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Text: Joining me on the call today are Gene Lee, Darden's CEO; and Rick Cardenas, CFO.
We plan to release fiscal 2021 first quarter earnings on September 24 before the market opens, followed by a conference call.
It has been 14 weeks since our last earnings call.
I don't know about all of you, but it's felt more like 14 months.
So much has happened.
Over the past three months, our businesses -- our business changed in ways we never imagined.
Then Rick will share some of our fourth quarter and year-end results and provide our outlook for the first quarter.
When I look back on all that has transpired, one thing that stands out is the resiliency of the full-service dining industry.
Prior to the pandemic, total annual sales for the casual dining industry was approximately $108 billion.
And while I do not know how long it will take the industry to recover from the significant impact it experienced, I am confident that this category will get back to the size it once was.
Our industry plays a vital role in our communities, and that was evident in how the consumer relied on restaurants over the last several months, even in a To Go only environment.
And while on-premise will continue to play an important role as we recover, we know that the consumer still wants to enjoy and in-restaurant experience.
In fact, going out to a restaurant with friends and family is the number one activity consumers say they look forward to doing as the economy opens back up.
And we've seen that as our dining rooms reopen across the country.
As this vital industry continues to rebuild, there's tremendous opportunity to increase market share through increased on-premise demand and incremental off-premise sales.
Those executing at the highest level are going to continue to win, and Darden is well positioned to take advantage of the opportunity.
When we last spoke in March, we knew the pandemic was going to have a significant impact on our business.
Our ability to manage through this crisis has been driven by our commitment to prioritize guest and team member safety, invest in our team members, provide frequent and transparent communication, leverage our digital platform, and be brilliant with the basics.
The health and safety of our guest and team members has always been our top priority, and we have taken a number of steps to create a safe environment in our restaurants.
From sourcing mask and other personal protective equipment for our team members, to developing a contactless curbside pickup process, our brands -- at our brands while dining rooms were closed.
We are mindful of the trust our guest and team members place in us.
Today, our health and safety commitments are focused on team member health checks, personal protective equipment, enhanced sanitation processes, social distancing and frequent hand-washing.
We also provide paid sick leave for all our team members so they can stay at home if they are real [Phonetic].
But we can't do it alone, and that's why we encourage our guests to join the online wait list or make reservations, not enter our restaurants if they are symptomatic, wear a mask and utilize contactless or mobile payment options where available.
We continued to invest in our team members as our dining rooms closed.
In addition to rolling out permanent paid sick leave, we introduced a three-week emergency pay program that provided nearly $75 million of pay during the fourth quarter for our hourly team members who could not work.
When emergency pay ended, we covered insurance payments and benefit deductions for hourly team members who were furloughed.
As we brought hourly team members back to work to support increased To Go volume, we introduced an additional payment to help cover unexpected costs such as transportation and child care incurred as a result of the pandemic.
And to recognize the unbelievable work our managers did during the quarter, we paid their target bonus for the fourth quarter.
We know our people are our greatest competitive advantage.
Not only were these investments the right thing to do to take care of our team members, they've also created a deeper loyalty and strengthened engagement, while we've seen this pay off as we bring our people back to work.
Communication is the most important aspect of leadership during a crisis.
We knew frequent and transparent communication with our team members and investors was important.
Beyond daily meetings with all of our brand Presidents, who in turn met with their operational leaders on a daily basis, we have maintained a consistent communication cadence with our team members.
Since this crisis began, I've provided regular business updates to our people and had been open and honest about the impacts to our business and consequently the impacts to them.
We took the same approach with our shareholders and the analysts by providing four business updates during the quarter.
The pandemic accelerate the consumers' desire for convenience, and we saw a significant increase in digital engagement.
The work we have done over the past few years, investing in our digital platform to reduce friction, prepared us to quickly adapt to consumer behavior and deliver on their expectations of convenience in a To Go only environment.
During this time, we have strengthened our digital platform and made meaningful progress against our digital strategy.
In addition to improving the guest experience across our digital channels, our strategy is focused on using technology to help our guest easily order outside and inside the restaurant, improve the wait to be seated, streamline the order pick-up process and speed up how they pay.
We've been building on our digital platform to support increased demand, and we certainly tested like never before.
During the quarter, online ordering at Olive Garden grew by more than 300% over prior year and accounted for 58% of To Go sales.
At LongHorn, online ordering grew by 400% and accounted for 49% of the gross sales.
Additionally, we accelerated our timeline and rolled out online ordering at our brands that had not yet deployed it.
