Published On: Sun, May 3rd, 2015

McDonalds To Show Its Face With A New CEO’s Strategy

Steve Easterbrook

The new CEO of McDonalds has a new strategy in place to turnaround the struggling company.

The new Chief Executive of McDonalds, Steve Easterbrook is getting ready to reveal a new plan during Monday on how to review growth at a time when the largest hamburger chain in the world is struggling to win back investors and consumers. His main goal will be to try and persuade people like Janna Sampson, who is co-chief investment officer at OakBrook Investments, who have bought shares of McDonalds on the cheap more than a decade ago and gradually increased their shares of the company to 7 million as the company improved its restaurants, enriched their services and expanded their menus with things like salads, wraps and coffees.

However the enthusiasm of Sampson vanished a few years ago as the quarterly sales at the established restaurants started flagging and falling down. During March of 2014 OakBrook sold most of their stocks, figuring that the stock prices were pretty high for a company that didn’t have a clear plan for turning their fortunes around. Easterbrook has said that he sees himself as an “internal activist” who is willing to challenge the current status of McDonalds and make the company a progressive, modern burger giant. Many of the analysts who cover McDonalds are watching things from a distance, twenty of them have held ratings on the stock, one has iterated sell and seven are saying buy, according to data from Thomson Reuters. Most of them expect that Easterbrook will outline more corporate cost cuts, making sales of some restaurants to franchisees and identifying steps to simplify the menu. He could also elaborate on certain plans that include experimenting with new mobile technologies and customized sandwiches. Among the group of option traders there have been many bold bets on McDonald’s turnaround plans in the last week. Some analysts have also stated that they believe Easterbrook has the ability to overcome challenges that McDonalds is facing.

“Management is doing what is in their power to fix the problems,” analyst John Ivankoe of JPMorgan said in a recent note. “This turnaround will take time obviously and we will have to be patient.” Many other industry experts have stated that the company needs to look into what some franchises call the identity crisis which is rooted in the company’s will to be everything for everyone.

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