Financial Analysis - Yum! Brands and Darden Restaurant

McDonald’s Corporation are the most successful and popular fast food brand in the world, holding the largest fast food market share and being the leading fast food restaurant chain in terms of world sales (8%). They are the second greatest outlet operator with more than 34,000 outlets, serving worldwide to 69 million customers daily, across 119 countries. Their brand is the seventh most valuable and

McDonald’s Corporation operates in the food service industry. The company has its restaurants in more than 100 countries of the world. McDonald’s, the world’s largest food chain is headquartered in U.S. having an employee population of 390000 (About McDonald's..., 2008).

Darden Restaurants, Incorporated began with its founder William (Bill) Darden in 1938. At the age of nineteen, Bill opened his first restaurant, The Green Frog, in Georgia. Thirty years later, Bill opened another restaurant, Red Lobster. His focus for the restaurant was to provide quality seafood at affordable prices to landlocked cities. Located in the center of Florida, Lakeland was the perfect city to begin Bill’s restaurant legacy. Offering a prime location, the city sat in the center of the state, one of the furthest points from water in Florida.

McDonald's has successfully created a brand/name for itself as the leading fast food retailer in the world. It is somewhat of impossibility for one to not come across a McDonald's with over 30,000 local restaurants in over 100 countries (McDonald's, 2011). Those restaurants are owned either by a franchise owner or a corporation; a percentage of all the earnings from a franchise owner, including a percentage from their annual revenue go to McDonald's.

Finances were examined in affective processing, in the context of figuring out who should the people invest in to get there profitable outcome. Both MCD and QSR are going to have their differences in what they each bring to the table, however, reviewing the cash flow, income statement and financial activities, this narrative research paper is going to explain what is going to have the greater advantage in the end. The bigger bang for your buck if you will. Processing all the information will give us the insight to figure out this great comparison.

In 2016 the majority of Yum shares are held by U.S.-based institutional investors including Vanguard Group, Corvex Management and State Street Corporation”. (Wong, 2016) The idea was to provide the company with better access to capital markets and to attract investors willing to pay for a piece of this lucrative pie. This fast food chain at the time had “17,000 outlets and more than $900 million cash on hand”. In September of 2016, yum sold a combined $460 million stake to Alibaba affiliate. A Beijing-based investment firm founded by former

Red Lobster is a casual dining seafood restaurant established in 1968 by Bill Darden and Charley Woodsby. The flagship restaurant opened in Lakeland, Florida and expanded in two years to four more locations in Florida. Darden’s goal was to supply customers without easy access to the coast with fresh seafood. In 1970, Darden sold Red Lobster to General Mills and continued as President until 1975. Red Lobster’s rapid expansion across the United States gave Red Lobster the notoriety as the first casual dining restaurant to reach a national market. The restaurant also became the first with national television advertisement. The popularity of a seafood restaurant in inland areas gave General Mills the

Brands, Inc. owns three of the world’s best known fast-food franchises, which are Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut. With a multi-branding strategy, a firm can combine its brands into the same location in order to increase sales and improve operating efficiency.

REFERENCES•www.mcdonalds.com, accessed on 18 July, 2008•www.mcdonldsindia.net, accessed on 18 July, 2008•en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald's, accessed on 19 July, 2008•http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/263943/mcdonalds_strategic_marketing_mix.html?cat=4, accessed on 19 July, 2008•www.kfc.com, accessed on 25 August, 2008

Darden Restaurants owns a number of specialty brands that are located throughout the United States and Canada. These include: the Olive Garden, Red Lobster, LongHorn Steakhouse, the Capital Grille, Bahama Breeze, Seasons 52, Eddie V's Prime Seafood and Wildfish Seafood Grille. The company has 2 thousand locations and they employ 135 thousand people. Their primary markets are middle class to affluent families. ("Our Company," 2012)

Darden Restaurants, Inc. has been a public company since 1995. A company born of the chain Red Lobster, Darden is a recent spin-off as a result of mergers and acquisitions of various types. Publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, Darden (DRI) is the parent company of Red Lobster, The Olive Garden, the now-defunct China Coast concept, and a new “Floribbean” concept: Bahama Breezes.

McDonald’s Corporation is the world’s largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants. There are over 31,000 McDonald’s locations worldwide primarily selling hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken products, french fries, breakfast items, soft drinks, and desserts.

Providing customers with the best of both worlds: west meets east. In addition to its radical strategic approach of localization with regard to its food, they extended that viewpoint when selecting their management team. By hiring Chinese executives, Yum! Brands is able to build relationships with the local suppliers more easily and quickly. It definitely helps with their competitive advantage that chicken is a staple meat in China. Given these factors, it is clear that KFC has a competitive advantage in this market. However, taking a closer look at the industry and thinking longer-term, the competitiveness is undesirable but there is still potential to improve profitability. See the analysis

Today, McDonald's franchise network is the world’s leading food service retailer with more than 30,000 franchise

Pizza Hut is one of the flagship brands of Yum! Brands, Inc., which also has KFC, Taco Bell, A&W and Long John Silver’s under its umbrella. Pizza Hut is the world’s largest pizza chain with over 12,500 restaurants across 91 countries