Below are two stock charts, of Starbucks Japan [?????????????????] (JP: 2717) versus McDonald’s Japan Hldg [????????????????] (JP: 2702) over the calendar year and one-year period. Starbucks had a nice run up over the past 52-weeks, but is in negative territory when looking at a year-to-date chart. McDonald’s has been mostly range bound, seemingly not moving more than 10% total in either direction. As of Friday’s close (9/7), Starbucks Japan was trading at 29.7 times trailing earnings vs. nearly 171x for McDonald’s Japan. On a forward basis, Starbucks is trading at around 23x earnings (yr-end 3/2008) vs. McDonald’s at about 59x (yr-end 12/2007). As for price-to-book, 3.0x for Starbucks and 2.1x for McDonald’s. They both have a pretty high level of shareholders’ equity ratio at 62% for Starbucks and 67% for McDonald’s. However, return on equity [ROE] is much higher at Starbucks, 10.75% vs. 1.2% at Starbucks. McDonald’s has a US$ equivalent market cap of about $2.3 billion vs. $655 million for Starbucks. Note McDonald’s Japan reported its best monthly sales ever in August, Y46.4 billion ($410M), +11.3% year-over-year, helped reportedly by sales of “limited time only” products like ?????, offering more 24-hours stores, and the August 29th opening of 15 McCafe (??????) stores. Click below for charts.

YTD chart

1-year chart