McDonald's biggest opportunity is, it's in improving operational levels on 30,000 restaurants.

Now I know it's hard to grasp that in terms of what's difference and new about that.

But I think in my 28 years I have never seen anything move the business forward than improving QSE&B and having more customers coming into our restaurant.

I think we have less customers coming into our restaurants because the experience we deliver -- because it has eroded a bit, and we need to get that back on track.

So with the opportunity down the road with 30,000 restaurants, focusing on the stores being the problem, I have a different perspective of where the opportunity is.

And that's not to say -- I get your point that new units become old units.

In terms of our new unit development, we're very focused on current value levels, achieving investment ratios.

When we develop restaurants, we tend to reflect the current reality of those developments -- the development picture.

So the new units generally come on at acceptable hurdle rates because they've made adjustments, whether it be in location volumes they've picked or in development costs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Where I come from, is we get -- we open any restaurant, we'd still have a problem.

That problem is in the 30,000 existing restaurants that need to have positive comparable sales and positive customer compliments.

This is going to be a long answer, because I think you kind of have to understand where I'm coming from on this.

I am one of the few people that have eaten our food regularly for 15 years, outside the United States where we have mostly the original system that McDonald's started with and inside the United States where we've gone through two different operating systems, changes in our grading process to no grading over that period of time.

Changes in our training systems, which are critical to keeping a million and a half million people up to date on how the McDonald's experience is executed.

So I personally have experienced the compromised food chains of all those changes we've made over those years.

I think it's possible to get back service standards.

And times have been compromised a bit with the latest system.

It can be fixed.

We're working on all those things that I have confidence, that when we get all that fixed over the longer term we will build our customer base back.

And that in itself will have a dramatic impact on our average volumes, et cetera.

That's where I'm coming from.

So maybe that puts a little more texture on the new versus old restaurant issue.

And Howard, this is Matt.

I will try to address your price point question.

This won't be a short answer, because it's a big issue.

I want to start out with what we like about the dollar menu, and specifically the Big and Tasty, and then what we don't like, because I think that will address your question.

Clearly, the big and tasty being on the dollar menu brought a lot of attention to the dollar menu.

It's brought in a lot of customers who might not have otherwise visited us.

It helped our value ratings, gave us more variety.

It let us introduce this lettuce, tomato hamburger to people who may not have sampled it before, and it allowed us to advertise nationally a value message to take advantage of the efficiency and power of national advertising, which is important for us given how big we are.

What we don't like about this, one of the issues that we have seen a small drop in sales in our signature sandwiches, things like the Big Mac and QPC.

We're not thrilled with that.

I have to go back to my own experiences as a consumer and let's take the discussion out of our industry for a second and talk about different value offerings to different kinds of customers in other industries.

If we were an automobile dealer, we would offer cars for consumers who wanted to spend different amounts of money.

In our business, we've always said to ourselves, we want to offer customers the tastes they crave at portion sizes they want at prices they can afford.

When I was coming out of school, I had not that much money in my pocket, I wanted to buy a Toyota car, I bought a Corolla.

When the time came I could afford a Camry or a Celica.

But the point in time came when I could afford a Celica, but if the Corolla offered as many features and as much power and pizzazz as the Celica, I would have never paid for the Celica.

One of our issues is that the differentiation in our customer's minds between the Big and Tasty and our signature sandwiches is not as great as the price difference, and we need to do something about that.

We're not pleased with the results, and so I think you'll see us making adjustments.

I think everyday value is important.

There's some segment of our customer population who are driven by value.

We need to appeal to those people without causing the people who love the Big Mac and the Quarter Pounder with Cheese to trade down.

Thanks, Howard.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Mark Chowanaowski at Soloman Smith Barney.

Hi.

There's two things I wanted to ask about.

First, just a clarification.

Does no share buy backs in the first half imply that you're going to do at least $500 million in the second half or is that imply that the prior $500 million saw that had been spoken about, that's no longer something we should look toward in 2003 as a whole?

