Ian Borden
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at McDonald's
Thanks, Chris, and good morning, everyone. As Chris noted, the QSR industry remained challenged and our performance in 2024 fell short of our expectations. Pressure on spending persists, in particular, with two significant cohorts of our consumer base, low-income and families, particularly in Europe. Still, we're confident that our accelerating the Arch's strategy, which is rooted in customer insights and built on our inherent competitive advantages is right for our business to win in 2025 and beyond. With respect to our quarter-four performance, global comp sales growth was slightly positive. In the US, quarter-four comp sales were negative, reflecting the impact of the food-safety incident. When we met last quarter, we committed to bringing the full resources of McDonald's to bear to reengage the customer and we did just that.
As Chris mentioned, by the beginning of Q2, we expect to have fully recovered. The immediate actions we took to identify the cause allowed us to quickly shift the focus to regaining our customers' trust and reigniting their brand affinity. Throughout November and December, we saw sequential improvement in baseline traffic performance, including slightly positive comp guest count growth for the month of December and had a positive comp guest count gap to most near-end competitors for the 4th-quarter. These results were driven by our marketing efforts to amplify traffic drivers. This includes additional investment in our national value campaign and always-on digital and media plans to drive momentum. In our international operated market segment, comp sales performance this quarter was slightly positive due to mixed results across the individual markets, including negative comps in the UK.
While QSR industry traffic was positive in only two of our big five markets, we had a positive comp guest count gap to most near-end competitors across the majority of our largest markets. During a difficult time for the industry, we have acted with urgency and remained steadfast in continuing to focus on what's within our control, including refining and providing compelling value propositions, introducing exciting menu innovation and leaning into our One McDonald's Way approach to marketing by driving brand strength, building cultural relevance and connecting with our customers and crew in exciting ways. For example, on our value propositions, Canada has paired everyday affordable price or EDAP menus with strong meal bundles through the Canadian menu, which features the $5.79 meal bundle and a $1 coffee EDAP offering, which drove coffee share gains in the quarter.
Canada not only provided great value offers, but paired them with full margin promotions that connected with our fans through culturally relevant campaigns. One example is the Grinch meal, which generated nearly 30 million impressions on social media, our highest user-generated content ever in Canada. These all help to drive positive sales and guest count performance in the market, including positive guest count gap to near-end competitors for the entirety of the 4th-quarter. And in Germany, we've continued to meet customers where they are even with a difficult industry backdrop. While QSR industry traffic in Germany has continued to contract further since the 3rd-quarter, we have continued to drive market-share gains by expanding upon the already successful McSmart menu now offering a range of meal bundle options introduced at the end of September.
We are seeing incrementality to the business, driven by the extended value offerings and by layering on exciting menu news with full margin items such as Dur or the Big Arch as well as the Big Rosty, which had made its annual return. In other markets such as Spain, we have continued to outperform the competition by driving strong execution of our the strategy, including continuing to focus on value through Menu for you, which is a branded equity that we have been able to capitalize on for over three years and delivering on digital execution with a month-long Christmas calendar, boosting engagement on the app and driving an increase in identified users. We also saw success from our One McDonald's Way approach to marketing, combining cultural relevance with global reach through a Friends TV show themed adult Happy Meal featuring our core menu items, including six friends characters and a themed dipping sauce. The campaign provided a significant lift to our top-line with a social media reach expanding well beyond just Spain.
All of this contributed to the market's strong comp sales and guest count performance in the quarter as well as share gains for both the quarter and the year. France, a market that we've talked about all year, started to see signs of improvement with positive comp sales and guest count gaps to nearing competitors for the 4th-quarter. These results were driven by our partnership with Hot Ones, providing three fiery sauces to fans, each one spicier than the next, being one of the most talked about campaigns over the last few years in the market. We've also seen the success of the EUR4 Happy Meal, which has resonated with families, driving an improvement in their brand perceptions around value and affordability and a lift in the Happy Meal category. We are encouraged by these signs of progress internationally and we'll continue to build upon the actions taken in 2024 so that we have a strong foundation for growth in 2025.
Finally, in our International Developmental License segment, comp sales for the quarter were over 4%, largely driven by positive results in the Middle-East and Japan. In the Middle-East, the positive sales comp largely reflected lapping the impact of the war that began in October of 2023. And in China, we're seeing encouraging signs of stabilization. In short, while the global QSR industry remains challenging, we're confident in our competitive strengths across our MCD growth pillars and our strong execution against the value expectations of our customers. Our ability to continually evolve to stay ahead of the customer positions us for success in any economic environment.
Turning to the P&L, adjusted earnings per share were $2.83 for the quarter, a 4% decrease compared to the prior year in constant currencies, reflecting the pressure on our top-line. Results also reflect higher other operating expense as well as the comparison to a prior year property sale gain. For the full-year, adjusted operating margin was just over 46%, with top-line results generating more than $14.5 billion in-restaurant margin dollars for the year, providing evidence of the resiliency of our business model.
Lastly, before I hand it back over to Chris, I want to touch briefly on our capital expenditures and free-cash flow profile. Our capex spend for the year was just under $2.8 billion. More than half was invested in new restaurant unit expansion across our US and IOM segments, which enabled us to deliver on our openings target for the year. Our capex spend was slightly above the high-end of the range we provided for the year as we invested more toward our future year development pipeline, setting us up for success as we continue to increase our pace of openings.
Our free-cash flow conversion for the year was 81%, below our expected 90% range due to pressures on-top line performance and higher capital spend to accelerate new restaurant growth. We have continued to follow our capital allocation priorities for the year. After investing to support long-term growth of the business, we returned $7.7 billion of cash to shareholders through a combination of dividends and share buybacks. We remain committed to returning all excess free-cash flow to shareholders over-time.
I'll talk about our 2025 outlook shortly, but first, let me hand it back over to Chris.