Arabi Post Tracks What Major American Companies Officially Acknowledged to Investors

McDonald’s U.S. branches faced a broad boycott campaign in the early days of the war on Gaza after its franchisee in Israel published photos showing that it was donating thousands of meals daily to the Israeli army while the Strip was under bombardment.

Globally, McDonald’s operates through three main segments: the United States; internationally operated markets with local partners; and the international developmental licensed markets segment, known as IDL. This segment includes more than 75 countries, including markets in the Middle East, North Africa, and Islamic countries that witnessed widespread boycott campaigns during the war.

Most restaurants in this segment operate under a franchise or developmental license model, meaning they are run through local operators and investors who own or manage the rights to operate restaurants under the McDonald’s brand in exchange for royalties and fees paid to the parent company, often calculated as a percentage of sales. As a result, declining demand first affects the local operator, and its impact then appears on McDonald’s through lower sales-linked fees and royalties.

We analyzed the details of the risk disclosures McDonald’s provided in its annual reports. The analysis showed that the Middle East did not appear in the 2022 report as a specific source of risk to the company’s business.

But that changed in the 2023 report, in which McDonald’s said its sales and revenues were negatively affected in the final quarter of 2023, particularly in the segment that includes Middle Eastern markets, and expected this impact to continue as long as the war continued.

In the same disclosure, the company revealed a notable measure that coincided with the escalation of boycott calls in the Arab world: it said it had provided some franchisees affected by the war in the Middle East with support that included reducing royalty fees and deferring the collection of cash amounts due.

2024 was the most important test, as it was the first full year of the war and boycott. In that year’s report, the company no longer spoke of an impact that began in the final quarter of 2023; rather, it said its sales and revenues had continued to be negatively affected by the war in the Middle East, adding that this impact could persist until the war ends and macroeconomic conditions recover.

The impact of the war on McDonald’s in 2024 coincided with a decision the company made that same year: acquiring 228 restaurants in Israel that had been operated by the local franchise company Alonyal.

The deal itself does not prove that the boycott was the main and sole reason for the company’s decision regarding its brand in Israel, but it changed the nature of the company’s relationship with the Israeli market, from restaurants operated through a local franchisee to a more direct presence by the parent company.

Risk disclosure was not the only thing reflecting pressure on the company amid the war and boycott. The figures McDonald’s provided show a clear shift in the performance of the segment that includes its Middle Eastern outlets.

In 2022, this segment was one of McDonald’s strongest growth drivers, recording 16% growth in “comparable sales.” Comparable sales is a metric that measures sales at the company’s existing branches only, excluding the effect of new branch openings, and therefore helps assess customer activity at existing locations rather than the impact of expansion.

In 2023, even though the war began in the final quarter of the year, the segment continued to grow by 9.4%. But in 2024, the first full year of the war and boycott, the growth metric declined, recording a decrease of 0.3%.

Notably, McDonald’s itself attributed the decline in comparable sales in this segment to two factors: the continued impact of the war in the Middle East and lower sales in China.

Features of the slowdown also appear in a broader metric: “systemwide sales,” meaning total sales at restaurants owned by McDonald’s and those operated by franchisees. In the segment that includes its Middle Eastern outlets, growth in this metric fell from 9% in 2023 to 0% in nominal terms in 2024, coinciding with the peak of boycott calls targeting the company.

KFC does not appear as an independently listed company with a separate annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Rather, it appears as a brand and operating division within Yum! Brands, which also includes Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and Habit Burger & Grill.

KFC is the group’s largest brand, with a network of tens of thousands of restaurants around the world, most of them outside the United States and the majority operating under a franchise model. This model makes the brand more exposed to shifts in consumer behavior in international markets: declining customer demand first affects the local franchisee, then reaches the parent company through franchise and licensing fees and sales-linked royalties.

Yum! Brands submits its annual report on a consolidated basis, but it breaks down performance by brand, making it possible to read the performance of KFC and Pizza Hut independently within the parent company’s disclosures.

