DRI
DARDEN RESTAURANTS INCEvidence as of 2026-10-16The desk's Snapshot
3 of 15 open to everyone · members see allRead the full desk report on DRI
Seven analysts, the debate, the risk review, every claim cited. And the same for every name you hold.
Free plan, no credit card required. Silver opens the full report, $19.99 a month. AI-written · every claim cites a source · Insight, not advice.
Overview · DARDEN RESTAURANTS INC
Darden Restaurants, Inc., through its subsidiaries, owns and operates full-service restaurants in the United States and Canada. It operates under Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen, Yard House, The Capital Grille, Seasons 52, Bahama Breeze, Eddie V's Prime Seafood, and Capital Burger brands. Darden Restaurants, Inc. was founded in 1968 and is based in Orlando, Florida.
Management team
- Ms. Sarah H. King · Senior VP & Chief People OfficerFind on LinkedIn
- Mr. Douglas J. Milanes · Senior VP & Chief Supply Chain OfficerFind on LinkedIn
- Ms. Susan M. Connelly · Senior VP and Chief Communications & Public Affairs OfficerFind on LinkedIn
- Mr. Daniel J. Kiernan · President of Olive GardenFind on LinkedIn
Start free to see the full management team.
Links open LinkedIn searches, not verified profiles. Team data from our market-data vendor's company profile.
Moneyta sentiment
Where the published evidence leans after the desk debated it, not a rating or a recommendation.
−0.4 on a −2 to +2 scale.
What builds the score
Solid bars are analyst rubric scores; faded bars are computed directly from data. Claims dropped in debate count for nothing; weakened claims count at half weight.
Editor's note
Written after the debate settled. The rest of the page is the evidence behind it.
The evidence balance is Cautious ( -0.4 ), with high confidence in the surviving claims. Revenue in fiscal Q1 2027 (fiscal quarter ended 2026-09-21) was $3,200,300,000 versus $3,345,300,000 in fiscal Q3 2026 (fiscal quarter ended 2026-03-16), $3,102,100,000 in fiscal Q2 2026 (fiscal quarter ended 2025-12-15) and $3,044,700,000 in the prior-year fiscal Q1 (fiscal quarter ended 2025-08-24).
Gross profit and gross margin in fiscal Q1 2027 were $602,900,000 and about 18.8%, below the $703,600,000 and ~21.0% reported in fiscal Q3 2026; operating income in fiscal Q1 2027 was $319,300,000 (operating margin ~10.0%) with net income of $233,400,000 and diluted EPS of $2.04. The record also shows ongoing capital returns — repurchases of $220,800,000 in fiscal Q1 2027 and a steady decline in shares outstanding to 113,143,224 as of 2026-09-21 — while long-term debt declined to $1,636,100,000 as of 2026-08-30.
How this note was made
every stage ran before the note was writtenAnalyst desk
Mercer, Oakes, Nash, Ellis, Yates, Talbot and Archer. The desk: named AI agents, not people. Each reads one slice of the evidence and nothing else (no outside knowledge, no browsing), so every finding traces to a source you can open.
Reads the XBRL figures companies file with the SEC (revenue, margins, income, debt and share count, quarter by quarter) and reports which way the trend is running.
Revenue for the fiscal quarter Q1 2027 (2026-06-01 to 2026-08-30) was $3,200,300,000, compared with $3,345,300,000 in fiscal Q3 2026 (2025-11-24 to 2026-02-22), $3,102,100,000 in fiscal Q2 2026 (2025-08-25 to 2025-11-23) and $3,044,700,000 in the prior-year fiscal Q1 (2025-05-26 to 2025-08-24).
XBRL companyfacts · 0000940944-26-000042Gross profit by the same quarters was $602,900,000 (fiscal Q1 2027), $703,600,000 (fiscal Q3 2026), $581,300,000 (fiscal Q2 2026) and $574,300,000 (prior-year fiscal Q1), producing gross margins of ~18.8% (602.9/3,200.3) in fiscal Q1 2027, ~21.0% in fiscal Q3 2026, ~18.7% in fiscal Q2 2026 and ~18.9% in the prior-year fiscal Q1.
XBRL companyfacts · 0000940944-26-000042Reads the filings themselves, above all the year-over-year diff of Item 1A risk factors: which risks a company added, dropped or quietly reworded since its last annual report.
