McDonald’s meal deals are slowly winning customers back to U.S. stores, but people are spending less

After a year of dominating U.S. headlines for everything from a major E. coli outbreak to a visit from Donald Trump, McDonald’s today announced its fourth-quarter and full-year 2024 financial report.

Here’s a quick look at the numbers:

• Fourth-quarter revenue was $6.4 billion
• Fourth-quarter net income was $2.2 billion
• Full-year revenue was $25.9 billion
• Full-year net income was $8.2 billion

Global comparable sales increased by 0.4% in the fourth quarter, while U.S. comparable sales dropped by 1.4% in the same period. (That’s compared to a 4.3% gain in the fourth quarter last year.)

The data shows that while McDonald’s has made progress globally, U.S. numbers remain sluggish as the chain struggles to strike the right balance between fair prices and profit.

The $5 meal deal: A financial mixed bag

Over the past several months, McDonald’s has been on a mission to dispel its reputation as a villain of the American inflation story. In a LendingTree survey last May, 65% of respondents said they’d been “shocked” by a fast food bill in the past six months, while 80% said they considered fast food to be a “luxury.”

Plenty of ire has been directed at McDonald’s for its perceived role in contributing to unaffordable fast food costs.

To combat that perception and win customers back, McDonald’s launched a $5 value meal in June. While the deal was meant to be a limited-time offering, the campaign’s popularity (and financial payoff; it’s been credited for saving the chain’s third quarter) led McDonald’s to extend the $5 meal into December 2024. Then, in November, McDonald’s once again promised to offer its value meal for at least the first half of 2025.

On an earnings call today, a McDonald’s spokesperson shared that Q4 was the company’s best quarter of the year with the American low-income consumer segment.

However, per the financial report, the 1.4% drop in U.S. comparable sales could be attributed to “a decline in average check, partly offset by slightly positive comparable guest counts”—meaning that, as customers are spending less per meal, McDonald’s is having trouble recouping the difference.

The impact of the E. coli outbreak continues

There’s another reason for McDonald’s lackluster fourth quarter in the U.S., according to CEO Chris Kempczinski: the lasting impact of last year’s E. coli outbreak, which sent the company’s stock into a tailspin at the time.

“Our fourth-quarter performance reflects the impact of the food incident,” Kempczinski said during today’s earnings call.

The outbreak, which emerged in late October, sickened dozens of McDonald’s customers and killed one person, causing the company to temporarily remove its Quarter Pounder from thousands of stores.

Months later, it seems like the company is still working to regain consumers’ trust as it continues to navigate a rocky economic climate.

Nevertheless, investors are relatively optimistic about the company’s outlook: As of this writing, shares of McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) are up almost 5%, to about $309 per share.