We also added the ability to order alcohol online for all of our brands and markets where that was allowed.
Our commitment to being brilliant with the basics allowed us to remain focused on operational execution, even as the environment forced us to radically change how we serve our guest.
Each one of our brands did a phenomenal job delivering a new guest experience by collaborating and sharing best practices.
This involved creating contactless curbside pickup that included designing what was essentially a drive-through in our parking lots.
Flawless [Phonetic] execution in this environment meant enabling our guests to order and pay online and have our team members seamlessly place their sealed orders in their vehicles.
Our operators displayed tremendous innovation, flexibility and passion as they continued to serve our guests.
And to ensure we consistently executed at the highest level, we took the opportunity to streamline our menus and improve our processes and procedures.
With these changes, we are seeing improvements in execution and direct labor productivity.
So, what have we learned from all this?
We've learned a lot, but most importantly, this situation has reinforced that our strategy that we developed five years ago, grounded in our back to basics operating philosophy, leveraging our four competitive advantages and cultivating a portfolio of iconic brands, is still the right one today.
Strong brands with loyal guests have fared better, and the trust we have earned from our guest is critical.
Being brilliant with the basics by consistently delivering exceptional food, service and atmosphere is imperative.
However, we know how important safety and cleanliness are to our guests right now, and we must continue to earn their trust every day.
And throughout this unprecedented time, we have benefited greatly from our four competitive advantages: our significant scale, our extensive data and insights, our regular strategic planning, and our culture.
Whether sourcing PPE for our team members, ensuring we're not impacted by supply chain issues or sharing best practices across eight brands, the ability to leverage our scale has allowed us to quickly react to constant change.
Finally, as I said earlier, we know our people are our greatest competitive advantage, and I'm impressed by how our team members responded and continue to respond to take care of our guests and each other.
Having a strong culture has been part of our DNA since we were founded.
We were able to keep the majority of our managers employed, and we stay connected with our furloughed hourly team members.
This allowed us to bring our people back quickly and get our dining rooms open safely without any delays.
We have also brought 60,000 furloughed restaurant team members back to work, and we expect to bring at least another 40,000 back as business continues to improve.
I'm incredibly proud that our culture has actually strengthened during this most difficult period in our company's history.
This, above all else, is what gives me confidence in Darden's future.
Fiscal 2020 was on track for a solid year of performance, and the beginning of Q4 was no different.
The first few weeks of sales were strong.
And then, nearly overnight, the impact of COVID-19 required us to pivot toward a To Go only format.
This posed unprecedented challenges for our restaurant and support center teams, and I am proud of how everyone moved quickly to increase To Go sales, reduce costs, manage working capital and improve efficiency.
The simplifications Gene referenced helped reduce key variable expenses in our restaurants, especially direct labor.
The teams also worked to reduce or eliminate other fixed costs in our restaurants and restaurant support center, as well as eliminate non-essential capital spending.
Given the significant reduction in cash flow, we also had to work quickly to ensure we had enough cash for whatever might occur.
During the quarter, we suspended the dividend and share repurchases, fully drew down our $750 million credit facility, took out a $270 million term loan and raised over $500 million in a follow-on equity offering.
All these efforts and the strong loyalty of our guests resulted in us tripling our prior To Go sales run rate averages and materially reducing our cash burn as we disclosed to you through our periodic business updates.
Given the confidence in our cash flow trends and the ability to access it in the future, we fully repaid our credit facility in early May.
Now turning to the results, the total sales were $1.3 billion, a decrease of 43%.
Same restaurant sales decreased 47.7%, and adjusted diluted net loss per share was $1.24.
Because of the significant reduction in total sales compared to last year, all of the expense lines experienced sales deleverage.
So, I'll just touch on a few highlights.
First, food and beverage costs were higher as a percent of sales, given menu mix related to both To Go mix and simplified menus, as well as increased packaging expense and elevated beef costs.
As we look at the labor line, there was significant deleverage in management labor, including approximately $25 million in manager bonuses.
However, we saw an improvement in hourly labor as a percent of sales of over 150 basis points, even with a substantial reduction in sales.
Restaurant expenses per operating week decreased over 20%, given our focus on cost management, even as we incurred over $5 million in incremental cleaning supplies and PPE related to COVID-19.
For marketing and G&A expense, we were able to reduce the absolute spend by $37 million and $17 million respectively versus last year.
Included in our restaurant labor and to a small extent G&A is approximately $50 million of investments net of retention credits.
This was related to emergency and furlough pay for our team members while they were not working.
