MCD · NYSE · Consumer Discretionary · Restaurants
Next earnings: November 4, 2026
$233.63-1.2%Sep 28 close
McDonald’s sells meals and drinks through company-run restaurants and earns rent, royalties and fees from franchised and licensed restaurants.
McDonald's Corp. pays its shareholders every quarter.
Paid out each year as a share of the share price
$1.86 every quarter
Every year we hold — the real record may be far longer
Of earnings, paid out rather than kept
Dated by ex-dividend day — the day you must already own the shares to be paid.
A dividend is not a promise. Companies cut them, and a high yield is often a share price that has fallen rather than a payment that has risen. This describes what has been paid, not what will be.
Payments come from the corporate-actions record rather than from the filings. The XBRL tag for dividends covers only about a fifth of filers and arrives in a zoo of units, so the actual per-share cash — dated, with one-off specials flagged — is the more reliable source. The filings still answer whether earnings cover the payment.
The annual figure is the last 4 regular payments, not a rolling 365 days. A year-long window catches three payments or five depending on where its boundary lands — Exxon’s misses an August ex-date by two days and understates the yield by a quarter — so the count is what is summed, and a partial set publishes nothing rather than a low number.