Welcome to the Darden fiscal year 2018 second quarter earnings call. Your lines have been placed on listen-only until the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star followed by 1 on your touch tone phone. This conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Kevin Kalicak. Thank you. You may begin.
Thank you, Gene. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for participating on today's call. Joining me on the call today are Gene Lee, Darden CEO, and Rick Cardenas, CFO. As a reminder, comments made during this call will include forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections. Those risks are described in the company's press release, which was distributed this morning, and in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We are simultaneously broadcasting a presentation during this call, which is posted in the investor relations section of our website at www.darden.com. Today's discussion and presentation includes certain non-GAAP measurements. Reconciliations of these measurements are included in the presentation.
We plan to release fiscal 2018 third quarter earnings on March 22nd before the market opens, followed by a conference call. This morning, Gene will share some brief remarks about our quarterly performance and business highlights, and Rick will provide an update on our financial results and outlook for the year. During today's call and for the remainder of this fiscal year, all references to Darden same-restaurant sales only include Darden's legacy brands, since Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen restaurants are new to Darden. I'll turn the call over to Gene.
Thanks, Kevin. Good morning, everyone. Let me start by saying I'm very pleased with our performance during the quarter. Our teams did a great job managing through some difficult circumstances recovering from the hurricanes. Total sales from continuing operations were $1.88 billion, an increase of 14.6%. Same-restaurant sales grew 3.1%, and adjusted net earnings per share were $0.73, an increase of 14.1% from last year's diluted net earnings per share. Given our consistent positive results, I am more convinced than ever that our success has been driven by the strategy we implemented three years ago. Our intense focus on improving the food, service, and atmosphere in our restaurants, combined with relevant integrated marketing, remains a winning strategy for our brands.
The long-term investments we have made and will continue to make in these areas are paying off, and we will work hard every day to better execute in these critical areas. This back-to-basics operating philosophy is coupled with Darden's four competitive advantages. One, leveraging our significant scale to create a cost advantage. Two, using extensive data and insights to improve operating fundamentals and to better understand our guests and communicate with them more effectively. Ensuring our brands systematically go through our rigorous strategic planning process. Four, cultivating our results-oriented people culture to enable growth. Together, our operating philosophy and competitive advantages give me confidence in our ability to continue to deliver our long-term framework over time. Turning to Olive Garden. Same-restaurant sales grew 3%, outperforming the industry benchmarks, excluding Darden, by 400 basis points.
This was Olive Garden's 13th consecutive quarter of same-restaurant sales growth, driven by our focus on simplification and flawless execution, which continues to result in high guest satisfaction scores. Our promotional strategies and core menu working together to create everyday value and drive increased frequency for our most loyal guests. Our strong to-go performance, which grew 12%. During the quarter, we ran our two most popular value promotions, Buy One, Take One, which appeals to our guests' need for convenience, and Never Ending Pasta Bowl, which highlights our brand pillar of never-ending abundance. Both promotions leveraged brand equities and were supported by strong integrated marketing campaigns highlighted by Olive Garden's most anticipated event of the year, the Pasta Pass.
This year, in addition to making 22,000 Pasta Passes available, we introduced the first of its kind Pasta Passport, which included all the benefits of the Pasta Pass, plus a trip of a lifetime to Italy. Once again, all Pasta Passes were claimed online immediately. The volume of social media and PR buzz surrounding this event illustrates the strong emotional connection our fans have with the Olive Garden. LongHorn Steakhouse had a strong quarter as the investments we've been making for the last two years are significantly improving consumer perceptions and motivating guests to visit more frequently. Same-restaurant sales grew 3.8%, outperforming the industry benchmarks, excluding Darden, by 480 basis points. This was LongHorn's 19th consecutive quarter of same-restaurant sales growth. The emphasis LongHorn's leadership has placed on simplification, like reducing their menu items by nearly 30%, has led to higher levels of execution.
At the same time, they continue to enhance the quality of the guest experience with strategic investments in food, service, and atmosphere. As I mentioned last quarter, same-restaurant sales in LongHorn's new markets continue to grow at a higher rate than in the established markets. Consumers in these new markets are discovering what makes LongHorn special, while at the same time, fully realizing the value proposition that inherently exists in the brand. This performance trend is not new to LongHorn. We have seen it play out over the past 20 years as I've been associated with the brand. I'll update you on the Cheddar's integration. The Cheddar's team is doing a great job managing the complexity of this integration, which also includes integrating their two largest franchisees, which were recently acquired. Merging three different operating systems into the Darden network isn't easy, but it's going exactly as planned.
