McDonald’s Q1 results loom, investors watch sales recovery and value strategy

McDonald’s latest earnings update will land Thursday before the market opens, with an 8:30 a.m. ET presentation and Wall Street looking for roughly $2.75 a share on about $6.48 billion in revenue. For crew members and managers, the bigger question is not the headline number. It is whether the company’s value strategy is bringing enough customers back to stabilize schedules, or whether it is only masking a still-fragile traffic picture.

That matters because McDonald’s entered this year carrying a warning from its own U.S. business. In the first quarter of 2025, domestic same-store sales fell 3.6 percent, the worst decline in McDonald’s home market since the 8.7 percent drop in the second quarter of 2020, when pandemic lockdowns hammered restaurant traffic. CEO Chris Kempczinski said then that low- and middle-income consumers were pulling back, and later described the U.S. consumer as a “two-tier economy.” Restaurant traffic from low-income consumers fell by almost double digits, while middle-income traffic fell by nearly as much.

That backdrop is why investors will parse every word about the $5 McValue platform, other discount offers and any mention of premium items. If McDonald’s says value menus are finally pulling more people back into stores, that could translate into steadier hours, less erratic staffing and fewer scramble shifts for workers who have lived through the chain’s long-running fight over wages, scheduling and labor intensity. If traffic is still weak, managers may keep labor tight and lean harder on speed, upselling and cross-training to make each shift cover more work.

Franchisee tone will be another tell. Franchise owners usually feel traffic swings first, and their read on margins will hint at whether promotions are helping or simply trading down sales. If franchisees sound squeezed, store-level employees may feel it quickly in tighter labor budgets and more pressure to keep service times down while value orders climb.

The report also carries a longer-term workforce signal. McDonald’s said in December 2023 it wanted 50,000 restaurants globally by the end of 2027, up from 43,477 locations at the end of 2024, and it said in early 2026 it was aiming for about 2,600 gross openings this year. That sounds like promotion potential, from shift lead to assistant manager and beyond, but only if the economics of the business stay healthy enough to fund growth. Thursday’s numbers will show whether McDonald’s is building on a real recovery or pushing harder on value because its customers, and its stores, are still under pressure.