The fast-food restaurant is pushing back the reopening of its dining rooms by 21 day
Fast-food chain Mcdonald's Corp (NYSE:MCD) last night said it was pausing its plans to reopen its dine-in services by 21 days amid an alarming spike in the coronavirus. MCD hasn't come away from the past several months of take-out only options, the firm reported a 30% dip in global sales during the first two months of the current quarter. In response to the news, MCD is trading close to the breakeven, up 0.4% at $185.50 at last check.
While MCD did manage an impressive rally off its March three-year lows, it was swiftly rejected by pressure at the $200 level, which coincides with its year-to-date breakeven. Since pivoting lower, it has had to contend with several other layers of tension on the charts, including its 180-day moving average, and more recently, its 10-day moving average. Year-over-year, MCD is off 11.9%.
Despite this less-than-stellar price action, analysts are still quite bullish, which could lead to some downgrades and/or price-target cuts down the road. Eighteen covering MCD still call it a "buy" or better, compared to seven that say "hold." Plus, its consensus 12-month price target of $207.28 is an 11.7% premium to current levels.
Options players are unusually optimistic, too. This is per MCD's 50-day call/put volume ratio of 2.16 at the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Cboe Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX), which sits higher than 86% of readings from the past year.
Echoing this is MCD's Schaeffer's open interest ratio (SOIR) of 0.79, which stands in the low ninth percentile of its annual range. This implies short-term options traders have rarely been more put-biased.