Olive Garden Is Red Hot Again
Darden Restaurants, the parent company of The Olive Garden, is hotter than a pot of boiling (and salted) pasta water.
Shares of Darden are up more than 15% since activist hedge fund Starboard Value won control of the company’s board of directors at Darden’s shareholder meeting in mid-October.
Starboard is the group that bashed Olive Garden for sub-par food and service.
Darden will report its latest quarterly results after the closing bell Tuesday. It will be interesting to see if Starboard has had a positive impact on the financials yet.
Analysts are predicting earnings of 27 cents per share, up sharply from a year ago.
They are also forecasting a large slide in sales to $1.55 billion. But that’s mainly because last year’s figures include revenue from Red Lobster, which Darden sold earlier this year to a private equity firm.
Now the focus is mostly on Olive Garden. (Darden also owns LongHorn Steakhouse, Bahama Breeze and several other smaller restaurant chains.)
Never ending corporate shakeup? Starboard had been pushing Darden to make some big changes.
Starboard put out a blistering, 294-slide presentation earlier this year detailing what it thought were major culinary problems at the Olive Garden, including failure to salt pasta water, pouring excessive amounts of gloopy sauce on its food and too many breadsticks.
This is the first quarter with the new regime in control. So it will be interesting to see if the company decides to shy away from some of the big promotions that made it famous, such as never ending pasta bowls. Starboard was very critical of practices that it thought were wasteful and hurt profits.
Former CEO Clarence Otis, who had already announced plans to step down at the end of the year back in July, decided to leave earlier than that after Starboard took over the board. His interim replacement is COO Gene Lee.
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Last month Darden also announced plans to improve efficiency at Olive Garden and LongHorn restaurants. Lee said the goal was for the company to be “limiting the number of distractions that divert our attention from what matters most — continually working to improve the food and service we offer our guests.”
And in another sign that Starboard was not happy with how the company was doing, Darden said last month that it was eliminating the use of corporate jets for company leaders. Darden said it will “cease flight operations immediately and expects to sell its aircraft in due course.”
Starboard on the war path. The Darden victory caps a busy year for Starboard.
The hedge fund also took a stake in Yahoo earlier this year and wrote a letter to CEO Marissa Mayer urging her to merge the company with AOL . (Starboard actually fought and lost a battle for control of AOL back in 2012).
Starboard acquired a stake in packaging giant MeadWestvaco this year as well and is pushing for changes at that company.
Most recently, Starboard acquired a stake in office supplies retailer Staples. It already has a position in Staples rival Office Depot. Both stocks surged on the news as investors speculated that Starboard might want to push Staples and Office Depot to merge.
But Darden is Starboard’s signature investment.
Wall Street will be watching closely to see if Starboard can boost the company’s sales and profits. And diners will be eager to see if the Olive Garden’s food tastes any different.
They may also want to count their breadsticks.