We are at an important point in the integration progress as we transition from planning to execution. Integration-related activity is peaking as we transition distribution networks, including our mainline distributor, produce suppliers, and smallware suppliers. Convert point-of-sale systems in 10 restaurants per week, which also includes two weeks of training per restaurant prior to the conversion. Finally, we just completed open enrollment, and Cheddar's team members will be transitioning to Darden benefits at the beginning of the calendar year. It is our intent to integrate Cheddar's and their two acquired franchise systems as fast as possible in order to position the brand to take advantage of the scale synergies and other benefits of the Darden infrastructure.
We realize that this is having a short-term negative impact on sales momentum, we believe the long-term benefit will far outweigh the short-term impact. Rick will provide an update on synergies in his remarks in just a moment. I want to thank the integration team for their outstanding work on this project. They have developed a comprehensive plan and are executing that plan at a high level. The more we learn about Cheddar's, the more excited we become about the long-term growth prospects. They are the undisputed value leader in casual dining, with a large, loyal guest base and an average approximately 6,300 guests per week per restaurant. Let me close by saying the holidays are the busiest time of the year for our restaurant teams as they help our guests celebrate with coworkers, family, and friends.
On behalf of our management team and the board of directors, I want to thank our 175,000 team members for all you do to create memorable guest experiences during this special time of the year. We remain focused on getting better every day, I look forward to making even more progress in the year ahead. Now I'll turn it over to Rick.
Thanks, Gene, good morning, everyone. We had another strong quarter with total sales growth of 14.6%, driven by 11.5% growth from the addition of 153 Cheddar's and 28 other new restaurants, and same-restaurant sales growth of 3.1%. Second quarter adjusted diluted net earnings per share from continuing operations were $0.73, an increase of 14.1% from last year's earnings per share. We paid $78 million in dividends and repurchased $89 million in shares. In total, we returned approximately $167 million of capital to our shareholders this quarter and $346 million fiscal year to date. Turning to this quarter's P&L. Restaurant level EBITDA margin was 20 basis points higher than last year as cost savings and leverage from same-restaurant sales growth more than offset overall inflation pressure and the addition of Cheddar's, which I'll refer to as brand mix.
Adjusted EBIT margin was flat as G&A expense as a percent of sales was 20 basis points higher than last year due to an unfavorable outcome in a legal matter this quarter. Excluding this matter, G&A would have been favorable by 10 basis points. This unfavorability in G&A was completely offset in income taxes due to the resolution of certain prior year matters. For the quarter, our adjusted EBIT margin increased 10 basis points versus last year. Looking more closely at the details, food and beverage costs were favorable by 20 basis points as pricing of approximately 1.5% and cost savings more than offset commodity cost inflation of just under 1% and our continued investments in food quality. Restaurant labor was unfavorable by 30 basis points compared to last year due to Cheddar's brand mix.
Restaurant labor in our legacy Darden brands was in line with last year due to continued productivity gains and sales leverage, despite inflation of about 4%. We opened more restaurants this quarter than the same period last year, which increased our pre-opening expenses. Restaurant expense as a percent of sales was unfavorable 10 basis points versus last year. Marketing expense was favorable by 40 basis points due to sales leverage and favorable brand mix from Cheddar's. G&A expense was unfavorable by 20 basis points due to the legal outcome I mentioned previously. Olive Garden, LongHorn, and Fine Dining segment all grew sales in the quarter, driven primarily by strong same-restaurant sales. Segment profit margin increased in each of these segments by leveraging the same-restaurant sales growth and managing costs effectively while still investing in a great guest experience.
Looking at the other business segment, sales grew 71.7%, mainly due to the addition of Cheddar's, as well as same-restaurant sales growth at Yard House and Bahama Breeze. Similar to last quarter, segment profit margin was 200 basis points lower than last year due to the brand mix impact of adding Cheddar's and from moving consumer packaged goods out of this segment, primarily to Olive Garden. Turning to the Cheddar's synergy update. We continue to expect total run rate synergies of between $22 million-$27 million. Based on the speed of integration and the great job our teams are doing to realize these synergies, we expect to achieve them a little faster than we originally anticipated.
We now project to realize just under $10 million in synergies in the current fiscal year and achieve our targeted run rate no later than the middle of fiscal 2019 instead of the end of fiscal 2019. Finally, this morning, we increased our full year fiscal 2018 outlook. We now anticipate same-restaurant sales growth of approximately 2%, new restaurant growth of approximately 40, and total sales growth of approximately 13%. Each of these are at the high end of our original annual outlook. Our full-year adjusted diluted net earnings per share from continuing operations are now anticipated to be between $4.45-$4.53. This is an increase from our previous outlook of $4.38-$4.50. We are anticipating an effective tax rate of approximately 25% and a diluted average share count of approximately 126 million shares outstanding for the year.
