Business · Strategy

McDonald's Outlines Ambitious Decade-Long Strategy to Boost Growth and Efficiency

McDonald's has announced a comprehensive 10-year plan, dubbed NEXT, involving an $8.5 billion investment aimed at increasing market share, improving profitability, and enhancing operational efficiency.

News AutomationCompiled 11:05 UTC · 1 min read

A McDonald's restaurant exterior at dusk.

1 sources

Pipeline ingest

3 reads

Positive / Neutral / Negative

1 countries

Related coverage

By Jeremy Bowman–Updated Sep 23, 2026 at 6:34PM EST

Key Points

McDonald's plans to invest $8.5 billion in its restaurants over the next decade to improve growth and profitability.
Burger King, fresh off its own turnaround, is taking market share from McDonald's.
McDonald's expects a slight decline in third-quarter U.S. same-store sales, showing the urgency for the new plan.
10 stocks we like better than McDonald's ›

Burger King is resurgent, and McDonald's (MCD-4.80%) is feeling the heat. With shares of the Golden Arches near a four-year low, the fast-food giant introduced a bold new turnaround plan that management hopes will accelerate same-store sales growth and reestablish the company as the clear #1 in its industry.

However, at first glance, investors didn't like what they saw. The stock closed down 4.8% on Wednesday, as the market seemed to balk at its plan to spend $8.5 billion over the next decade as part of NEXT, what the company is calling its turnaround plan, which it announced at Wednesday's Investor Day. Management also gave a disappointing update on the third quarter, saying that U.S. comparable sales would be slightly negative.

A McDonald's sign with an arrow under it.

Image source: McDonald's.

McDonald's plan to turn the business around

McDonald's has three major goals as part of its NEXT strategy.

Capture 1.5 percentage points of market share gains in the chicken and beverage categories, while maintaining its leadership in beef.
Expand its operating margin to the low-to-mid 50% range by 2030
Increase gross restaurant-level efficiency by 250 basis points, or about $100,000 in annual cash flow for the average U.S. restaurant.

Those are worthy goals, but they aren't going to come cheap. The company is planning to invest in its franchisees as part of the initiative with $5 billion through 2030 and $8.5 billion through 2036 for rent relief and capital support.

Management believes those investments will generate a four-year payback period for franchisees, while improving customer and crew experiences.

Is McDonald's overspending?

$8.5 billion is a big price tag for a turnaround strategy, and investors are often skeptical of turnaround spending, at least before it begins to pay off. Starbucks' profits initially fell at the beginning of CEO Brian Niccol's Back to Starbucks plan as the company invested in additional labor, dragging the stock down with it, but those efforts have since paid off.

The company didn’t explain where the funding would come from. McDonald's doesn't have $8.5 billion sitting on its balance sheet. In fact, it has just $4.3 billion in current assets. It could add to its $40 billion debt balance or press pause on share buybacks, which are on track to absorb $2.5 billion of its cash flow. McDonald's spends roughly $5 billion a year on dividends, but investors should regard the dividend as safe.

According to the numbers above, McDonald's will invest approximately $1.25 billion in each of the next four years, and then $600 million annually over the six years after that. That should be manageable for a company of its size.

McDonald's Stock Quote

NYSE: MCD

McDonald's

MCD Motley Fool Moneyball Superscore: 58 out of 100. Get access to Motley Fool Moneyball. Premium Feature

Moneyball Superscore

58/100

Today's Change

(-4.80%) $-12.03

Current Price

$238.32

MCD

YTD1w1m3m6m1y5y

PriceVS S&P

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$177BMarket cap calculated using publicly traded shares outstanding only. Does not include unlisted, private, or dual-class non-traded shares. Implied market cap may vary.

Day's Range

$234.03 - $250.32

52wk Range

$234.03 - $341.75

Volume

16.6M

Avg Vol

4.7M

Gross Margin

57.38%

Dividend Yield

2.97%

Will the move pay off?

With McDonald's comparable sales growth wilting and Restaurant Brands International's (NYSE: QSR) Burger King ascendant, it makes sense that McDonald's would want to make a change.

Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again

In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. If you’d invested $5,000 then, you’d be sitting on $2,975,075.

Now, for the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. It’s a key player in the $1.8 trillion space race, and with the stock recently sitting 20% off its highs, the window to get in early is closing fast.

Continue ›

Stock Advisor returns as of September 23, 2026.

Burger King has revamped its Whopper, stepped up its ad campaigns, rolled out new value meals, and invested in restaurant remodels and operational improvements, and those moves have paid off. Burger King reported U.S. same-store sales growth of 8.5% in the second quarter.

McDonald's is capable of achieving a similar recovery, and with the stock now down 30% from its peak earlier this year, the stock price already reflects the company's challenges. Its price-to-earnings ratio is at a historically low 19, giving the stock plenty of upside.

At this point, I think bailing on McDonald's is a mistake for investors. The company is doing the right thing to respond to the threat from Burger King. Investing billions to return the business to growth is preferable to the alternative of a steady decline and continued market share losses to BK.

It will take time for these investments to pay off, but investors should be patient. After announcing its strategy, management deserves a chance to deliver.

Could McDonald's help you build long-term wealth?

Before you buy stock in McDonald's, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and McDonald's wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $389,154! Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,406,303!

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 949% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 214% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors.

See the 10 stocks ›

Stock Advisor returns as of September 23, 2026.

Motley Fool issues A.I. buy alert

This tech could reach $80 trillion. Imagine a technology worth over 15 Nvidias.

What in the world could be worth 15 Nvidias? The answer is a radical tech breakthrough that our experts think is transforming every walk of life. And this giant leap forward has many on Wall Street very excited.

Continue ›