MCD and PEP, Revisited: Six Signals We Said to Watch, Scored

What These Two Companies Actually Do

McDonald’s (MCD) is mostly a landlord and franchisor. About 95% of its 46,000+ restaurants are run by franchisees. McDonald’s collects rent and royalties from them rather than selling most of the burgers itself. The restaurant industry is dealing with price-sensitive customers and a battle over value menus.

PepsiCo (PEP) sells snacks and drinks. Its profit engine is North America snacks, a unit called PepsiCo Foods North America (PFNA), which is the old Frito-Lay. Packaged food has had a hard stretch. Shoppers are pushing back on price, and investors are worried that GLP-1 weight-loss drugs will cut snacking.

Why We’re Back

We covered both names this summer. The McDonald’s piece ran on 8/18/2026 and the PepsiCo vs. Coca-Cola comparison ran on 7/22/2026. Each ended with three signals to watch. Both stocks kept falling after that. MCD returned −11.7% from 8/18 to 9/29/2026, and PEP returned −4.1% from 7/22 to 9/29/2026, both on a total-return basis.

In the past week, several dividend commentators on YouTube have called both stocks cheap, long-streak dividend payers “on sale.” Those fair-value calls are their claims, not ours, and they didn’t check the signals we laid out. This piece does.

Neither company has reported a new quarter since our pieces ran, though McDonald’s did announce its annual dividend raise on 9/17 (more on that below). McDonald’s reported Q2 on 8/4 and PepsiCo on 7/9. Our original pieces used FY2025 figures. Here we use the latest filed trailing-twelve-month (TTM) figures through Q2 2026. The prices moved much more than the reported numbers did.

Performance and yield figures are historical and may change. Total return includes price movement and distributions where available. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Yield is not the same as total return.

The Price Move, With Dates

The five-year total-return chart at the top compares MCD, PEP, and SCHD. Over that span SCHD is up nearly 60%, MCD a bit under 10%, and PEP roughly flat, so the gap opened well before this summer. SCHD sits in the upper part of its 52-week range ($26.32–$35.31, now $32.85), about 7% below its high. MCD ($233.98) and PEP ($128.69) both sit just above their 52-week lows of $232.06 and $126.42. MCD is about 31.5% below its 52-week high of $341.75.

This matters for the “on sale” argument. Dividend stocks as a group fell far less: SCHD returned −4.1% over MCD’s window and +0.6% over PEP’s. Both of these declines are specific to the company, and each has its own cause. Two one-day moves stand out:

• PEP, 9/18/2026: fell 2.9% ($133.66 → $129.75) to a fresh 52-week low with no earnings or company news. KO rose 0.2%. Volume was about 23.5M shares, roughly three times normal, on a quarterly options-expiration and index-rebalance day, which can move a stock without any new information.
• MCD, 9/23/2026: fell 4.8% ($250.35 → $238.32) on its investor day. YUM held roughly flat.

The Scorecard at a Glance