MCD vs. SBUX, CMG, YUM, DRI, DPZ, TXRH, EAT, CAKE, WEN, and PZZA
Should you be buying McDonald's stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of McDonald's include Starbucks (SBUX), Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG), Yum! Brands (YUM), Darden Restaurants (DRI), Domino's Pizza (DPZ), Texas Roadhouse (TXRH), Brinker International (EAT), Cheesecake Factory (CAKE), Wendy's (WEN), and Papa John's International (PZZA). These companies are all part of the "restaurants" industry.
McDonald's vs. Its Competitors
Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) and McDonald's (NYSE:MCD) are both large-cap retail/wholesale companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, earnings, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, risk, dividends, media sentiment and valuation.
72.3% of Starbucks shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 70.3% of McDonald's shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.1% of Starbucks shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 0.3% of McDonald's shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
Starbucks currently has a consensus target price of $98.81, indicating a potential upside of 6.25%. McDonald's has a consensus target price of $321.17, indicating a potential upside of 10.20%. Given McDonald's' higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe McDonald's is more favorable than Starbucks.
McDonald's has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Starbucks. McDonald's is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Starbucks, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Starbucks has a beta of 1, indicating that its share price has a similar volatility profile to the S&P 500.Comparatively, McDonald's has a beta of 0.56, indicating that its share price is 44% less volatile than the S&P 500.
McDonald's has a net margin of 31.75% compared to Starbucks' net margin of 8.61%. Starbucks' return on equity of -42.14% beat McDonald's' return on equity.
Starbucks pays an annual dividend of $2.44 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.6%. McDonald's pays an annual dividend of $7.08 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.4%. Starbucks pays out 88.4% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. McDonald's pays out 62.5% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Starbucks has increased its dividend for 15 consecutive years and McDonald's has increased its dividend for 49 consecutive years.
In the previous week, McDonald's had 28 more articles in the media than Starbucks. MarketBeat recorded 120 mentions for McDonald's and 92 mentions for Starbucks. Starbucks' average media sentiment score of 0.83 beat McDonald's' score of 0.77 indicating that Starbucks is being referred to more favorably in the media.
Summary
McDonald's beats Starbucks on 10 of the 19 factors compared between the two stocks.
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New MarketBeat Followers Over Time
This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding MCD and its top 5 competitors to their watchlist. Each company is represented with a line over a 90 day period.
Media Sentiment Over Time
This chart shows the average media sentiment of NYSE and its competitors over the past 90 days as caculated by MarketBeat. The averaged score is equivalent to the following: Very Negative Sentiment <= -1.5, Negative Sentiment > -1.5 and <= -0.5, Neutral Sentiment > -0.5 and < 0.5, Positive Sentiment >= 0.5 and < 1.5, and Very Positive Sentiment >= 1.5.
McDonald's Competitors List
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This page (NYSE:MCD) was last updated on 6/30/2025 by MarketBeat.com Staff
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