The SEC does not judge companies' strategy: it requires them to state it. Every company listed in the United States must file standardised documents, whose content is prescribed, and which engage the liability of its executives.
The consequence, for anyone studying a group like McDonald's, is decisive. What the company declares to its shareholders is not a sales pitch: it is a regulatory, certified and enforceable document. Form 10-K sets out the breakdown of revenues — fees, rent, initial fees — which can be found, at the scale of a single restaurant, in the accounts of a French franchisee in the 1990s.
These documents can be consulted free of charge by anyone, via the EDGAR database.