The second question, just in terms of as I go through my model calculating what I think earnings per share should be in 2003, my understanding is that in a normalized cost environment, you need roughly 2% seams per sales to hold margins flat.

And I want to make sure that that is truly how you view the business.

Thanks.

Marc, it's Matt, I'll try to deal with both questions.

On the share buy back issue, we had said in the fall last year we were targeting to purchase $500 million worth of stock.

With the change in management, we're re-examining everything.

What we're saying is we're not committing to any number for 2003, but for the first half of the year we're not buying back shares.

We want to maintain financial strength and may have to pay down some debts.

The issue having to do with how much of a sales boost do we need to see to hold our margin.

The 2% number isn't a bad number, but I have to tell you you have to make an assumption of how you're getting your comp.

If the comp you're getting is 2% because you are the raising prices, you don't need a full 2% to cover the cost inflation.

If the comp you're getting is all coming from transactions, you probably need that 2% or a bit more.

Thank you.

It's a big guideline to use.

I just quickly, to answer your earlier question in terms of 2003 unit openings, roughly it will be broken down by 250 in the U.S. and again, this is traditional and sat light openings.

Europe is about 200, Asia Pacific -- these are all net numbers about 80.

Latin America is about 20 net and Canada is somewhere in the 70 range.

That gets you just over 600 net openings, including traditional and satellite for 2003.

I think we gave you that breakdown.

Thanks, our next question comes from Matthew DeFrisco at GKM.

Given that some of your competitors are shifting to a cobranding strategy.

Can you give us your argument why we wouldn't see more aggressive stints by yourself, to sort of make that position with something that could go well with McDonald's on a mature base to jumpstart sales even more or maybe even rejuvenate the brand.

And secondly, by opening up the new McDonald's stores -- continuing to open up new stores, should we assume that -- and Chipolte being the only other brand that you're looking to grow -- should we assume then that you're not seeing the returns yet to grow faster the Prep brand or Donato's Brand?

There's a lot of pieces to answering what you've raised.

The issue of cobranding, I'm not a big fan of cobranding in terms of diluting great brands like McDonald's by marrying brands in one facility;

I think it blurs the consumer offering.

So saying that, that's one perspective.

The partner brands that we have are part of a much broader strategy.

That over the next several months we intend to bring to life for everybody.

It involves not necessarily cobranding, but codevelopment and opportunities to possibly sell products in our restaurants that may have evolved out of these brands, et cetera, et cetera.

The signs of McDonald's making an acquisition real problematical.

Because there's very few things that really make a difference by themselves.

And even when we embarked upon the partner brands strategy several years ago, we had the intent of -- the intent was to add few points to our growth rate.

The majority of our growth is going to come from McDonald's.

It's a brand that I think can capture a broad segment of the meal market.

The idea I give, the U.S. service market is $400 billion and we capture $20 billion of it.

Out of that $380 billion that's left, there's a lot of meal allocation that could be under the arches, we're organizing ourselves to go after that.

So it's a complicated question, but I think I've touched on most of the key points of your question.

This is Matt.

I'll try to deal with the other part of your question, but I want to focus on the cobranding issue.

I know a lot of people on the call have tried Chipolte, and to me to bring this issue to life.

The way we think of it is, if the first time somebody experiences Chipolte, which is an 18-ounce gourmet burrito.

If the first time you ever experienced it, it was inside an existing McDonald's store where the person working the French Fries stepped around the counter to prepare your burrito, it would leave you with a different impression of the brand.

So, when you've got a brand that's growing, and hasn't formed a firm image in a consumer's mind, you need to be very careful about things like cobranding.

I think you'll see us keep our brands separate for a much longer period of time than some of our competitors.

I also want to remind you, some of our competitors just don't have the average unit volumes we do, and they have to combine brands to get the real estate.

With respect to the other partner brand, the reason we're not talking about expansion there is because we haven't seen a consistent unit level economic picture that we need to see before we can talk about rapid expansion.

I'm specifically talking about Donato's and Boston Market.

