Bill Gates’s investment firm sold its shares in the world’s largest independent McDonald’s Corp. franchisee, exiting a holding owned for more than five years.
Cascade Investment no longer owns shares in Arcos Dorados Holdings Inc., having previously held a stake of about 7% in the company now worth almost $40 million, filings show. The Microsoft Corp. co-founder’s charitable trust, which previously held about 2.4%, also sold its shares.
Cascade Investment and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation first invested in Arcos Dorados, an operator of McDonald’s stores across Latin America and the Caribbean, in early 2014. Shares in the Montevideo, Uruguay-based company — whose name means “Golden Arches” in Spanish — have since fallen by more than half. In August, Arcos Dorados reported a 60% drop in revenue for the three months ended June 30 from a year earlier, hurt by the coronavirus pandemic.
Shares of Arcos Dorados slid 1.2% to $4.26 at 9:38 a.m. in New York, and have tumbled 47% this year.
Gates, 64, has parlayed the proceeds of Microsoft into a global empire of listed assets through Cascade Investment, ranging from railroads to agricultural businesses to construction firms. He has a net worth of $123 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Representatives for the Gates family and Arcos Dorados didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.
