McDonalds built a huge global fast-food empire and they are going to be around for a while. They still make most of their profits on real estate - the own the properties and lease them back to the franchiser. McDonald's is sitting on billions of dollars of prime real estate. But unless they change their business plan for the restaurants, they are going to begin suffering a decline in fast-food market share. There are just too many outlets out there doing fast-food better.
Perhaps McDonald's is also doing poorly in the U.S. But the initial article says that all 7 countries where McDonald's is pulling back from, or entirely out of, are in the Middle East or Latin America!