Favorable sales of half-priced hamburgers boosted earnings of McDonald's Co. (Japan) last year, with its sales for 2000 expanding 9.3 percent to a record high of 431.1 billion yen for the seventh straight year-on-year rise, the company said Wednesday.

The Japanese unit of fast-food giant McDonald's Corp. of the United States has halved the prices of its hamburgers on weekdays since February 2000, resulting in the number of hamburgers sold on weekdays jumping 4.8 times from a year earlier.

Den Fujita, president of the Japan unit, said the number of middle-aged salarymen visiting McDonald's restaurants has skyrocketed since the introduction of the half-priced hamburgers, reflecting the effect of the prolonged economic slump on their pocket money.

However, the company's pretax profit for the reporting year marked the first decline in seven years, falling 6.7 percent to 29.2 billion yen due to investment in new production equipment, it said.

For 2001, the company said it expects earnings to grow further.

Fujita said a possible reshuffle of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's Cabinet will boost the yen against the dollar, enabling the company to reduce import costs for raw materials.

"Japanese people are not fed up with rice and in the same way, we have had people in the hamburger generation who do not get sick of hamburgers," he said.