Darden Restaurants, the owner of numerous restaurant chains including Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse, on Tuesday reported higher-than-expected earnings and guidance for its first fiscal quarter of 2017.
The restaurant group reported adjusted earnings per share of $0.88, higher than analyst estimates of $0.82 a share. Revenue missed slightly at $1.71 billion against estimates of $1.72 billion.
Sales increased by 1.6% across all Darden restaurants, higher than the estimated 1.4% rise. Olive Garden saw a sales increase of 2% over the same quarter last year, much higher than estimates for a 1.4% bump.
Darden also increased its outlook for the full year, raising earnings-per-share guidance to $3.87 to $3.97 for all of fiscal year 2017; the company had previously projected a range of $3.80 to $3.90 a share.
“We continued to gain market share and our same-restaurant sales growth outperformed the industry by a considerable margin,” CEO Gene Lee said in a press release. “We also returned significant capital to shareholders in the form of our regular dividend and $196 million in share repurchases.”
Following the news, shares of Darden were up by just under 6% in premarket trading at $65 a share, a $3.64 jump from Monday's close, as of 7:40 a.m. ET.