This negatively impacted our earnings per share by $0.30, which was not adjusted out of reported earnings.
During the quarter, we impaired $390 million of assets as a result of lower sales, reduced profitability and lower market capitalization.
The impairments related to $314 million of Cheddar's goodwill and trademark assets, $47 million of restaurant level assets and $29 million of other assets.
We permanently closed 11 restaurants in the quarter, six of which were already impaired.
The entire $300 million -- $390 million of impairment charges were adjusted out of our reported earnings.
We ended the quarter with $763 million in cash and another $750 million available in our credit facility.
This gives us over $1.5 billion of liquidity available to weather the crisis and make appropriate investments to grow profitably.
Our adjusted debt to adjusted capital at the end of the quarter was 61%, well within our debt covenant of 75%.
As we shifted to an off-premise only model, we took a disciplined approach to pursue sales opportunities with an eye toward incremental profitability and cash flow, by focusing on cost management and the guest experience, while ensuring our team members were taken care of.
This approach resulted in a better finish to Q4 than anticipated and is the underpinning for the strength of our business model that is reflected in our first quarter financial outlook.
Now, turning to fiscal 2021 performance, in today's release, we provided quarter-to-date same restaurant sales and the performance of our restaurants with dining rooms at least partially open.
These results are encouraging.
With last week's blended same restaurant sales down 30%, we are operating cash flow positive at these levels.
Our To Go sales remain elevated in restaurants with dining rooms at least partially reopened.
Olive Garden To Go sales are approximately double their pre-COVID averages and LongHorn has more than tripled their pre-COVID averages in these restaurants.
While it is our normal practice to provide an annual financial outlook, due to the uncertainty in business performance moving forward, we are only providing an outlook for the first quarter.
We expect to achieve approximately 70% of prior year sales levels, total EBITDA of at least $75 million and diluted net earnings per share of greater than or equal to zero on a diluted share base of 131 million shares.
At this point, we don't intend to further share intra-quarter business updates since we have provided our first quarter outlook.
For the full year, we intend to open between 35 and 40 net new restaurants.
Our first opening of the year is expected to be in early July with a few others likely to be opened by the end of the first quarter.
In total, we expect between $250 million and $350 million of capital spending for fiscal '21.
Turning to other aspects of capital allocation, as you recall, we suspended our dividend last quarter due to the level of cash flow uncertainty and the need to preserve as much cash as possible.
We have been consistent in our commitment to returning cash to shareholders, and our dividend is a big part of that.
As soon as we see the business begin to generate the sustainable cash flows to support a dividend and repay our term loan, we will have discussions with our Board on our dividend policy.
Dave will celebrate his 65th birthday later this year, and we've been discussing this transition for some time.
Dave and I have been partners on this journey for 23 years.
He was a joint venture partner for LongHorn when I joined [Indecipherable] in 1997.
I still remember the first time I met him.
We were going to visit his restaurants, so he picked me up at the airport in his Volvo with no air conditioning in the North Carolina heat.
I knew at the end of the day that Dave was a special operator.
I wasted no time.
We bought out his interest in this joint venture and brought him into the Company.
Over the last 23 years, Dave has been successful in every one of his leadership positions.
He has led three of Darden's iconic brands: The Capital Grille, LongHorn Steakhouse and Olive Garden.
And most recently, he served as our Chief Operating Officer.
He built great teams and became a mentor to many operators and executives.
His can-do approach and attitude permeates throughout Darden and each of our brands today.
For many of the last 23 years, Dave and I have had lunched together on Monday to discuss what happened in the previous week and talk about what needed to get done going forward.
Not much has changed over those 23 years, except today, we order salads instead of two or three entrees each.
I'll miss seeing him when I walk into the room on these days.
Unfortunately, because of COVID-19, our conference has been postponed until next year.
We will however be inviting Dave to our conference in 2021, and he has committed to come so we can celebrate all he has done for Darden and for many of you.
And as I've said to you repeatedly, your ability to adapt, innovate and collaborate during this time has truly been inspiring.

user
q4 sales $1.27 billion versus refinitiv ibes estimate of $1.24 billion.
q4 adjusted non-gaap loss per share $1.24 excluding items.
darden restaurant - expects to open 35-40 net new restaurants and have total capital spending of $250 to $300 million in 2021.
sees q1 total sales of approximately 70% of prior year sales.
darden restaurant - qtrly negative blended same-restaurant sales of 47.7%.
darden restaurants - with over $750 million of cash on hand as of june 22 & access to $750 million credit facility, has access to over $1.5 billion of liquidity.

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