Which filings the desk reads
The desk reads the annual 10-K in full: its risk factors, and how they changed since last year. Quarterly 10-Qs and event filings (8-Ks, insider Form 4s) are listed for context but not read line by line: the 10-K is where the material risk disclosures live. A brand-new company, or one we have only just begun tracking, may have no annual report on file yet; its risk analysis fills in once that lands.
The company's 10-Q filed 2 October 2026 adds and materially rewords risk disclosures emphasizing that fiscal 2026 experienced higher-than-normal inflationary conditions for commodities, labor, health care, and utilities and that failure to manage these cost pressures or achieve purchasing economies of scale "could compress our margins and adversely affect our sales and results of operations."
10-Q filed 2026-10-02The 10-Q filed 2 October 2026 adds specific new language calling out increases in minimum wage, health care, and other benefit costs as risks that "may have a material adverse effect on our labor costs," and states that pricing actions to offset inflation "may be constrained by competitive dynamics and consumer demand sensitivity."
10-Q filed 2026-10-02Reads the signal panel above (momentum, volatility, drawdown, relative strength and beta) and ranks each against the whole research universe rather than judging it in isolation.
Beta vs SPY is 0.19 and correlation vs SPY is 0.09 as of 2026-10-15, indicating low market sensitivity and low linear co-movement with the S&P 500 proxy.
Moneyta signal set · 2026-10-15Short- and medium-term momentum are positive: momentum 3m is +7.9% and momentum 6m is +9.0%, with the 6-month momentum ranking in the 66th percentile of the 882-stock research universe.
Moneyta signal set · 2026-10-15weakened in debateReads which funds hold the name and at what weight, plus insider Form 4 filings, to show the exposure you may already carry through index funds.
Institutional 13F-reported holdings total "$22.99B" as of 2026-06-30, with 1,090 holders, 0 new positions, 99 exited positions, a quarter-over-quarter value change of 6.9%, and a holder-count delta of +49.
13F holdings · 1090 filers · as of 2026-06-30Capital World Investors is the largest reported institutional holder with a reported value of "$3.13B" and a quarter-over-quarter value change of 6.8% in the 13F period ended 2026-06-30.
13F holdings · 1090 filers · as of 2026-06-30Reads recent headlines that are genuinely about this company, ignoring rating chatter and market-wide stories. Findings argue in the debate but never move the sentiment score.
Multiple outlets ran a matchup-style piece comparing Darden and McDonald’s for income investors under the headline 'Darden vs. McDonald’s: Which Restaurant Stock Is the Better Buy for Income Investors' on 14 October 2026, carried by AOL.
News · aol.com · 2026-10-14The same 'Darden vs. McDonald’s' income-investor headline also appeared on 14 October 2026 at 247wallst and on finance.yahoo.com, indicating syndicated or widely repeated coverage of the income/dividend theme.
News · 247wallst.com · 2026-10-14Reads parsed Forms 3/4/5: who bought or sold, at what size, and whether a 10b5-1 plan was involved. Flags clustered open-market officer buying; treats plan sales as routine and never counts a fund or 10%-holder as an officer.
Cardenas Ricardo (President and CEO) reported multiple transactions on 28 July 2026 including reported sales of $797k (3,801 shares), $1.5M (7,241 shares) and $2.7M (12,802 shares) and a code M entry of $2.4M (19,091 shares).
Form 4 · Cardenas Ricardo (President and CEO) · $2.4M code M · 2026-07-28Vennam Rajesh (SVP, CFO) reported a sale of $1.8M (8,478 shares) on 29 July 2026.
Form 4 · Vennam Rajesh (SVP, CFO) · $1.8M sold · 2026-07-29Reads the implied-expectations math built from the company's own filings (the growth rate today's price would justify, and the multiples beside it) and argues whether the market's bar looks high or low for this business. Never turns the math into a target.
The trailing twelve‑month price / earnings (P/E) ratio is 24.05.
Valuation inputs · SEC XBRL + stored EOD closeTrailing twelve‑month EBITDA is $1,944,300,000 and the enterprise‑value / EBITDA (EV/EBITDA) multiple is 13.2.
Valuation inputs · SEC XBRL + stored EOD closeDebate and risk review
A bull and a bear contest the claims and the chair rules on each; the risk review stress-tests what survived.
A bull and a bear argue the analysts' claims across two rounds, then a chair rules on each one. Only what survives feeds the score. The argument is shown, not hidden, so you can judge the reasoning yourself.
