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Chicago - McDonald's said on Monday that sales of breakfast items in the US and "robust" results in France, the UK and Germany helped produce its best quarterly same-store sales in three years and better-than-expected second-quarter earnings, before charges.
That sent shares of the Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonald's, also a component of the Dow industrials, higher in pre-market trading from Friday's close of $51.91.
The world's largest fast-food company said that a move, announced in April, to sell nearly 1 600 existing restaurants to a franchiser in Latin America and the Caribbean will cost it nearly $1.6bn, or about $1.33 a share.
That will be offset with a gain of about 2c a share for eliminating the depreciation on those assets from its books beginning in mid-April.
When it all shakes out, McDonald's said its second-quarter bottom line will fall to a loss of 60c a share. If the extraordinary items are subtracted, McDonald's said its earnings from operations would be about 71c a share.
On that basis, the results are notably above the 67c a share average estimated reached by analysts reporting to Thomson Financial.
Same-store sales, the industry's growth measure of receipts rung up at stores open longer than a year, advanced 8.4% in June, on top of last year's 5.9% increase.
In the US where McDonald's has been aggressively pushing its gourmet coffees, same-store sales were up 4.2%, reflecting a slower year-over-year increase than last June's 5.2%.
However, in Europe, McDonald's second-largest market, same-store sales vaulted 11.1% after last year's 4.5% increase, underscoring that continent's string of healthy monthly same-store sales.
In the Asia Pacific/Middle East/Africa division, a considerably smaller segment, same-store sales jumped 12.1% and were up 8.8% in the year-ago period driven primarily by strong sales growth in Japan, Australia and China.
For the quarter that ended June 30, worldwide comparable-store sales were up 7.4% after last year's 5.5% increase. In the US, the quarterly receipts were up 5%, a better year-over-year gain compared with last year's 4.2% increase in June.
In Europe, the numbers were 7.8% in the most recent quarter compared with 6.3% a year ago. The APMEA division turned in a 10.9% increase in same-store sales after last year's 7.2% rise.
McDonald's credited its results with the "ongoing strength" of the company's breakfast business and the everyday values as well as the variety of choices on menus.