Sunday, April 17, 2011

Concerns with McDonald's 2009 Financial Statement Notes

Certain Assets Not Measured at Fair Value

The issue here is that MCD’s carrying amount of debt (on B/S) is less than the fair value of its debt obligations. Although correctly classified in accordance with fair value accounting, for analysis purposes it might be a good idea to include the $0.7 billion difference in long-term debt on the B/S.

The effect of including this in the B/S would be adding $0.7 billion to long-term debt and subtracting the same amount from Equity.

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Leasing Arrangements

Of course the operating lease issue is self-explanatory. You can see that MCD’s total minimum lease payments are quite substantial, and could be included in a ratio analysis as both long-term debt and a corresponding LT asset.

The exact effect of converting all Operating Leases into Capital Leases would be to add $8.212 billion to long-term liabilities and the same amount to long-term assets. See attached. Spreadsheet. The fact that this amount is so large (almost 30% of total assets) might suggest that MCD using aggressive accounting methods.

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Impairment and Other Charges

This note discusses an impairment charge to 2007s operating results. The company incurred a substantial pretax impairment charge of $1.7 billion due to the sale of its “Latam” licenses. The company sold its licenses in exchange for a 5% royalty each year for 20 years on Latam’s (Latin America) earnings. The company is recognizing a large impairment charge in one year to offset revenue that it will recognize for the next 20 years. This charge clearly disrupts the results for 2007 and might want to be considered during analysis.

The effect of this LATAM transaction would be to add $1.681 billion back to operating income for 2007. The net effect would be to add $1.32 earnings per share back for 2007. This one-time impairment charge seriously throws off the company’s earnings for 2007, and without the charge one would see much more stable earnings growth for MCD over the past 5 years.

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