In its 2024 report, Yum! Brands emerged as one of the clearest cases in this investigation. The company did not merely refer generally to geopolitical risks or sales pressures; it devoted a separate section titled “Middle East Conflict”, in which it said that some of its markets had begun to be affected since the fourth quarter of 2023, the period in which the war on Gaza began and calls for boycott escalated.

The company identified the two most affected brands: KFC and Pizza Hut. It also named the markets where the impact was clearest: the Middle East, Malaysia, and Indonesia—markets that witnessed broad boycott campaigns during the war.

Yum! Brands estimated the impact of these markets on its global comparable sales growth at about one percentage point during 2024, while acknowledging that the impact extended to other markets and trade areas where its scale is difficult to determine precisely.

One percentage point may seem limited, but it becomes significant when measured against systemwide sales of $65.5 billion, as it is mathematically equivalent to around $655 million. This does not mean it was a proven direct loss, but it illustrates the scale of the impact the company officially measured, while acknowledging that the actual effect may have been broader.

The company’s risk language evolved across the reports it filed during the war on Gaza. In its 2023 report, Yum! Brands used explicit wording about “consumer boycotts of Western brands” among the risks linked to geopolitical conflicts and consumer reactions.

But in the 2024 report, the language became more specific about the impact and less direct in naming the boycott. The company said sales in some of its markets were negatively affected during 2024 by the conflict in the Middle East, but replaced the phrase “consumer boycotts” with the softer wording of declining consumer sentiment toward Western brands.

As for the 2025 report, the more direct wording receded, and a broader phrase appeared about rising anti-American sentiment, alongside instability and conflicts in the Middle East. This shift does not negate what appeared in the 2023 and 2024 reports, but it reveals the company’s language moving from clearly naming the boycott and consumer reactions to broader, less specific expressions.

The indicators did not stop at the language of risk. The figures disclosed by Yum! Brands show a clear decline in the performance of KFC and Pizza Hut during the first full year of the war and boycott.

The indicators did not stop at the language of risk. The figures disclosed by Yum! Brands show a clear decline in the performance of KFC and Pizza Hut during the first full year of the war and boycott.

In 2024 specifically, the decline was not the result of a drop in the number of outlets. On the contrary, KFC continued to expand and increased its number of restaurants worldwide, but sales at existing outlets declined. This divergence between geographic expansion and declining comparable sales suggests that opening new restaurants was not enough to obscure the pressure on existing markets, amid the peak of the war and boycott.

As for Pizza Hut, the other brand within Yum! Brands, it appeared more affected in the figures, as its comparable sales moved from 2% growth in 2023 to a -4% decline in 2024, then remained negative in 2025 at -1%. Thus, Pizza Hut did not recover at the same pace that later appeared in KFC.

Burger King is part of Restaurant Brands International, known as RBI, a company registered in Canada and listed on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges.

Alongside Burger King, the group owns other brands: Tim Hortons, the Canadian coffee chain; Popeyes, the American fried chicken chain; and Firehouse Subs, a sandwich chain the company acquired in 2021.

Parent company

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Burger King does not appear in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings as an independent company with a separate annual report, but rather as a brand and operating segment within the parent company, which submits its annual report on a consolidated basis.

The company presents its performance through segments that combine brand and geography, with separate segments for each of its brands in the United States and Canada, and a single international segment covering all brands’ operations outside the United States and Canada.

In the fourth quarter of 2023, the same period in which the war on Gaza began and boycott campaigns escalated, RBI created a separate financial segment called “INTL”, short for international operations.

This segment includes the operations of the four brands outside the United States and Canada, including markets in the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

The company does not say that creating this segment was due to the war or the boycott, and its financial disclosures do not establish that. But the timing is notable: since then, the performance of international operations, which include markets that witnessed broad boycott campaigns during the war, has appeared in a separate segment that can be tracked.

