Darden Restaurants Inc (NYSE:DRI) shares are trading higher in premarket on Thursday.
The company reported third-quarter revenue growth of 6.2% year-on-year to $3.158 billion, missing the analyst consensus estimate of $3.215 billion.
The sales growth was driven by a blended same-restaurant sales increase of 0.7% and sales from the acquisition of 103 Chuy’s restaurants and 40 net new restaurants.
Darden clocked an operating margin of 13.2%, and the operating income rose 7.9% to $418.2 million.
Adjusted EPS of $2.80 beat the consensus estimate of $2.79.
Darden generated an operating cash flow of $1.25 billion for the nine months. It held $238.7 million in cash and equivalents as of February 23, 2025.
Also Read: NVIDIA And Elon Musk’s xAI Join BlackRock, Microsoft Led AI Infrastructure Partnership
Inventories at the end of third quarter were $324.6 million.
Darden’s Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $1.40 per share, payable on May 1, to shareholders of record on April 10.
During the quarter, the company repurchased approximately 0.3 million shares of its common stock for a total of $53 million. As of the third quarter end, the company had approximately $548 million remaining under the current $1 billion repurchase authorization.
Guidance: Darden Restaurants continues to see FY25 sales of about of $12.1 billion with an estimate of $12.092 billion. Same-restaurant sales growth of approximately 1.5%.
The company expects FY25 adjusted EPS of $9.45 – $9.52 (prior view $9.40 – $9.60) against an estimate of $9.48.
Price Action: DRI shares traded higher by 1.51% at $191.00 in premarket at last check Thursday.
Read Next:
Photo by Sundry Photography via Shutterstock.
Disclaimer: Investing carries risk. This is not financial advice. The above content should not be regarded as an offer, recommendation, or solicitation on acquiring or disposing of any financial products, any associated discussions, comments, or posts by author or other users should not be considered as such either. It is solely for general information purpose only, which does not consider your own investment objectives, financial situations or needs. TTM assumes no responsibility or warranty for the accuracy and completeness of the information, investors should do their own research and may seek professional advice before investing.