McDonald's franchisees' sales outlook for the next six months is the most negative it's been in more than a decade, according to Janney Capital Markets.
According to a survey conducted by Janney, franchisees' sales outlook is the weakest it has been in a decade. This was enough for the research house to cut its June comparable sales estimate by 1.1 percent to a 2.6 percent drop. In addition, second quarter EPS was reduced by two percent.
Janney's restaurant analyst, Mark Kalinowski, wrote in a research note that the franchisees surveyed on their six-month outlook gave an average rating of 1.84 on a scale of 1 to 5, in which 1 means "poor" and 5 means "excellent." Nine of the 27 respondents rated their outlook at 1, and no franchisees indicated their outlook was a 5.
"This 1.84 number is meaningfully below the 2.9 average result over the history of the survey and below the 2.21 result from three months ago," Kalinowski wrote. "Indeed, this result becomes the worst ever in our decade plus of conducting this survey, even lower than the previous low score of 1.89 from six months ago."
According to Bloomberg, if Janney is right, McDonald's will record the worst June and July sales in 11 years.
McDonald's shares were last trading at $99.71, down 0.6 percent in the pre-market.
