Darden Restaurants Lifts FY17 Earnings View, Backs Sales Growth Forecast

(RTTNews) - Darden Restaurants, Inc., (DRI) on Tuesday lifted its outlook for fiscal 2017 net earnings per share to $3.87 to $3.97 from previous estimate of $3.80 to $3.90. The company continues to expect annual same-restaurant sales growth of approximately 1.0% to 2.0%.

In its first quarter, net earnings increased to $110.2 million from last year's $86.4 million. Earnings per share from continuing operations increased 39.7% to $0.88. Excluding last year's adjustments, earnings per share grew 29.4%.

Total sales from continuing operations increased 1.6% to $1.71 billion from $1.69 billion a year ago.

Same-restaurant sales increased 1.3% for the quarter

CEO Gene Lee said, "We continued to gain market share and our same-restaurant sales growth outperformed the industry by a considerable margin."