McDonald's close to decision on structure of U.S. real estate: WSJ

(Reuters) - McDonald's Corp <MCD.N> is close to deciding what, if anything, to do with its massive U.S. real estate holdings, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

McDonald's has not made a decision yet, but "we have had a lot of review and a lot of debate," the company's board member Miles White told the WSJ in an interview.

A McDonald's spokeswoman person said the company's senior leaders will discuss more on the business strategy at its investors meeting in November.

McDonald's sales have slumped in recent times and that made some investors and analysts recommend the company spin off its U.S. holdings, likely as a real-estate investment trust, saying the move would benefit shareholders, the WSJ said.

The company's directors and executives have evaluated "the long-term role of real estate" in sustaining McDonald's performance and its context in a global business model, White told the Journal.

McDonald's get a significant part of revenue from its real estate, with rent payments from franchisees rising 26 percent to over the past five years to $6.1 billion in 2014, the WSJ said.

That was a fifth of total revenue of $27.4 billion in a year when overall sales and profit fell, the newspaper reported.

(Reporting by Subrat Patnaik and Rosmi Shaji in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza)