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Eli Lilly said its highly popular drug used for weight loss and diabetes, tirzepatide, showed promise as a treatment for fatty liver disease in a midstage trial. 
The results add to a long list of potential health benefits of the treatment besides helping patients shed pounds and regulate blood sugar under the drug’s brand names, Zepbound and Mounjaro. 
The pharmaceutical giant said in its fourth-quarter earnings release that tirzepatide succeeded in a phase two trial as a treatment for a serious form of liver disease called MASH. 

An injection pen of Zepbound, Eli Lilly’s weight loss drug, is displayed in New York City, U.S., December 11, 2023. 
Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Eli Lilly on Tuesday said its highly popular drug used for weight loss and diabetes showed promise as a treatment for fatty liver disease in a midstage trial. 
The initial study results add to a long list of potential health benefits of the treatment, known as tirzepatide, besides helping patients shed significant pounds and regulate blood sugar under the drug’s brand names, Zepbound and Mounjaro, respectively. Those additional benefits could potentially expand the limited insurance coverage for weight loss drugs, most of which cost close to $1,000 per month. 

The pharmaceutical giant said in its fourth-quarter earnings release that tirzepatide showed positive results in a phase two trial as a treatment for a serious form of liver disease called metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, or MASH.
There are currently no cures or medicines available to directly treat MASH. The condition is characterized by excess fat buildup and inflammation in the liver and can lead to liver scarring, also known as fibrosis. An estimated 3% to 5% of adults in the U.S. are affected by MASH, according to some studies. 
The trial followed around 190 adults with MASH with severe stages of liver scarring, Eli Lilly executives said on an earnings call Tuesday.
At all dose sizes, tirzepatide met the trial’s main goal of helping patients become free of the disease with no worsening of liver scarring compared with people who did not receive the treatment, according to the company’s earnings presentation. 
For example, around 74% of patients who received the highest tirzepatide dose of 15 milligrams became free of MASH with no worsening of liver scarring after a year, compared with around 13% of those who received a placebo. 

It was less clear how much the drug reduced liver scarring, which was the second aim of the trial. Eli Lilly did not disclose whether tirzepatide met that goal, but the company said the drug’s effect on decreasing liver scarring was “clinically meaningful” across all dose sizes. 
Eli Lilly is “equally encouraged” by tirzepatide’s results in reducing liver scarring, the company’s chief scientific officer, Dan Skovronsky, said on the call. 
“There’s nothing bad in the data that would stop us from going to phase three,” he added. “I think having a positive phase two trial here with really meaningful data in MASH obligates us to think about next steps.” 
He noted that adverse events were consistent with other studies on tirzepatide in patients with obesity and diabetes, without providing further details. Previous trials on Zepbound showed that patients experienced diarrhea, nausea and vomiting, among other symptoms.
Eli Lilly will present the full results from the phase two trial at a medical conference later this year.

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Leerink Partners analyst David Risinger called the initial trial results “positive” in a research note Tuesday. He said a larger and longer phase three study could increase the odds of tirzepatide causing a statistically significant decrease in liver scarring.
Tirzepatide works by activating two naturally produced hormones in the body: glucagon-like peptide-1, known as GLP-1, and glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide, or GIP.
The combination is said to slow the emptying of the stomach, making people feel full for longer and suppressing appetite by slowing hunger signals in the brain.
Several other drugmakers are trying to develop treatments for MASH. 
They include Eli Lilly’s main rival Novo Nordisk, which is studying semaglutide, also known as Wegovy for weight loss and Ozempic for diabetes, in a late-stage trial in MASH. But a midstage trial on semaglutide in MASH patients had mixed results, according to data released in 2022. 
Unlike tirzepatide, semaglutide only targets GLP-1.
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Toyota Motor is investing $1.3 billion in a Kentucky plant to produce a new all-electric, three-row SUV for the U.S. market, the company said Tuesday.
The vehicle is expected to go into production between late 2025 and early 2026.
The announcement comes as consumer adoption for EVs has been slower than many expected, causing some automakers to delay or cut investment plans for all-electric vehicles.

Akio Toyoda, Chairman of Toyota Motor Corporation.
Yoshikazu Tsuno | Gamma-rapho | Getty Images

Toyota Motor is investing $1.3 billion in a Kentucky plant to produce a new all-electric, three-row SUV for the U.S. market, the company said Tuesday.
The vehicle is expected to go into production between late 2025 and early 2026, according to a company spokeswoman. It is part of previously announced plans by the Japanese automaker to invest $35 billion in battery-electric vehicles, or BEVs, through 2030.

A company spokesperson declined to provide additional details for the upcoming vehicle, which will likely compete with current vehicles such as the Rivian R1S and Kia EV9.
The announcement comes as consumer adoption for EVs has been slower than many expected, causing some automakers to delay or cut investment plans for all-electric vehicles.
Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, is among the most prominent automakers to say that while EVs are a solution to reach carbon neutrality, they’re not the only one. The automaker continues to invest in hybrids, plug-in hybrid vehicles and other technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells.Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO: More

The playground rivalry between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk dates back years—and in who-is-cooler-than-whom terms, Mr Musk usually wins easily. As an innovator, Mr Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook and boss of Meta, a social-media giant, has often been dismissed as a geeky dilettante in a hoodie. He has never received the Promethean kudos Mr Musk has for turning Tesla into a stallion of electric vehicles (EVs) and SpaceX into a rocket sensation. Mr Zuckerberg is notorious for his motto “move fast and break things”, which may have helped Facebook conquer the world but gave licence to critics to cast it as a social menace. Mr Musk is revered as a rule-breaker, plays up his bad-boy image and mostly gets away with it.Such was the tenor of their relationship when Mr Musk proposed a cage match with Mr Zuckerberg in June last year just before Meta launched a short-messaging app, Threads, to compete with Mr Musk’s Twitter (now X). Forget the physical fight that never happened. In business terms, even then Mr Musk had the upper hand. He was the richest man on Earth. Tesla’s market value, though falling, was higher than Meta’s. Its revenues were growing faster. Yet since then, he could not have kicked himself harder in the teeth. In the past few weeks Tesla has shocked investors with a horror-show earnings presentation. Mr Musk’s $56bn pay package from 2018 was rescinded by a judge, which has slashed his net worth. From America to China, his EVs have suffered recalls.Mr Zuckerberg, meanwhile, is punching the air. On February 1st Meta released earnings showing a staggering rise in sales and margins. Its market value has reached $1.2trn, exactly the level Tesla achieved at its peak in 2021, and more than twice what the EV-maker is worth now. To be sure, short-term measures of financial performance are not everything. But look at longer-term factors, such as the way both men run their businesses, treat their shareholders and customers, and respond to their own failures, and it is clear the fight is as good as over. Zuck has won.To understand why, start with the interplay between the way both gazillionaires control and run their companies. Each of them lords it over their firms in a way that makes corporate-governance advocates blanch: Mr Zuckerberg via a dual-share structure that gives him majority control of Meta; Mr Musk, by having everyone at Tesla in his thrall. But as Mr Zuckerberg has become more sensitive to his fellow shareholders, Mr Musk has become less so. That has had a big impact on performance.Mr Zuckerberg’s volte face started in 2022 when shareholders recoiled at the way he was blowing their money (and his) on moonshot projects like the metaverse, just as Meta’s core business was slowing. Instead of ignoring them, he listened. Since then he has changed his tune to focus on cutting costs, boosting profits, and using the cash to invest in artificial intelligence (AI) and the metaverse in a way that improves existing products as well as funding futuristic bets. Moreover, to convince shareholders he is not wasting their money, Meta will return more cash to them via share repurchases and pay the company’s first-ever dividend.Mr Musk has had no such epiphany. In the two years since Tesla’s share price peaked, he seems to have doubled down on disappointing fellow owners of the company’s stock. The sensible ones long for a cheap, mass-market EV. Instead Tesla is selling expensive ones at a margin-shredding discount. They want him to spend more time at Tesla, but he splits it with SpaceX and wastes it at (and on) X. They yearn for full-self-driving cars as the catalyst for a robotaxi revolution. Instead, even diehard fans were stunned recently when Mr Musk threatened to move his AI and robotics efforts away from Tesla unless he was given 25% voting control.That leads to a second big difference: motivation, which was the crux of the judge’s decision in Delaware on January 30th to strip Mr Musk of his gargantuan pay cheque. Mr Zuckerberg, as the judgment noted, receives no salary or share options. His 13% economic stake in Meta is the main incentive to come to work each day. Mr Musk, however, is different. Though his Tesla shareholding at the time meant he would become $10bn richer every time Tesla’s value jumped by $50bn, that wasn’t enough. Tesla’s board (many of whom the judge ruled were too chummy with Mr Musk to be independent) convinced shareholders that an extra incentive was needed to keep his nose to the grindstone: namely, the biggest payout in the history of public markets. Now that it has been voided, his motivation, presumably, is even more in doubt.Then there are both men’s attitudes to customers, which have also moved in opposite directions. Mr Zuckerberg was vilified for Facebook’s fast-and-loose approach to users’ data, content moderation and privacy. The concerns are still strong, especially when it comes to youngsters on social media. But Facebook now has an independent oversight board to rule on content decisions, and Meta says it has invested $20bn since 2016 in online safety. No doubt Mr Musk still has some loyalists as customers. But considering how many American EV owners lean Democratic, the more he rants on X, the more it is clear that he disdains their political opinions. The latest recalls are a further source of worry (though the problem can be fixed with a software update). In China, a huge market, he faces stiff competition. Meta, by contrast, credits Chinese advertisers with helping drive a big surge in ad revenues last year.Caged tyrant In a nutshell, as Mr Zuckerberg grows older, he appears to have learned from his mistakes. As Mr Musk grows older, he gets more puerile and distracted. His huffy reaction to the Delaware court’s judgment, threatening to up sticks and move Tesla’s incorporation to Texas, is a case in point. It indicates he wants the company’s shareholders to have even less protection from his capriciousness than usual. If anyone should get into the ring and hammer some sense into him, it is them. ■ More

Eli Lilly reported fourth-quarter revenue and adjusted earnings that topped expectations on the strong launch of its new weight loss drug, Zepbound, and higher prices for its blockbuster diabetes treatment, Mounjaro.
The quarterly results are the first to include sales of Zepbound, which won FDA approval in early November. 
Eli Lilly will hold an earnings call with investors at 10 a.m. ET on Tuesday.

An injection pen of Zepbound, Eli Lilly’s weight loss drug, is displayed in New York City, U.S., December 11, 2023. 
Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Eli Lilly on Tuesday reported fourth-quarter revenue and adjusted earnings that topped expectations on the strong launch of its new weight loss drug, Zepbound, and higher prices for its blockbuster diabetes treatment, Mounjaro.
Zepbound, which won approval from U.S. regulators in early November, raked in $175.8 million in sales for the fourth quarter.

The quarterly results are the first to include sales of Zepbound, which some analysts say could post more than a billion dollars in sales in its first year on the market and eventually, become the biggest drug of all time. 
Shares of Eli Lilly were up about 5% in premarket trading Tuesday.
Here’s what Eli Lilly reported for the fourth quarter compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv:

Earnings per share: $2.49 adjusted vs. $2.22 expected
Revenue: $9.35 billion vs. $8.93 billion expected

Eli Lilly posted net income of $2.19 billion, or $2.42 a share, for the fourth quarter. That compares with a profit of $1.94 billion, or $2.14 a share, a year earlier. 
Excluding one-time items associated with the value of intangible assets, among other adjustments, the company posted a per-share profit of $2.49 for the fourth quarter of 2023.

The pharmaceutical giant booked fourth-quarter revenue of $9.35 billion, up 28% from the same period a year ago.
Eli Lilly also issued its full-year forecast for 2024, which was generally in line with expectations.
The company expects full-year adjusted earnings of $12.20 to $12.70 per share. Eli Lilly also forecast 2024 revenue of $40.4 billion to $41.6 billion.
Analysts surveyed by LSEG expected full-year adjusted earnings of $12.43 per share and sales of $39.38 billion.
Shares of Eli Lilly jumped almost 60% last year as weight loss drugs skyrocketed in popularity despite hefty price tags, mixed insurance coverage and a handful of unpleasant side effects. With a market cap of roughly $673 billion, Eli Lilly is the largest pharmaceutical company based in the U.S. 