A review of RBI’s disclosures between 2022 and 2025 shows that the company gradually moved from general wording about risks in international markets to including boycotts and the Middle East in its risk language after the war began.

In the 2022 report, the company merely referred to the risks of operating outside the United States and Canada, including anti-American or anti-Canadian sentiment, without naming the Middle East as a specific source of risk and without using the word “boycott.”

But in the 2023 report, filed months after the war began, the word “boycotts” entered the list of risk factors in international markets, within a context discussing anti-American or anti-Canadian sentiment and social and political unrest.

In the same report, the company added a paragraph on the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, saying these conflicts could continue to negatively affect economic conditions, including through reduced demand for brands associated with America or Canada.

In its 2024 report, the language grew firmer. Instead of speaking only of a potential impact, the company said that the conflicts have adversely affected, and may continue to adversely affect, its business. It added that declining profitability among affected franchisees could delay the development and opening of new restaurants.

In the 2024 report, the wording became more forceful. Instead of speaking only of a potential impact, the company said the conflicts had negatively affected, and could continue to negatively affect, its business. It added that declining profitability among affected franchisees could delay the development and opening of new restaurants.

In the 2025 report, however, the language shifted toward broader wording. Instead of focusing solely on Ukraine and the Middle East, the company referred to the Ukraine-Russia conflict and tensions in the Middle East, Latin America, and East Asia. Thus, the Middle East became part of a wider list of geopolitical risks, after having been more prominent in the 2023 and 2024 disclosures.

The wording also moved from the sense of an ongoing impact to a more general phrase stating that these tensions had affected and may affect the company in the future—language that is less specific in describing the continuation of the current impact.

In terms of figures, the international markets segment of Burger King’s parent company and the other brands shows a clear slowdown in international operations. Comparable sales growth fell from 15.4% in 2022 to 9% in 2023, then to 3.3% in 2024, the first full year of the war and boycott, before partially rising to 4.9% in 2025.

These figures show that the international operations segment lost a significant share of its growth momentum between 2022 and 2024. This is not enough to say that the boycott alone explains the decline, because the segment includes multiple regions and brands, but the slowdown occurred in the segment that includes Middle Eastern markets and countries that witnessed boycott campaigns during the war.

Notably, the slowdown did not appear only in sales at existing branches, but also in expansion. Net restaurant growth—that is, new branches after subtracting closures—fell from 9.1% in 2022 to 6.1% in 2024, then to 4.9% in 2025.

This simultaneous decline in comparable sales and branch openings differs from the case of KFC, where the number of restaurants continued to expand strongly despite declining sales at existing branches. In RBI’s case, however, signs of pressure appear in both directions: slower growth at existing branches and a slowdown in new restaurant openings.

Among the seven companies whose financial disclosures Arabi Post reviewed, Coca-Cola appears to be the clearest in naming the impact of the boycott. In the risk disclosure section of its annual reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company acknowledged that boycott campaigns resulting from political activism had reduced demand for its products.

Coca-Cola differs from the restaurant companies we examined. It does not primarily rely on operating branches or granting franchises, but on selling concentrates to local bottling companies. Concentrates are the basic, concentrated mixture of the beverage, which bottling companies purchase and then mix locally with water, sugar or sweeteners, and carbonation before bottling and distribution.

For that reason, the parent Coca-Cola company’s figures appear less severe than those of other companies, but its disclosure language was more explicit. In its 2023 report, the company wrote that boycott campaigns resulting from political activism had reduced demand for its products.

In its 2024 report, the company added an explicit reference to its operations facing disruptions due to international conflicts, including conflicts in the Middle East, and acknowledged that it had at times faced boycott campaigns that led to reduced demand for its products.

In its 2025 report, Coca-Cola retained its general acknowledgment of boycotts and disruptions resulting from international conflicts, but it no longer mentioned the Middle East by name as it had in its 2024 report.

The significance of this shift is also reflected in the figures for the Eurasia and Middle East operating unit, which includes key Arab and Islamic markets. Performance here is measured using the unit case volume metric—that is, the number of beverage units sold rather than their dollar value. This metric is therefore particularly important because it provides a closer measure of actual consumer demand, independent of the effects of inflation or currency fluctuations.

The figures show a clear turning point. After strong growth of 8% in 2022, the Eurasia and Middle East operating unit entered negative territory in 2023—the year in which the war on Gaza began in its final quarter and the boycott intensified—and the decline deepened to -2% in 2024, the first full year of the war and boycott. In 2025, the unit returned to growth, posting a 7% increase.

These figures are not sufficient to conclude that the boycott alone explains the decline, as other factors such as currency fluctuations, inflation, and conditions in individual markets also played a role. However, their significance stems from two concurrent facts: the company itself acknowledged that boycott campaigns reduced demand for its products, and the Eurasia and Middle East unit declined during the two years that witnessed the peak of the war and boycott.

Coca-Cola also notes in its disclosures other factors that affected some areas of its business, including the suspension of operations in Russia. However, this explanation alone is not enough to account for what appeared specifically in the Eurasia and Middle East unit. The company reports the impact of Russia within the performance of the Europe unit under its Europe, Middle East, and Africa segment, not within the Eurasia and Middle East unit.

Moreover, the suspension of business in Russia was announced in March 2022, meaning its impact began before the 2023 fiscal year, although it may still have affected comparisons between 2023 and 2022, since 2022 included part of the company’s Russian operations before the suspension.

The brand known in the Middle East as Pepsi is part of the broader parent company PepsiCo, which, in addition to the Pepsi beverage, owns a wide portfolio of consumer brands including Lay’s, Doritos, Cheetos, Gatorade, Mountain Dew, Quaker, and Bubly.

The Pepsi case is particularly sensitive among boycott supporters because of two brands linked to Israel, directly or indirectly. The first is SodaStream, an Israeli company acquired by PepsiCo in 2018.

The second is Sabra, the well-known hummus brand in the U.S. market, which was jointly owned by PepsiCo and the Israeli Strauss Group until PepsiCo acquired Strauss’s remaining stake on December 3, 2024, making Sabra wholly owned by PepsiCo.

This makes Pepsi different from some of the other companies in this investigation. It owns, or has owned, partnerships in brands that are sensitive among boycott supporters, while also maintaining a significant presence in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa—markets that include countries where widespread boycott campaigns took place during the war on Gaza.

The company grouped these markets within an operating segment called AMESA (Africa, Middle East, and South Asia). Beginning with the 2025 fiscal year, however, PepsiCo restructured its reporting segments and merged AMESA with Europe into a broader segment.

This move does not in itself prove that the company intended to obscure the impact of the boycott, as restructuring may simply have been a routine managerial decision. In practice, however, it changed the ability of external readers to track the performance of Middle Eastern and South Asian markets within the company’s disclosures as they previously could. The figures may still exist internally, but they no longer appear as a separate segment in public reporting.

A review of the risk language in PepsiCo’s reports shows a pattern similar to that of other companies. In its 2022 report, there was a general reference to the possibility that consumers might reduce purchases of the company’s products or publicly boycott them, and the Middle East was mentioned among the risks associated with developing and emerging markets.

However, the report did not yet link the Middle East to an ongoing conflict or specific geopolitical tensions—wording that would become clearer in later reports after the outbreak of the Gaza war.

In the 2023 report, the boycott entered the company’s disclosures in stronger terms. PepsiCo stated that certain factors had reduced, and could continue to reduce, consumers’ willingness to purchase some of its products, including as a result of public boycott campaigns.

In the 2024 report, two notable shifts occurred. First, the company explicitly named the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East for the first time in disclosures within this context. Second, it added a striking reference to growing negative consumer sentiment toward non-local products.