Please note, this outlook does not contemplate any potential impacts from the pending tax legislation. Based on the information we know today, we anticipate that the tax legislation will have a benefit to us in terms of our effective tax rate going forward. Also, in the quarter the bill is enacted, we are required to revalue our deferred taxes. Since the bill has not received final approval, there are still many details we must analyze, and we will reserve comment on the specific impacts to our tax rate overall. Given the complexity of the pending legislation, we will not be providing any other detail in the Q&A session. Neither the expected reduction to our effective tax rate nor the one-time deferred tax adjustments are included in the outlook we updated today. We plan to update our fiscal 2018 outlook in early January to reflect the impact of tax legislation.
In closing, I want to wish you all a great holiday season and hope you will celebrate with family and friends in 1 of our restaurants. With that, we'll take your questions.
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session of today's conference. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1, unmute your phone and record your name clearly when prompted. Your name is required to introduce your question. To cancel your request, please press star followed by 2. As a reminder, 1 question with 1 follow-up question is preferred. 1 moment for the incoming questions. Our first question comes from Brett Levy from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.
Good morning, thank you. Can you share a little bit of color on what you're seeing across the competitive landscape? Obviously, you're still generating significant market share gains, but the rate of growth seems to have slowed a little. Where are you seeing pockets of, I hesitate to use the word weakness? Also just 1 quick question on tax. I know you said you won't say much, but are you under the impression that there will be no change to tip credit, how it impacts casual diners? Thank you.
Hey, Brett. As Rick said, we are making no further comments on the pending tax legislation. We will update our guidance in January once the bill is passed. For everybody out there that wants to ask us a question, we're not going to answer them. As far as the consumer landscape, I think you're referring to that our gap to Knapp-Track may have, or our gap to benchmarks may have shrunk a little bit. We've been pretty clear, and we said as we prefer to operate in an environment with a stronger industry. If our gap shrinks a little bit, that's okay with us. As I said in my prepared remarks, I think we had a great quarter considering everything that transpired. We saw strength in all our businesses. We started in a pretty big hole in September. I think it feels pretty good out there.
I would say when I look at the benchmarks, I'm seeing about 3% growth in what the consumer's paying. I don't feel as though the environment's all that promotional right now. They could be getting that in a couple different ways, whether getting it through price or mix. I feel like it's fairly positive out there right now. I just feel good. I think the consumer's using the whole menu. They're not all that reactive to what people are doing from an incentive standpoint, so it feels good.
Just one follow-up. Your guidance raise on both the top line and the comp, is that implying just what we've achieved so far in the first half of the year, or is there something that you are seeing in the second half that's given you greater confidence? Thank you.
Hey, Brett, it's Rick. The guidance implies what we know for the first half of the year and just some estimates that the economy or the industry's not going to get much better. We don't assume that it's going to get better until it gets better. The guidance we have given is prudent based on where we are today.
Our next question comes from David Palmer from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.
Thanks. Good morning. I'm thinking ahead to calendar 2018. I'm struggling a bit to create an outlook for what the casual dining industry same-store sales would look like for that year. Obviously, given the fact you have an empire that slices across various concepts, and you can see how the consumer's behaving across the menu. This is an easier comparison quarter for the industry, than what we'll have perhaps coming up. Do you feel like this is a sustainable improvement that's going on lately? Are there any tea leaves that you can see in terms of behavior that gives you confidence that there is an improvement going on even before tax reform? Thanks.
Good morning, David. When I look out over the landscape, the brands that are well-positioned and have strong value equations are continuing to take share. This is approximately a $100 billion category that has been growing approximately 2%. For those that are well-positioned, I feel like they're going to continue to do well. If your value proposition's a little off, and your offering's not resonating with the consumer, it could be a struggle. I think focusing on the overall industry benchmarks is somewhat dangerous, because there's been such deviation in the performance of the people that are doing well compared to the people who aren't. I can't comment and give you guidance on what we think calendar 2018 might look like. We've given you what we think our guidance is for the back half of our fiscal year.
We always get a little nervous in December, January, February, March, because weather's out of our control. We can't control that. If we have a bad winter, that could put pressure short-term on our same restaurant sales. We don't think that has any impact on the overall momentum of the business. As I said earlier to Brett's question, we feel pretty good about how the consumer's reacting to our brands right now.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from John Glass from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.
