1. Background to the Turnaround
Big Brand in Big Trouble
In February 1996, McDonald’s stock traded at 27 times earnings. But in July 1997, McDonald’s second quarter profit growth was just 4%, with a 2% decline in earnings from the US business.
When I joined McDonald’s in September 2002, the stock price was down to $17.66 from a high of $45.31 in March 1999. McDonald’s reported its first-ever quarterly loss of $344 million since it went public in 1965, with same-store sales down 1.9% in Europe, 6.1% in Asia-Pacific, and 1.4 % in the United States.1
1 The Associated Press (AP), December 17, 2002.
In December 2002, after McDonald’s stock declined 60% over three years, the board of directors replaced Jack Greenberg with Jim Cantalupo as ...
Get Branding Strategies for Success (Collection) now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
