MCD Dividend Calculator
Dividend growth rate (CAGR)
| Year | Yield | Div / share | Annual income | Yield on cost | Cumulative income | Portfolio value | Shares |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2.6% | $7.26 | $264.00 | 2.1% | $264.00 | $13,059 | 45.89 |
| 2 | 2.7% | $7.85 | $360.11 | 2.4% | $624.11 | $16,322 | 55.42 |
| 3 | 2.8% | $8.48 | $470.14 | 2.7% | $1,094 | $19,811 | 65.00 |
| 4 | 2.9% | $9.17 | $596.06 | 3.0% | $1,690 | $23,550 | 74.66 |
| 5 | 3.0% | $9.91 | $740.11 | 3.4% | $2,430 | $27,566 | 84.45 |
| 6 | 3.2% | $10.72 | $904.91 | 3.7% | $3,335 | $31,889 | 94.40 |
| 7 | 3.3% | $11.58 | $1,093 | 4.1% | $4,429 | $36,556 | 104.56 |
| 8 | 3.5% | $12.52 | $1,309 | 4.5% | $5,738 | $41,604 | 114.99 |
| 9 | 3.6% | $13.54 | $1,557 | 4.9% | $7,295 | $47,081 | 125.74 |
| 10 | 3.8% | $14.63 | $1,840 | 5.4% | $9,135 | $53,036 | 136.87 |
Year 1-10 dividend income (preview)
Based on a $10,000 initial investment with $200.00 monthly contributions, DRIP on.
Historical dividends per share
Recent dividends
| Ex-date | Cash amount | TTM yield | Fwd yield | Share price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-03-03 | $1.86 | 2.2% | 2.2% | $332.17 |
| 2025-12-01 | $1.86 | 2.9% | 2.5% | $303.57 |
| 2025-09-02 | $1.77 | 2.8% | 2.2% | $315.76 |
| 2025-06-02 | $1.77 | 2.8% | 2.3% | $312.68 |
| 2025-03-03 | $1.77 | 2.3% | 2.3% | $304.29 |
| 2024-12-02 | $1.77 | 2.3% | 2.4% | $292.44 |
| 2024-09-03 | $1.67 | 2.3% | 2.3% | $285.52 |
| 2024-06-03 | $1.67 | 2.5% | 2.6% | $259.75 |
| 2024-02-29 | $1.67 | 2.2% | 2.3% | $292.28 |
| 2023-11-30 | $1.67 | 2.2% | 2.4% | $281.84 |
| 2023-08-31 | $1.52 | 2.2% | 2.2% | $281.15 |
| 2023-06-02 | $1.52 | 2.5% | 2.1% | $289.91 |
Source: Polygon.io. Last 12 dividend distributions, most recent first. TTM yield = sum of last 12 months of payments ÷ share price on ex-date. Forward yield = this payment × detected payout frequency ÷ share price on ex-date.
About MCD
McDonald's Corporation — ticker MCD — is one of the longest-running dividend payers in the US equity market and a Dividend Aristocrat with a streak of roughly four-and-a-half decades of consecutive annual increases dating to 1976. The streak places McDonald's solidly in the Aristocrat bracket — defined as twenty-five consecutive years of increases for an S&P 500 constituent — and approaching but not yet inside the fifty-year Dividend King threshold. That continuity is one of the central reasons MCD occupies a permanent place in many income-focused portfolios designed around streak-based quality screens.
McDonald's operates in the Consumer Cyclical sector under most sector taxonomies, specifically the restaurants industry. The cyclical label deserves a footnote, however, because the cash-flow profile of McDonald's is structurally less cyclical than a typical full-service restaurant operator. The reason is the franchise-and-real-estate business model, which is the defining feature of how MCD generates the cash that funds the dividend. Roughly ninety-five percent of McDonald's restaurants worldwide are operated by franchisees rather than by the company itself, and McDonald's collects revenue from franchisees in two distinct streams: a royalty on sales, and rent on the real estate that McDonald's frequently owns or leases and sub-leases to the operator. Both streams are recurring, contractually structured, and substantially less variable than the operating margin of a company-owned restaurant business would be.
This structural point matters for a dividend-focused reader because it shapes the risk profile of the cash stream that supports the dividend. A typical restaurant operator's cash flow is sensitive to commodity costs, labor inflation, and consumer-traffic shifts in ways that compound at the unit-economics level. McDonald's royalty-and-rent stream is sensitive to franchisee sales — which does fluctuate with traffic and pricing — but the royalty rate is fixed by contract and the rent is fixed by lease, so the corporate cash flow is more like a recurring license-and-real-estate stream than like a direct-operations stream. The combination of high franchise mix, broad geographic diversification, and a real-estate-anchored capital structure gives the company a cash-flow profile that has historically supported the dividend through commodity cycles, labor shifts, and consumer-spending downturns.