In Boston Market's case, we have a pretty good cash on cash return, but we bought most of those stores out of bankruptcy.

We got them at a great price.

It's when we build a new store it probably costs four to five times what we paid to bring each of those stores out of the bankruptcy, and you need to get higher cash flows before it makes sense to expand.

We targeted a specific unit volume we need to reach before it makes sense to expand more rapidly.

We're not quite there yet.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Our next question is from Janice Meyer at CSFB.

Hi.

Thanks.

On the capital expenditures for 2003.

I'm not clear about the one nine.

You're opening zero units year-over-year, your ending is lower, it sounds like you're going slower on the franchise investments, the remodeling.

So how again do we get to a flat Cap Ex versus last year?

And also your comments about analyzing the returns for that 1.9.

Do you think there are ways to lower the Cap Ex without lowering your growth expectations?

Janice, this is Matt.

I'll try to deal with both of those.

As I think you know and as I mentioned, a lot of the 1.9 is investment in existing restaurants, the biggest piece of which is the U.S. remodeling program.

And we have set aside a significant amount of money.

If that program delivers the way we hope and expect it will, we will spend that money, and if not, we won't.

So I think we have a lot of flexibility there.

There isn't a lot of tremendous amount of lead time in doing those remodels.

When we're building a traditional McDonald's store between when we identified the site and when we've captured our first year of sales and know how well it's done, there may be 18 months to 2 years of time.

That isn't the case with investments in existing restaurants.

One thing I would add, Janice, is that the technology spending that is built into the Cap Ex budget for next year was very modest.

I think it was maybe $18 million in terms 69 piece that would have fallen within that Cap Ex budget.

That doesn't make much of a difference, as Matt pointed out.

The fewer openings -- the fewer traditional openings is really upset by the money we set aside for a higher level of investment.

So this will evolve as we move forward.

Partner brands will probably open more stores in 2003.

Although one of the things we like about Chipolte is, in fact, that expenses are very low, compared to what we have to spend for McDonald's and/or Boston market.

So it doesn't have that much of an impact.

Janice this is Matt again, the other question you asked is, what effect does this have if we end up opening fewer units, because returns don't look as we expect.

What does that do to our 2003 growth rates?

Well, if we're talking about a new McDonald's store, we think that the growth rate for McDonald's in '03 is largely a function of our comp sales in '03 and the stores we opened at the end of '02.

If we decided to cut back on new unit openings, the big effects in our growth rate would be in '04.

Thanks.

Our next question comes from John Ivencon with J.P. Morgan.

Hi, thanks.

I think you brought up Happy Meals in the context of Germany and the U.K. in terms of some changes that may be coming.

Could you talk about any changes that may be happening to the United States that may be significant, is one question?

And a second one, I don't know if it's obvious, actually, thinking about it.

Would you care to talk about earnings for 2003 just in the context of being flat up or down relative to 2002 as you think about it?

Thanks.

Thanks, John.

I think in terms of any potential Happy Meal changes, it's important to remember, certainly, kids are one of our core equities and Happy Meals are a real important part of our business all over the world including in the United States.

And we are always looking for ways to innovate in that area and continue to insure that our Happy Meal program and our kids offering is the best out there.

And we feel like we've done a good job of that.

We're open to new ideas.

I'm sure our U.S. team will take a look at how these changes that the U.K. and Germany are putting in work for them and maybe assess those earnings.

I think there are some opportunities to refresh our Happy Meal program that we may be able to take advantage of.

But nothing specific to report on that at this time.

And John, this is Matt.

On the earnings issue, flat up or down, we asked -- we thought long and hard about this.

We know all of you have an important job to do and we want to help you in any way that we can.

We've learned over the last two years that we're not very good at predictions; we've decided certainly for 2003 to get out of the predicting business.

And so, we're going to focus our entire organization on the long term and try to take the focus off of the short term.

We're not going to give any specific guidance as to earnings per share numbers.