Several pieces of the record jointly support a favorable read: the company is returning capital while shrinking share count (consistent repurchases and a clear downward trend in shares outstanding), long-term debt has meaningfully declined over the recent quarters, and management declared a cash dividend in early October with leases extended that reduce near-term real-estate uncertainty for key concepts. Market signals show low correlation to the S&P 500 and positive medium-term momentum with technical indicators above key moving averages, and institutional ownership is sizable with large holders increasing position values. These items mitigate some concerns raised in risk disclosures and insider sales by showing active capital allocation, balance-sheet deleveraging, and ongoing investor interest in the equity.
Chair's verdict, claim by claim
Fragility · computed, not argued
balanced0.30
41 surviving claims rest on 21 distinct sources; the heaviest analyst carries 17% of them, and 99% of what the desk raised survived the debate.
The evidence base draws from a moderate breadth of sources, but one analyst accounts for a noticeable share of surviving claims, so parts of the read may lean on relatively concentrated analyst input. The very high survival rate through debate means claims were rarely overturned — that supports internal consistency but also raises the possibility that alternative interpretations were not fully exercised, so treat the read as informative but sensitive to source/analyst concentration.
Peer context · computed, not argued
12-1 momentum ranks 2nd of 6 in Restaurants (as of 2026-10-15).
90-day volatility ranks 3rd of 6 in Restaurants (as of 2026-10-15).
dividend yield ranks 2nd of 6 in Restaurants (as of 2026-10-15).
Disconfirming evidence · base rates · falsifiers
Context
Outside consensus, and where this name already sits in your own portfolio.
Third-party consensus shown for context. It never enters Moneyta sentiment. When the two diverge, the debate above is where the why lives.
What this was built from
Every figure on this page traces to one of these. The desk reads only what is listed here (no outside knowledge, no browsing), and each card shows who read it and what it contributed to the score.
9 filings· 1 cited
SEC XBRL filings
Quarterly figures as filed with the SEC, read straight from EDGAR's structured data, not retyped or estimated.
Read by Mercer+0.6 to the score
13 documents· 1 cited
SEC filing documents
The filings themselves, including the year-over-year comparison of Item 1A risk factors.
Read by Oakes−0.7 to the score
1 signal set
Moneyta signal set
Computed from our own end-of-day price history and ranked against the whole research universe. No AI involved.
Read by Nash+0.3 to the score
3 holdings records· 1 cited
Fund holdings
Which funds hold this name and at what weight, plus insider Form 4 filings.
Read by Ellis+0.5 to the score
8 headlines· 2 cited
News coverage
Recent headlines about this company, rating chatter excluded and nothing published after the report date.
Read by Yatesnothing survived
12 filings· 2 cited
Insider filings
Parsed Forms 3/4/5 from EDGAR: named insiders, share counts, prices, and 10b5-1 plan state, with stated and inferred flags kept apart.
Read by Talbot−1.2 to the score
1 computation
Valuation inputs
TTM cash-flow figures from the company's own XBRL filings, priced with the stored closing price. Implied growth and multiples only; no fair-value dollar figure reaches the desk, by design.
Read by Archercontext only
1 record· 0 cited
Company profile
Sector, industry and company details.
1 record· 0 cited
Analyst consensus
Third-party consensus, shown for context only; it never enters Moneyta sentiment.
Read means we pulled and handed it to an analyst; cited means a claim on this page points at it. Reading twelve quarters to state one trend is normal; the gap is shown rather than hidden.
Written by AI, checked against sources
The analysts, the bull–bear debate and the editor's note are AI agents reading only the evidence listed on this page. They can misread a filing or a headline, which is why every claim cites a source you can open and check yourself. The sentiment score is arithmetic over the claims that survived the debate, not a language model's opinion.
Educational analysis of published data. Moneyta does not give investment advice or make recommendations. Past patterns do not indicate future results.
The full terminal on DRI Gold
Who holds it, who's buying, what the Street thinks: live behind the lock, updated as filings land.
Institutional holders
Net institutional flow, Q/Q
Largest holder position
Insider buys, 90 days
Clustered insider value
Street target range
The real figures are for members. Educational analysis, not advice.
Get this for the names you actually hold
Every name in your portfolio, researched the same way, plus the one thing no sample can show: how each one sits inside what you already own.
Educational analysis of published data. Moneyta does not give investment advice or make recommendations.