DARDEN (DRI) REPORTS STRONG AUGUST QUARTER, DRIVES STOCK TO ALL TIME HIGH, SUPPORTS FULL SERVICE CASUAL DINING SECTOR

Darden (DRI) reported a strong quarter, driving its stock up 6.1% today to an all time high of $159. The “pin action”, as this is written, has moved Bloomin’ Brands up 5.25%, BJ’s up 4.3%, Cracker Barrel up 4.0%, Brinker up 6.3%, Ruth’s Chris up 4.1%, Red Robin up 7.1%, and Texas Roadhouse up 2.5%.

We consider Darden management, led by CEO Gene Lee, to be “best of breed” among full service dining companies, and their conference call commentary is uniquely candid and invariably instructive. The following is a summary of the results and their conference call discussion. We have underlined what we consider the most insightful of their remarks.

Q1’22, ending 8/29/21, in which the Company bought back $186M of stock, showed EBITDA of $370M, and diluted EPS from continuing operations of $1.76/share. That compares to 8/25/19 when EBITDA was about $288M and EPS was $1.38. Over the same two year period consolidated comp sales were up 4.8%, including Olive Garden (OG) down 1.5%, Longhorn Steakhouse (LH) up 20.9%, Fine Dining (FD) up 12.6%, and Other Business Virtually Flat.

MARGIN AND SALES DISCUSSION

The two year comparison, from Aug’19 to Aug’21 showed:  CGS 150 bp higher with investments in food quality and pricing below inflation, labor 110 bp lower due to efficiencies from operational simplification, including a narrower menu at OG, (partially offset by higher wages), Other Operational expenses 110 bp lower due to sales leverage, and marketing 220 bp lower. Consolidated restaurant level EBITDA at DRI was 290 bp better at 20.9%, and G&A was 30 bp higher (mostly stock compensation). Q1 at OG showed flat sales (because two years ago included “Buy One, Take One”) with segment profit margin up 220 bp. LH showed sales up 26% with profit margin up 250bp. Helping at LH is the 40% fewer crew members than at OG and relatively heavy geographical concentration in states such as GA and FL.  Fine Dining sales were up 24% with profit margin up 490bp, as pent up demand and increased Sunday dining have helped. The digital platform continued to grow, representing 60% of all off-premise sales, and off-premise sales were 27% at OG, 15% at LH.  They had previously used PayPal (used for 25% of mobile app transactions) and added Apple Pay and Google Pay during the quarter.  

INTRA-QUARTER SALES TRENDS, SEPTEMBER SO FAR

Q1 sales started strong in June, strengthened further and peaked in July, slowed in August with the Delta Variant, finishing Q1 at +4.8% cumulatively. Company comps are up 7% first three weeks of September. There have been some cancellations of large parties inside Fine Dining, but management still expects a strong holiday season.

STAFFING & SUPPLY CHAIN COMMENTARY

Top priority in Q1 was staffing of restaurants. Introduced was a new talent acquisition program that allows applicants to apply and schedule an interview within 5 minutes or less. Social media and a digital platform is netting more than 1,000 new team members per week, and staffing is now 90% of pre-Covid levels. The success of this enhanced recruiting effort has been more important, one way or another, than the ending of supplemental unemployment benefits. Staffing has been complicated by the contract tracing and quarantining requirements when an employee has been exposed to one of the Covids.  While stores are not 100% staffed, management does not believe they will need as many as previously due to productivity improvements during Covid. Hoping to hang on to current margins, as sales and operations normalize. (“no reason why we can’t hang on to these margins”).

Another important influence during Q1 was the supply chain challenge, as shortages and higher freight costs are now leading to 4% cost inflation and a planned 2% menu price increase.

GUIDANCE

Guidance versus the pre-Covid year ending 5/20 includes total sales growth up 7-9% over the two years. Total cost Inflation is expected to be about 4%, with commodities up 4.5% and total restaurant labor up 5.5%, including hourly inflation of about 7%. For the year ending 5/22, management expects EBITDA of $1.54B to $1.6B, with diluted EPS of $7.25 to $7.60 on $9.4B of sales. Have to go back to the year ending 5/19 to get a full year’s normalized comparison, which was $8.5B of revenues and $5.73/share of earnings from continued operations. Over three years, therefore, from 5/19 through 5/22 sales would be up about 10% and EPS (at the ’22 midpoint of $7.43) would be up about 30%.

OFF PREMISE, INCLUDING DELIVERY

They are not going to promote delivery, and don’t want to go too aggressively after off-premise in general  (“on the weekends, we have to throttle the off premise business”) because they don’t want to affect dine-in operations. A modest catering effort is improving but is not significant to the total.

MARKETING

There is very little couponing now, only about 1% of sales, and the check increase has only been about 2.5% over the last two years, less than the industry average of about 5%. The sales strength at LH can be attributed to its geographical footprint in states like Fl and GA.  Fine Dining sales trends are still lackluster in major cities like NYC (down 40%) and others, but there has been an uptick in Suburbia, apparently from pent up demand and better Sunday activity.  “Last 6-8 weeks have felt some pressure in Georgia and Florida….Texas in a world of its own, Northeast is performing OK but  has never really come back, have felt the Variant to varying degrees in Tennessee, KY, West Va…..Doesn’t make sense to advertise aggressively when restaurants are still not 100% staffed…we’re not going to know what the full potential at equilibrium is for a while…we don’t want to be discounting off a value platform……we’ve got to figure that out….we need to see what the competitive environment is…..and see what the economic backdrop is. Darden has not been pushing the Loyalty program during Covid, considering it a form of discounting (to highest use consumers)… “we were seeing positive trends in our loyalty program, a point based discount program, but  we don’t think that is the right way, in the long run, to do loyalty in the restaurant business”.

Roger Lipton