In the 2025 report, the explicit reference to the “Middle East” disappeared from the risk disclosure text and was replaced by broader wording about geopolitical events and tensions, wars, and military conflicts. However, the company retained two key phrases: negative sentiment toward non-local products and reduced consumer willingness to purchase certain products, including as a result of public boycott campaigns.

The AMESA segment was the operating unit that encompassed Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia within PepsiCo. Its significance in this investigation stems from the fact that it grouped together key markets that experienced boycott campaigns or were affected by the atmosphere surrounding the war.

The company attributed the decline in AMESA’s revenues in 2023 primarily to a significant negative impact from currency fluctuations, driven in particular by the weakness of the Egyptian pound, in addition to a decline in organic volume.

Even so, net revenue increased by only 1%, supported by pricing and organic volume growth in other markets, while being pressured by a negative nine-percentage-point impact from currencies.

Then came 2025 without a standalone figure for the AMESA segment, after PepsiCo restructured its reporting segments. The change was not simply a complete merger of AMESA with Europe; rather, its operations were distributed among new segments, including Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Since that adjustment, historical comparisons of PepsiCo’s performance in the Middle East and South Asia have become more difficult for external readers, because the segment that once grouped these markets together no longer appears on its own in the annual disclosures.

The AMESA figures do not mean that the boycott alone explains the decline. The segment is broad and includes dozens of markets, and its figures are influenced by currencies, inflation, pricing changes, and the performance of different products. PepsiCo does not provide a complete country-by-country breakdown within the segment, nor does it separately disclose the performance of brands such as SodaStream or Sabra within it. The available disclosures also distinguish only between beverage revenues and convenient foods revenues at the segment level, not at the level of individual brands or countries.

Starbucks was among the prominent companies that faced calls and campaigns to boycott its stores during the war on Gaza. Its disclosures filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission show that boycotts appeared during that period among the risks that could affect the company’s business, although the documents do not explicitly link these boycotts to Gaza.

Globally, Starbucks operates through more than one model. In the United States, Canada, and China, the company directly operates a large number of its cafés, while in other markets, including the Middle East and North Africa, it relies on a licensing model under which it grants a local partner the right to use its brand.

In the Middle East and North Africa, the licensed partner is Kuwait’s Alshaya Group, which operates a wide network of Starbucks stores. In May 2024, Alshaya Group announced the layoff of more than 2,000 employees from the Starbucks network in the Middle East, attributing it to “difficult trading conditions.”

Reuters, however, said at the time that Alshaya Group’s decision came as the business was affected by consumer boycotts over the war in Gaza. The group’s announcement of the layoffs came around seven months after the start of the war on Gaza, at a time when the brand was facing widespread boycott campaigns in Arab and Islamic markets.

An analysis of Starbucks’ risk disclosures from 2022 through 2025 shows the boycott appearing more clearly in the company’s reports. It is worth noting that Starbucks’ fiscal year does not end at the end of December like the other companies, but usually ends in late September or early October each year.

In the company’s 2022 report, the word “boycotts” appeared, but in general contexts, without linking it to a specific campaign against Starbucks or to the Middle East. In the 2023 report, the company also discussed boycotts among the risks, again without linking them to the Middle East.

But in the 2024 report, the boycott appeared more prominently. The company moved the reference to boycotts into the list of “Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements,” one of the early pages of the report, and added that “allegations, even if untrue,” that the company does not respect internationally recognized human rights or that it takes positions on social or geopolitical issues could adversely affect the value of its brand.

In the 2025 report, Starbucks moved to its most direct wording on the boycott, saying that “negative commentary about the company, even if inaccurate or malicious,” had harmed the value of its brand in the past and could harm it in the future.

In the same disclosure, the company acknowledged the role of social media platforms, video-sharing services, and instant messaging in accelerating the spread of negative commentary or publicity, sometimes before it has an opportunity to investigate or respond.