As I know you know, we're trying to give you everything we can on important components, but we're not going to try to predict comp sales, which is probably the only single item we haven't given you a lot of flavor for.

Thanks.

Thanks John.

Our next question comes from John Glass with CIBC.

Thanks.

Two questions, one on the capital allocation, is it your intention to pay down perhaps more debt in 2003 than you have in the past?

Can you give us a sense of if you're willing to accelerate that and by what magnitude we should expect?

And secondly, Jim, how do you look at market share versus sales and profitability?

Are you willing to give up market share in the U.S. to faster growing competitors if that means you could get your comps to increase or your profitability to increase?

And what I mean by that is are you willing to close stores and move capacity from the market in order to achieve profitability?

Thanks

John, this is Matt.

I'll take the first question about the debt level.

I think you asked in relation to what happened in 2002, what we looked like when we finished 2003?

First of all, for perspective, in 2002 our reported debt level went up significantly, but very little of that was actually cash borrowing.

I think that probably 80 to 90% of the increase in our debt levels was due to the increase in the value of the Euro and the pound.

And another chunk of it was due to FAS 133 writeups where you have to writeup certain derivatives.

And the additional cash borrowing was in the neighborhood of $100 to 120 million.

So in terms of what happened in '02, I think we expect the paydown debt levels somewhat -- we're focused on maintaining a strong credit rating and maintaining as much financial flexibility as possible.

Until we know what '03 looks like, we can't tell you what somewhat means, but I expect our debt levels to be reduced when we end 2003.

The market share question, you know, I think some of you have heard me say before that I don't talk about market share a lot, because I don't like to share anything.

I said that in terms of competitive positioning in the marketplace and being the leading player in the marketplace.

I think that's important.

Everything at all costs?

I hear the suggestions that you think that we should close thousands of stores.

And the fact of the matter is, I could not find thousands of stores that are losing money or losing cashflow that you would close that aren't creating some kind of value because there are some costs certainly.

We've got a return on.

Now -- so, that would be my answer.

I think convenience is important to our business, I think it's a theory that all the sales that were in the stores that closed went to other stores, which has been put forth by some that that would change my presumption.

That doesn't happen.

We have to be very, very careful about losing our convenience edge, losing our top line awareness edge by being out in the marketplace where people work, shop and live.

So that's real important to me.

So I don't see a scenario at least today that -- or a strategy that would involve closing a lot of stores and reducing market share and gaining a solution to what our challenges are.

I think the only thing I would add, is that as a regular course of business, we're always looking to upgrade our position in the marketplace, and to the extent we see opportunities to relocate restaurants and put us in a better position when neighborhood change or where demographics change.

We do that all the time, and we believe in that strategy and have had great results in doing that in terms of sales increases.

We will continue to do that.

We may close 400 stores or so a year, we talked about earlier.

We tightened our screens, we closed more stores in the U.S. as a result of those tighter screens, probably 150 more than what we had originally envisioned.

But as Jim said, we don't think there's a whole lot out there.

Thanks.

The next question comes from Joe Buckley at Bear Stearns.

Thank you.

Jim, first let me commend you for being on the call.

It's refreshing to find the CEO in the call two weeks in a row.

I hope you make it a regular practice.

Are we done with your questions?

That's no reflection to the job Mary and Matt do, but it's good to have the CEO on.

I'm curious on each expense.

You talk about paying down dept, but you fixed more debt, you have the currencies going against you on that line.

Should you expect spending up in '03 versus '02?

The second question, how are you going to monitor the Cap Ex as it's in progress.

Typically when you open a new store, you get a honeymoon effect, or when you remodel, you get some of the honeymoon effect.

So how can you accurately judge whether or not the capital investment is truly working or not.

And lastly, Jim, as long as you're on the call, you said you wouldn't throw into capital at problems.

But it seems like a lot of capital is going into the U.S. market.

Which is kind of hard to believe that that's a high return for you given your already strong presence of penetration.

So could you address that?

It's Matt.

I'll take the first one about interest expense.

