McDonald's Corporation (MCD) Management Presents at 11th Annual UBS Global Consumer and Retail Conference (Transcript)

McDonald's Corporation (NYSE:MCD) 11th Annual UBS Global Consumer and Retail Conference March 9, 2022 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Kevin Ozan - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Dennis Geiger - UBS

Dennis Geiger

Good morning again. I am Dennis Geiger, Restaurants analyst at UBS. I am pleased to welcome and excited to have with us this morning, Kevin Ozan, CFO of McDonald's. McDonald's is the largest restaurants chain in the world with more than 40,000 restaurants globally with leading share and momentum in many of those key markets, and has an exciting and unique growth trajectory. So, we want to welcome Kevin. Thanks so much for joining us this morning, Kevin.

Kevin Ozan

Yes, thanks for having me, Dennis. Good to see you.

Question-and-Answer Session

Q - Dennis Geiger

Terrific. So, I want to start out maybe first, Kevin, with an announcement that you and team made yesterday. McDonald's announced the decision to temporarily close 850 restaurants in Russia, while continuing to pay more than 60,000 employees in the country. Can you talk about that decision?

Kevin Ozan

Yes, sure. Certainly since the beginning of this crisis, our number one priority has been our people. So, we previously indicated that we have been continuing to pay salaries of all of our Ukraine folks even though obviously all the restaurants there are closed. To your point, yesterday we announced that we were temporarily closing all of our restaurants in Russia, and pausing all of our operations there. As you would imagine, this is a really challenging and complex situation for a global brand like us. We have been doing business in Russia for decades. We are certainly a part of the communities throughout the country where we feed and support a lot of people in the country. We've indicated that we will continue to pay all of our employees in Russia that's both