Mounjaro sees higher demand, prices

Higher prices for older drugs, particularly Mounjaro, helped drive up Eli Lilly’s revenue, the company said. Mounjaro booked $2.21 billion in sales for the fourth quarter, up from just $279.2 million in the same period a year ago. 
Analysts had expected the drug to bring in $1.73 billion in worldwide sales, according to estimates compiled by FactSet.
That increase reflects heightened demand but also “higher realized prices” in the U.S. due to decreased use of Eli Lilly’s savings card programs as access to the drug continued to expand during the quarter, the company said. The savings card programs aim to help lower the out-of-pocket costs for drugs like Mounjaro for patients.
Revenue growth was also driven by sales of Eli Lilly’s breast cancer pill Verzenio, which rose 42% to $1.15 billion for the quarter due to increased demand and higher prices.
That result came in under analysts’ expectations, however, which called for $1.18 billion in sales for the period. 
Sales of Jardiance, a tablet that lowers blood sugar in Type 2 diabetes patients, climbed 30% to $798.1 million for the fourth quarter. Analysts had expected $771.8 million in sales from Jardiance. 
Jardiance, which Eli Lilly shares with Boehringer Ingelheim, is among the first 10 drugs selected to face price negotiations with the federal Medicare program. Those price talks heated up last week after Medicare sent its initial price offers for each drug to the manufacturers. 

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Meanwhile, Eli Lilly said higher prices were offset by lower prices of its other diabetes medicine Trulicity and insulin product Humalog.
Trulicity reported $1.67 billion in revenue, down 14% from the same period a year ago. Analysts had expected Trulicity to get $1.77 billion in sales for the quarter. 
Humalog saw $366.6 million in revenue for the quarter, down 33% from the year-ago period. Analysts had expected the medicine to book $438 million in sales, according to FactSet.
That decrease isn’t a surprise: Last year, Eli Lilly said it would cut prices of Humalog and another commonly prescribed insulin by 70% and cap monthly out-of-pocket costs at $35 at certain retail pharmacies for people who have private insurance starting May 1, 2023.
Eli Lilly will hold an earnings call with investors at 10 a.m. ET on Tuesday. 
Executives will likely be asked about whether the company has made more progress in addressing the supply issues plaguing its weight loss and diabetes drugs. 
There may also be questions related to the timing of the FDA’s decision on Eli Lilly’s experimental Alzheimer’s drug, donanemab, which significantly slowed the progression of the memory-robbing disease in patients at the early stages of it.
The company did not mention the drug in its earnings release.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates. More

McDonald’s and Starbucks both said the Israel-Hamas war and related boycotts hurt their sales in the latest quarter.
Starbucks saw traffic to its U.S. stores fall as occasional customers stopped visiting.
McDonald’s said the war hurt its Middle Eastern sales, as well as demand in majority Muslim countries and France.

People dit at McDonald’s outdoor seating after going out on a Saturday night along Rothschild Street on June 11, 2022 in Tel Aviv, Israel. 
Alexi Rosenfeld | Getty Images

McDonald’s and Starbucks, two of the biggest U.S. restaurant companies, both said the Israel-Hamas war hurt their sales at the end of last year.
Shares of McDonald’s fell nearly 4% on Monday, after it reported that a sales slowdown in the Middle East contributed to its fourth-quarter revenue miss. Starbucks’ stock has fallen roughly 2% since Tuesday, when the company reported that the war dented its U.S. sales in the final three months of the year, too.

The two restaurant giants became some of the largest U.S. companies to say the Middle East conflict hurt their sales — and will likely hit demand in future quarters, as well. It is unclear whether other restaurant companies will see a similar downturn.
Starbucks became a target of boycotts when Starbucks Workers United, which represents hundreds of the chain’s unionized cafes, posted in support of Palestinians, leading to backlash from conservatives. Starbucks sought to distance itself from the tweet, which the union deleted, and sued Workers United for trademark infringement.
Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan said Tuesday that the company’s sales in the Middle East struggled, but boycotts also hurt its U.S. cafes. The chain’s U.S. same-store sales rose 5% in its fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 31, but foot traffic fell.
The lag in U.S. foot traffic largely came from customers who only visited occasionally, according to Narasimhan. Starbucks is looking to revive demand by offering more targeted promotions and introducing new drinks.
For its part, McDonald’s saw fourth-quarter sales slip in the Middle East after its Israeli licensee offered discounts to soldiers, prompting some boycotts from customers who oppose the country’s offensive in Gaza. The Middle East typically accounts for about 2% of McDonald’s global sales and 1% of its global earnings before interest and taxes, according to TD Cowen analyst Andrew Charles.

McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said Monday that the company saw weaker sales in the Middle East and majority Muslim countries, like Malaysia and Indonesia, as a result. France, which has the largest Muslim population in Europe, also saw weaker sales, although executives said pricing backlash also contributed to softer demand.
McDonald’s doesn’t expect its Middle Eastern sales to recover until the war ends.
“The ongoing impact of the war on these franchisees’ local business is disheartening and ill-founded,” Kempczinski told analysts on the company’s conference call.
Unlike Starbucks, McDonald’s did not note any effect on its U.S. sales.
Besides McDonald’s and Starbucks, some activists have also called for boycotts of Domino’s Pizza, Papa John’s, Restaurant Brands International’s Burger King and Yum Brands’ Pizza Hut.
Yum Brands is scheduled to report its quarterly results on Wednesday, while Restaurant Brands is slated to share its earnings on Feb. 13. Domino’s and Papa John’s are not expected to release their fourth-quarter earnings until the end of the month.
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Novo Nordisk’s parent company said it will acquire drug manufacturer Catalent in a $16.5 billion deal that could help boost the supply of the highly popular weight loss injection Wegovy and diabetes shot Ozempic. 
Catalent is the main supplier of fill-finish work, which involves filling and packaging syringes and injection pens, for Wegovy. 
Novo Nordisk will then buy three of Catalent’s manufacturing sites from its parent company for $11 billion.

Boxes of Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss drug Wegovy in Oslo, Norway, Nov. 21, 2023.
Victoria Klesty | Reuters

Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk’s parent company, Novo Holdings, on Monday said it will acquire drug manufacturer Catalent in a $16.5 billion deal that could help boost the supply of the highly popular weight loss injection Wegovy and diabetes shot Ozempic. 
Catalent is the main supplier of fill-finish work, which involves filling and packaging syringes and injection pens, for Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy. 

Novo Nordisk will then buy three of Catalent’s manufacturing sites from Novo Holdings for $11 billion. Novo Holdings owns almost 77% of the voting shares in Novo Nordisk.
Novo Nordisk and Novo Holdings said they expect the acquisition of the plants and the broader deal to buy Catalent to close at the end of 2024. 
Novo Nordisk added that it expects its purchase to gradually help increase its filling capacity beginning in 2026. The company already contracts the three plants, which are located in Italy, Belgium and Bloomington, Indiana. 
Catalent shares closed more than 9% higher on Monday after the deal announcement. The company has a market value of roughly $10 billion. Novo Nordisk’s stock closed around 4% higher, for a market value of about $407 billion.
Shares of Novo Nordisk jumped almost 53% last year as Wegovy and Ozempic soared in popularity — and slipped into shortages — for their ability to help patients lose significant weight over time.

The Catalent deal is the company’s latest effort to boost manufacturing capacity for its drugs as it faces competition from Eli Lilly and other emerging competitors in the weight loss drug market.
Last year, the company announced plans to invest in new production facilities in Denmark and France. Novo Nordisk also said last week that it has more than doubled the number of Wegovy starter doses it’s shipping to the U.S., which allows more patients to begin the treatment.
Under the terms of the deal, Novo Holdings will buy Catalent for $63.50 a share in cash, a premium of 16.5% to Catalent’s closing price on Friday.
The deal to buy Catalent has the backing of activist investor Elliott Investment Management, which has a stake in the U.S. company, according to Novo Holdings. 
Notably, some of Catalent’s factories that manufacture Wegovy have been linked to regulatory problems in the past. Reuters reported in July that Catalent’s factory in Brussels that fills Wegovy pens had repeatedly breached U.S. sterile-safety rules in recent years and that staff had failed to perform required quality checks.
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The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage hit 7.04% on Monday, according to Mortgage News Daily.
Mortgage rates have been on a wild ride since the summer, briefly crossing to a 20-year high of 8% in October.
With the all-important spring housing market closing in, rates are more important than ever, given high and still-rising home prices.

This photo taken on Aug. 22, 2023 shows an advertisement in front of a real estate for sales in Millbrae, California, the United States. The sales of previously owned homes in the United States dropped 2.2 percent in July from June to a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 4.07 million units, the National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday. Sales were 16.6 percent lower compared with July of last year, while homes were sold at the slowest July pace since 2010. (Photo by Li Jianguo/Xinhua via Getty Images)
Xinhua News Agency | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images

The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage crossed over 7% on Monday for the first time since December, hitting 7.04%, according to Mortgage News Daily.
It comes after the rate took the sharpest jump in more than a year Friday, after the January employment report came in much higher than expected. Rates then moved up even more Monday after a monthly manufacturing report came in high as well.

Mortgage rates have been on a wild ride since the summer, briefly crossing to a 20-year high of 8% in October. Rates then fell sharply, as investors saw more and more evidence that the Federal Reserve would end its latest phase of interest rate increases.