The dividend mandate has been built into the company's capital-allocation policy for decades. Management has consistently prioritized maintaining and growing the dividend alongside reinvestment in the menu, technology stack, and franchisee support programs, with share repurchases as a substantial secondary lever. The credit-rating profile sits in the investment-grade range. The balance sheet carries meaningful debt — typical for large, franchise-heavy restaurant operators that use leverage to support real-estate ownership and share repurchases — but the debt is well supported by the recurring royalty-and-rent cash flow. Expense ratio is not applicable to individual stocks — the figure you'll see in the calculator above is zero, since there is no fund wrapper between you and the underlying shares.
The dividend has never been cut in the streak window. It has occasionally grown more slowly than longer-term averages in particular years, but the per-share amount has never been reduced or suspended — which is the relevant test for a Dividend Aristocrat.
How MCD pays dividends
McDonald's pays cash dividends quarterly, on a March–June–September–December cadence. The board declares the per-share amount each quarter; the ex-dividend date typically falls in the first half of the second month of the quarter, and the pay date falls about two weeks later. Holders who own shares as of the close on the day before the ex-date receive the dividend; holders who buy on or after the ex-date wait for the next quarterly payment. On the ex-date the share price drops by approximately the distribution amount on the open, reflecting the fact that the company has paid the cash out of its balance sheet.
Holders who DRIP through their broker receive additional shares purchased at the prevailing market price around the pay date. Most major brokers offer fractional-share DRIP for MCD, so the full cash distribution is reinvested even when the per-share amount divided by the share price doesn't produce a whole number. The mechanics are identical to any other quarterly US dividend stock — there is no managed-distribution policy, no covered-call overlay, and no return of capital. The cash that funds the dividend comes from operating free cash flow generated primarily by franchisee royalties and the real-estate rent stream rather than from direct restaurant operations, which is the structural distinction that gives MCD's dividend its relatively stable funding base.
Recent growth pattern: MCD has typically raised the quarterly per-share amount once per year, usually announced in October for a December pay date. The size of the annual hike has historically run in the mid-to-high single digits — comfortably above long-run inflation and structurally consistent with what a mature, franchise-heavy restaurant business can support out of free cash flow. The pattern of one cleanly compounded increase per year is the same as for most US large-cap dividend growers.
Because the increase happens once per year rather than spread over four quarters, the year-over-year dividend growth rate compounds cleanly. The calculator on this page uses a recent dividend growth rate to project the income line forward; you can override this with a custom growth rate if you want to model a more conservative or more optimistic path.
MCD's dividends are qualified for the long-term capital-gains rate in taxable accounts, given the standard sixty-day holding-period rule (the share must be held for more than sixty days during the 121-day window centered on the ex-date). Most buy-and-hold investors clear this threshold easily. In tax-advantaged accounts the qualified-dividend treatment is moot because no current-year tax applies; the structural advantage of a long-running dividend grower in a Roth IRA or 401(k) is the compounding of share count via DRIP without tax friction.
Who MCD suits
MCD suits investors who want a long-streak Aristocrat with a different underlying cash-flow shape than the typical Dividend King — specifically, a royalty-and-rent stream funded by a global franchise network rather than direct operating earnings from company-owned stores. The yield typically sits in the low-to-mid single digits — above the broader S&P 500 average and structurally consistent with other mature Aristocrats, though typically below the yield of pure consumer-defensive Kings like KO or PG and well below the high-yield levels of stocks like AT&T or Verizon. The trade-off is the canonical Aristocrat one: a moderate current yield in exchange for a long, unbroken streak of annual raises and a balance sheet that has historically supported the streak through full economic cycles.
The most useful framing for MCD relative to other Aristocrats is the cash-flow-shape distinction. KO, PEP, and PG generate cash from consumer-defensive product sales; JNJ from pharmaceuticals and medical devices; MCD from franchise royalties and rent. These different cash-flow shapes produce different risk profiles. The royalty-and-rent stream is structurally less sensitive to commodity costs and direct labor inflation than a company-owned-restaurant model would be, but it is sensitive to franchisee health and franchisee sales trends. Against diversified dividend ETFs such as SCHD or NOBL (the latter being specifically a Dividend Aristocrats ETF), MCD offers concentrated single-name exposure with a long streak; the ETF wrappers diversify across many names at the cost of giving up MCD's specific yield profile.