Let me give you a little bit of background.

If you assume our debt levels remain constant -- and they won't -- I would expect our expenses to go up, because we fixed more debt, and the difference between float rate to fixed rate depending on which currency it is could be anywhere from 150 to 200 basis points.

So the issue is for '03, that additional interest expense, because we fixed a larger piece of our portfolio, how will that be offset by the fact that we expect to have less debt by the end of the year?

That unfortunately is a function of how much cash we generate and how much debt we choose to pay down.

I can tell you if we didn't pay down debt our interest expense would be up, because rates aren't going down and we fixed a larger piece of our debt portfolio, but I can't tell you the extent of the offset.

Do you want to comment on how we monitor returns on the reinvestments?

I can comment.

We're going to have about 200 restaurants in the U.S. that will be completed by the end of the 1st quarter, and I think we believe, based on our prior experience that we should see some immediate results from those changes.

And we're going to be monitoring those results relative to what else is going on in the marketplace, so how are those restaurants performing compared to what would have been our expectation given the local market and what's going on in the local market.

If we don't see a mid single digit comp improvement relative to that market, I think that signals to us that it's not working the way it was supposed to.

This is Jim on the capital end.

I don't think the capital that we're spending is to solve their problems.

As I said before, we have 13,000 restaurants in the U.S. and our net openings are another 250.

The dynamics of the marketplace -- my daughter the other day -- we have to drive 20 minutes to a McDonald's from her house.

There are communities developing, and I'm fixing that pretty fast.

There are communities developing all over the country.

We have to, as I said before, remain competitive, convenient to our customers to open restaurants both -- and I think that level of opening is not going to solve the problems.

As I said before, the problems are positive comparable sales and margin improvements.

And I was looking the other day,if we could just get the customers we lost over the last few years back in the stores, get comparable sales and recapture only half our margin, our financial picture would look dramatically different.

So going after from that perspective, which is why I talk about, that's where our focus is at.

Is really going to pay the dividends in the long term.

We're going to be able to do a lot more things after we do those two things.

Thanks.

We have a question from Andy Barish of BMA.

Thanks.

Two quick ones, if I could.

Can you try to quantify -- I imagine there are some cost savings related to this higher level of closures, particularly as you characterize negative cashflow stores.

Any chance we could get a rough number for savings for '03.

And then on the G & A numbers coming out of the 4th quarter --.

The 4th quarter number was 50 to 100 million higher than the run rate for the rest of '02 depending on the quarter.

Was that all incremental ad costs as well as one-time clean up stuff in there.

I'm trying to get a sense of what the real run rate is.

A couple things you were already aware of.

We had the extra $20 million or so spending in the U.S., related to the extra advertising, tied in with the dollar menu.

We also had incremental technology spending in the 4th quarter and that was higher than the run rates in the -- earlier in the year, although, of course, now we would expect that to come down, which we already commented on.

That wasn't our flat expectation for G & A for 2003.

I think if you're looking at the reported number, it would play a roll in year-over-year increases.

As we look forward to this year, you will see that clearly -- we will expect to see that run rate on an annual basis come down quite a bit.

With respect to the other part of your question, what part of operating income opportunities are created in '03 because of the non G & A activities we undertook, specifically the market restructuring and the store closing?

I think that we would expect that that would aid our earnings per share somewhere around 2 to 3 cents per shares in '03.

Thanks.

Our next question comes from Troy Hoff at US Bancorp.

Could you go back to, you were talking about the folks that are out of this system, and first you try to approve it, and then -- what kind of time frame are you looking for for improvement before you start discussing with them their exiting system?

Troy.

This is Matt, I'll give you my sense of the time frame.

You have to remember, we were mystery shopping 13,000 stores; we were doing a tiny bit over 1 a month.

You can't draw conclusions based on, you know, three or four mystery shops.

You needed some massive shops before you begin to see patterns.

And we didn't roll out our 800 number internationally until July 1.

So you have to sometimes have a base of data which is convincing that there's a problem.