Mortgage rates do not follow the Fed directly, but they follow loosely the yield on the 10-year Treasury, which is heavily influenced by the central bank’s impression of the economy at any given time.
“The rapid increase in rates over the past two days is actually not too surprising given the fact that the market was widely seen as overly optimistic on the Fed rate cut outlook. The Fed has repeatedly pointed to economic data having the final say in that outlook and data has been shockingly unfriendly to rates as of Friday morning’s jobs report,” said Matthew Graham, chief operating officer at Mortgage News Daily.
As mortgage rates fell over the past two months, buyers seemed to be returning to the market. That coincided with a slight uptick in the number of homes for sale. Total inventory, however, is still historically low and is keeping competition high. It is also keeping home prices stubbornly hot.
High prices and low supply combined to make 2023 the worst for home sales since 1995. Most predict 2024 will be better.

“The strong job market is good news for the spring buying season as higher household incomes are a necessary component, but it also means that mortgage rates are not likely to drop much further at this point,” said Michael Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Mortgage applications to purchase a home had been rising steadily, but fell back in the last few weeks, as mortgage rates edged higher. With the all-important spring housing market closing in, rates are more important than ever, given high and still-rising home prices.
The median price of an existing home sold in December (the most recent data) was $382,600, according to the National Association of Realtors, an increase of 4.4% from December 2022. That was the sixth consecutive month of year-over-year price gains. The median price for the full year was $389,800, a record high.
Given how high prices are, even small rate swings are having an outsized effect on monthly payments, which are the final determination of affordability. Just a half percentage point swing can cost or save a buyer more than $200 a month on the median-priced home. So what next?
“The future of rates in 2024 is all about ifs and thens,” said Graham. “If we see more data like last Friday’s jobs report, rates will have a hard time getting back below 7%. But inflation is even more important than the labor market. If inflation comes in cooler than expected, it could balance the outlook.”
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McDonald’s reported mixed fourth-quarter results on Monday.
The fast-food titan beat earnings estimates, but missed on revenue as international markets lagged.
The company said conflict in the Middle East hit its sales in the region.

Visitors are attending a New Year event held by McDonald’s in Shanghai, China, on January 25, 2024. 
Costfoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

McDonald’s reported mixed quarterly results Monday as turmoil in the Middle East took a toll on its sales in those markets.
Shares of the company fell less than 1% in premarket trading.

Here’s what McDonald’s reported compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv:

Earnings per share: $2.95 adjusted vs. $2.82 expected
Revenue: $6.41 billion vs. $6.45 billion expected

The fast-food giant reported fourth-quarter net income of $2.04 billion, or $2.80 per share, up from $1.9 billion, or $2.59 per share, a year earlier.
Excluding the write-off of software that’s no longer in use, restructuring costs and other items, McDonald’s earned $2.95 per share.
Net sales rose 8% to $6.41 billion.
The chain’s global same-store sales grew 3.4% in the quarter, falling short of StreetAccount estimates of 4.7%, as its Middle Eastern sales struggled.

The international developmental licensed markets segment saw its same-store sales increase just 0.7%. McDonald’s said the division’s sales lagged as a result of the Israel-Hamas war.
“The Company is monitoring the evolving situation, which it expects to continue to have a negative impact on Systemwide sales and revenue as long as the war continues,” McDonald’s said in a regulatory filing.
All other markets in the segment, like China and Japan, reported positive same-store sales growth for the quarter.
Domestic same-store sales rose 4.3%, about in line with expectations, helped by menu price hikes. The company also credited effective marketing and digital sales growth.
In the third quarter, McDonald’s said its U.S. traffic fell as low-income consumers pulled back their spending. It was the first sign that diners were beginning to shy away from the chain’s higher prices. McDonald’s has also been rolling out an improved version of its burgers nationwide, as it tries to convince customers that its prices are worth it.
The company’s international operated markets segment, which includes Canada, Australia and Germany, reported same-store sales growth of 4.4%, shy of StreetAccount estimates of 5.1%. Same-store sales shrank in France, however.
For 2024, McDonald’s reiterated its forecast from December that new restaurants will increase its systemwide sales growth by nearly 2%, excluding currency changes. The chain plans to open more than 2,100 new locations this year as part of a broader strategy to accelerate its expansion and reach more customers.
The company also said it will spend between $2.5 billion and $2.7 billion this year on capital expenditures. More than half of that money will go toward opening new restaurants in the U.S. and its international operated markets. More