In taxable accounts, MCD's dividends are qualified for the long-term capital-gains rate, given the standard holding-period rule. In tax-advantaged accounts the treatment is moot. As with any single-stock position, this content is educational only; it is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold MCD, and individual circumstances vary. Restaurant-specific risks — including franchisee financial health, regional consumer-spending shifts, and labor-cost trends in major markets — are real and should be weighed against the dividend continuity and the franchise-and-real-estate cash-flow structure that have historically supported the streak.
Hypothetical scenarios
Scenario 1: $10,000 invested in McDonald's at the start of 2000
Consider a hypothetical purchase of $10,000 of McDonald's stock at the start of 2000. At that point the dividend streak was already nearly a quarter century long, and the company was a globally distributed quick-service restaurant operator with the franchise-and-real-estate model already firmly in place. The 2000 entry price implied a per-share figure in the low-to-mid forties on a split-adjusted basis, and the initial $10,000 would have purchased a couple hundred shares.
Holding from 2000 through to the present, with quarterly dividends reinvested via DRIP, three forces compound together. First, the per-share dividend grew each year as the company continued the streak — over the multi-decade window, the per-share figure increased many times over, supported by steady royalty-and-rent cash flow from the global franchise base and ongoing menu and technology investments at the corporate level. Second, the share count grew as DRIP reinvested every quarterly distribution at the prevailing market price; share count growth alone, independent of price, would have meaningfully increased the income line by the end of the period. Third, the share price climbed broadly in line with long-run US consumer-cyclical performance, with the McDonald's-specific real-estate-anchored business model contributing a structurally more stable cash-flow profile than would be typical of a direct-operations restaurant peer.
The illustrative outcome is not a precise dollar figure — actual returns depend on the exact reinvestment prices, dividend taxes paid along the way in a taxable account, and the specific entry and exit timing. The structural point is that all three forces — per-share dividend growth, share-count growth from DRIP, and long-run price growth — compounded against the same initial position for a multi-decade window, and the annual dividend income at the end of the period is an order of magnitude larger than the year-one income. The franchise-and-real-estate model gave the cash flow that funded the dividend a steadier shape than would typify a more operations-heavy restaurant peer. MCD is offered as a structural illustration, not a forecast.
Scenario 2: $50,000 today plus $500/month for 20 years
Consider a hypothetical accumulation strategy in McDonald's: $50,000 starting capital, plus $500 per month added on a regular cadence for 20 years. The calculator on this page can model this exactly — set Initial investment to $50,000, Extra contribution to $500, Contribution frequency to Monthly, time horizon to 20 years, and leave DRIP on.
The mechanics: each month, the new $500 buys additional shares at the current price, which adds to the share count and therefore to next quarter's dividend. Each quarter, the dividend received from all accumulated shares is reinvested, adding more shares at the prevailing price. Over 20 years this dual-track accumulation — DCA contributions plus dividend reinvestment — produces a position large enough that the annual dividend stream alone meets a meaningful portion of a typical income target, even before considering any potential price appreciation on the position. Because MCD's per-share dividend growth has historically run in the mid-to-high single digits, both the share-count side and the per-share side of compounding contribute materially to the income line over a 20-year window.
What's worth focusing on in the calculator is not the year-20 portfolio total but the annual dividend column in the projection table. The first few years are slow because the base of dividend-generating shares is small; by year ten the annual dividend has grown significantly above year one as both the per-share amount and the share count have climbed; by year twenty the income line has compounded substantially. That ramp is the structural argument for combining DCA with a long-streak Aristocrat like MCD: the contribution side builds the share base while the dividend-growth side scales the income each of those shares produces. These scenarios assume the historical pattern of dividend growth continues at a similar rate. Real outcomes depend on MCD's future capital allocation, franchisee health and sales trends, the path of US and international restaurant demand, tax treatment in your specific account, and the broader path of US equity markets. Educational only; not a forecast.
Sources & methodology
Dividend history and price data come from Polygon.io's reference and aggregates endpoints. Forward yield is computed as the sum of the most recent four cash distributions divided by the previous-close share price. The dividend growth rate shown on this page is the compound annual growth rate of total annual distributions across the available history in this snapshot.
Last updated: 2026-05-15.
Information here is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Past dividend history does not guarantee future payments. Verify all figures with the issuer or a registered financial advisor before making investment decisions.