And then you have a conversation with the franchisee, and then you begin deciding what's not working within the restaurant? what seems to be the text?

We seem to know where the restaurants are that have issues.

And the ideal is to not to force the restaurant to turnover.

You have to allow some amount of time, probably a few months, to see if there's improvement.

And in some cases, we send unannounced McDonald's people back in to see how things look after we've given notice that it's not working.

So it's hard to say there's a time frame.

But from this point forward, two years is way too long, and probably expecting that it's all going to happen in the next month is way too short just for some perspective.

Let me just make an additional comment, too, on our relationship with our operators.

I think we're pretty good, and we've demonstrated that over 40-some years of picking franchisees, we have a great operator base, for the great majority of them are people that want to do the right job.

I talked about us getting away from grading like we did 10 years ago.

But grading the way we used to do it 10 years ago is by projects, and much of it also involved training.

So by getting away from the grading, we also lost the calibration of standards and training that might have gone on in the restaurant.

All the stuff that Matt talks about, mystery shops, the 800 numbers, also the new grading procedures, and full-field procedures really get people the opportunity to improve their business.

As I said before, the great majority want to.

There are some barriers out there; they differ store-by-store.

And we want to do the servicing with our owner/operators.

But by the same token, some of it becomes very clearly when you have folks getting measured twice.

And you can move much more rapidly on those that just aren't getting with the program for whatever reason.

Thanks.

We have a question from Peter Oakes at Merrill lynch.

I'll give it a shot.

Jim, back in McDonald's hay day when you were queried about capitalization from asset growth and unit growth, if I remember correctly, you used to think of that as relatively minimal.

Given the benefit of hindsight, I'd be curious if you'd be willing to revisit that, as we think about what the natural growth of comp could be as you think about, you know, 30,000 units across the world.

Secondly we saw in the 4th quarter assistance being earmarked for some of the difficulties in both the U.S. and Europe.

And yet both those markets' was less than 2%.

So I'm curious as to one, the magnitude and two, what's the likelihood of seeing those continuing if any -- of any significance going into '03 here.

And lastly, Jim, on the kitchen modifications, particularly revisiting the use of bins, can you give us a timing as to when you're think thinking about putting those back in?

Thanks a lot.

I'll take the first two, and then maybe Matt you can talk about the other.

We have very, very extensive procedures that give us an indication before we open the restaurants, and we make judgments about incremental returns and incremental investments.

So while there's some cannibalization on most restaurants that open, it's at a level that makes sense for us in terms of total marketplace.

And I said before, had we not opened any restaurants, our comps would not be that significantly different.

So we do get it, but it's small.

We know what it is, so we make judgements about that.

I think this year really indicates -- we're still struggling to comps.

So that's not -- the new unit opening program is not the major problem.

And I think we have a good handle on cannibalization.

And the front end, Peter, when we're growing the international marketplace, it wasn't only about openings, it was about dominating the marketplace, about the seizing the marketplace we talked many years about, and I think the benefits of that have proven themselves in terms of our position in the international arena.

Today is tight, and it has been for several years.

So that's one perspective on international cannibalization.

On the kitchen stuff, you know, I talked about -- that's one of our major priorities, in terms of service.

In my view -- and not everyone agrees with me, service has been challenged by the system.

Now, can it be fixed?

Yes, it can.

I think this is one of the major layouts we have.

Our taste issues.

So it depends how soon.

There are 30 stores right at the moment.

I don't know that the bin is the only way to solve this problem; there are other initiatives that go directly at surface and basically have food ready when it's ordered.

Things such as an anticipator, which was built into the made-for-use system but never used.

It has its challenges.

It may end up with anticipated sandwiches in the landing area that we have now, but that is the top priority, because in my view that is going to be the biggest thing to solve our service challenges.

Peter, it's Matt.

On the issue of rent assistance, would what we saw in the 4th quarter be something we would expect to continue in the 1st quarter of '03, and it's primarily the U.S. and Europe, two specific markets in Europe.

