News - Middle East: The McDonald’s fast food chain has experienced its first decline in global sales in almost four years, significantly affected by a boycott campaign initiated by Palestinian supporters around the globe amid the ongoing Israel’s war on Gaza.

McDonald’s worldwide sales dropped by 1% in the April-June period, marking the first decline since the fourth quarter of 2020 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and government-imposed restrictions, the company reported on Monday.

The ongoing anti-Israel boycott was not addressed in the report explicitly, which instead attributed the decline to customers being "more discriminating with their spend."

McDonald's blamed the decline in sales to a decrease in US customer traffic, partially mitigated by price increases, as well as the continued impact of the war in West Asia and reduced demand in China.

The report showed that the net income of McDonald’s decreased 12 percent to a little over $2 billion in the second quarter of the year. The global decline in comparable sales, which covers company-owned and franchised stores open for at least 13 months, marks the first fall since the last quarter of 2020.

 “While quarterly revenue of $6.49bn was roughly unchanged from a year ago, net profit declined 12 percent to $2.02bn, missing Wall Street expectations,” said Chris Kempczinski, the company’s chief executive.

Kempczinski told analysts that consumer sentiment in most major McDonald’s markets was low.

McDonald’s has more than 40,000 restaurants in over 100 countries. Its international sale declined by over 1% has prompted the company to issue a caution about the negative impact of the Gaza war on its operations in certain nations in the West Asia region  along with Indonesia and Malaysia.