MCDMcDonald's
Is it safe?
Nothing alarming, nothing pristine: comfortable debt (A) and steady price behavior.
Investment-grade balance sheet. A rule of thumb on leverage, not a credit rating.
Relatively steady, low volatility. Worst drawdown -37% · now 30% below its 52-week high.
Where this answer is blind. Altman sits structurally low for utilities and pipelines; Beneish runs high for fast growers, since sales growth alone lifts it; banks and REITs are excluded.
Can MCD take a bad year?
McDonald's carries $39.0B of net debt at 2.59× EBITDA: a load its earnings can carry.
Net debt · as at Q2 2026 · between two and four years of EBITDA, normal for a stable business
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 2.59×
Net debt / EBITDA · 2.81× a year ago · the load is coming down
- Interest cover
- 7.88×
Interest cover · operating profit covers the interest bill several times over
- Annualised volatility
- 18%
Annualised volatility · about as steady as the market itself
Details›
- Total debtQ2 2026
- $39.9B
- Cash and short-term investments
- $822M
- Net debt
- $39.0B
- EBITDA, trailing twelve months
- $15.1B
- Operating profit, trailing twelve months
- $12.8B
- Total debt / EBITDA
- 2.65×
- Annualised volatilitytwo years of daily moves
- 18%
- Worst drawdown on file
- −37%
- Below its 52-week high
- 30%
Balance sheet from SEC filings; drawdown and volatility from end-of-day closes; Altman Z from the filed statements.
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