I don't want to get into the situation, but I think in Europe, unless the business bounces back significantly, most of the systems in Europe I would expect to be present in '03.

We saw a lot of activity in the U.S., most of that related to the dollar menu and our provision of the dollar menu and the downside assistance for our franchisees.

Earlier in the call we talk about the dollar menu, what we liked and what you didn't.

Certainly there was a tradedown to big and tasties, we're going to be re-examining that, and I assure you that our customer, owner/operator and shareholder perspectives will be brought to bear on this decision.

And the fact that we had to pay more downside assistance than we wanted to or expected to will be a big factor in what we decide to do with it.

Thanks.

We're running a little short of time.

We're going to try to take two more questions.

And the next question is from Mark McCoviak at John Levins.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

My question really goes back to a comment made earlier regarding balance between a cash cow and a gazelle, and then thinking back to when management was visiting analyst investors in the fall.

And I think a pushback on why you could not change the roughly 1.9 of Cap Ex in '03 that a lot of it was committed and spoken for.

You can't back out of commitments and change things so quickly.

And I'm trying to think, I know we've got a lot on our plates here in '03, but thinking past '03.

If you're still a business that can generate 3 billion roughly of operating cashflow preCap Ex, predividend, preshare buy back, how would you feel so fiercely about what you're doing with that cashflow?

I'll just address the first part of the question and then get to the second part.

It is true that we -- there's some lead time to building a new McDonald's store.

And in some parts of the world it could be a year.

In other parts of the world it could be six months.

And other times we commit to the land and make lease commitments later.

That affects probably no more than a third to a half of the sites we plan to open in the year.

We do have some flexibility.

Regarding the cashflow we generate, I think our message today is pretty clear.

We have a new management that's been here for 22 days, and we don't want to make firm commitments as to how we're going to allocate the 3 billion or so of cashflow we generate in '03.

We're rethinking a lot of things, we're rethinking the 1.9 not going up.

The issue is, if it's smaller, how much smaller will it be, and we're rethinking what we can do with share repurchase.

Unfortunately, I don't think we can share a lot of details with you right now.

Thanks.

Our last question is from Rick.

To follow-up on your statements, the closings in the U.S. and Japan, when you look at the charges, the largest restaurant closing and asset impairment charges in Europe.

Can you give us details on that?

And then a follow-up, you talked about cashflow negative stores, assuming they're company-run stores, can you give us an amount of that negative cashflow?

Thank you.

Rick, this is Matt, I'll take the first part.

What you observe is accurate about the cost of store closings lays out.

In Japan, we have a lot of very small stores.

And the cost of closing them per store is tiny, whereas in Europe, the cost for store is much, much higher.

They're bigger stores, more pieces of real estate.

And in the U.S. we have some satellites that were closed that would have a much smaller first-store class.

And then -- we forgot the second part of your question.

It was the -- oh, for the -- to the extent that those were company-operated restaurants --

I think just to give you a rough split, I think there's three categories of restaurants, we have company operated, franchise and affiliated.

And I think roughly 260 or so of the 719 were company operated.

I think roughly the balance is split roughly between affiliated, and the balance are franchises.

And so I think given the percent this company operates, I don't think it's going to have a meaningful impact on cashflow operations, I think that's where you were going with that.

I appreciate your input today.

I'm going to ask Jim to close our call with a brief comment.

I know you're all anxious to hear more plans and we're trying to define that.

That's why I said I would join you today.

We had two calls in a week and a half.

And I've been here 23 days.

Now, we're targeting the end of March to give you a more comprehensive picture of what our turnaround plans are.

And so, you know, look for some direction from Mary as to when that will happen.

In just closing, I just want to say that we know we need to make changes, and I think you're going to see a lot of changes at McDonalds in the weeks and months ahead.

And that is the basic message I want to leave with you today.

Thanks a lot for joining us.

I'm looking forward to talking to you again.

Thank you.

This concludes today's teleconference.

Thank you for your participation and have a great day.

You may disconnect at this time.