Thanks very much. Rick, first, can you just maybe flip the guidance to your previous expectations? You've raised sales expectations for both units and for comps, you raised earnings, it would seem like tax and share count were responsible for that. You're also observing some hurricane impact. Are those the right puts and takes, or is there anything else that moves, for example, in G&A or something that's not explained by that?
Yeah, John, a couple things. One, as I said earlier, we did have a little bit of a legal settlement that we had this quarter. Not settlement, but an outcome that we had this quarter that we didn't anticipate. We also, as we talk about the G&A cost of sales and food and beverage. We're still saying that our cost inflation in total is going to be about 2% when you include labor. Every tenth that moves is about $0.03 a share. We're still saying approximately 2%. It's just closer to the two, right at the two, than maybe a little bit lower than the two. Also, we're going to continue to invest in our consumer and invest in value.
As we've said before, if we do get some incremental revenues, we may have some of that we hold back and invest in our consumer for the long term. That's why we still believe that the high end of our range at $4.53 is the right place to be, even though we did increase our sales, and we did have a little bit of benefit in tax, which was offset in legal.
You, last quarter, talked about being conservative in pricing and in the middle of the 1%-2% range. You've been a little bit higher than that at Olive Garden, maybe at, but maybe slightly above it, a little lower than LongHorn Steakhouse. Can you maybe just update what your thoughts on pricing are? If the industry is better, do you feel like that gives you a little more license to be a little higher in that range, or do you still want to maintain that lower than competitors value proposition?
A couple of things. One is our long-term framework and algorithm has always said in our strategy of leveraging Darden's cost advantage. We've always said that we want to price below our competition, which generally prices at inflation. Even if inflation goes up and competitors start to price, we believe that somewhere in that middle of between the 1% and 2% is the right place to be. In Olive Garden, you mentioned it. I think it was 1.7% this quarter. LongHorn Steakhouse was below 1% this quarter. Even though our commodity cost inflation was 1%, Olive Garden had much more inflation than LongHorn Steakhouse because of dairy. As we think about Olive Garden over the year, it's also a timing thing. We still think Olive Garden will be about 1.5% for the year, and LongHorn Steakhouse will be below that.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Nicole Miller from Piper Jaffray. Your line is now open.
Thank you. Good morning. First question, could the industry be benefiting from off-premise sales, and could that be a permanent benefit as we enter the calendar year? Specific on that point to Darden, when you look at what you're doing in test, how do you look at the price point breaks and what should be outsourced and insourced? For example, if you get over $100 or maybe it's $200 or $300, is that something you're still insourcing? When you outsource, I think there's a lot of delivery test a lot of marketplaces you're testing. How are you deciding who to go to and when? Thanks.
Okay. A lot in there, Nicole. Let me start with the off-premise sales. I take that back to where we identified a couple of years ago that the consumer needs state of convenience. The consumer is still looking for convenience. We've got some brands that really can satisfy that, especially Olive Garden. We've done a great job with that. I think that that's probably a more permanent part of our equation today. I don't see that need state going away. I see that need state increasing. I think we'll continue to come up with innovative ways to meet that need. As far as when we start thinking about delivery, as we've said before, we've got multiple tests going on in the marketplace. We're trying to learn. We believe that someone is going to rise up and create some scale in this space. We'll watch those third-party deliverers.
We're also watching competitors that are doing it themselves. We have a small test where we're doing it ourselves. We'll watch this whole space kind of develop, and we'll decide how we're going to participate in that. We are still very attracted to the large party delivery catering in Olive Garden, where our average order is over $300. That makes a lot more sense for us to market and pursue than running around delivering $10 entrees at this point in time. For us, it's a wait and see. We're very engaged in the process with all the third-party delivery companies, and we're very engaged with our own activity around that. To us, it's a let's see how this thing develops.
Just a quick follow-up on a separate topic. I believe I saw Olive Garden recently showed up as one of Glassdoor's ranked best employers. What I want to understand, is that a function of the return to basic strategies or tactics that you have in place now? Or is there even more to come? Thanks.
Well, I think that we have a filter that we run every decision through. The first question we ask is, how does our team member win if we make a decision? The second is, how does our guest win if we make a decision? We believe one of our four competitive advantages is our culture. Even as the employee market has tightened, our retention rates have not moved at all. They've actually improved a little bit. We'll continue to invest in our team members. We believe we have great training programs. 50% of our management comes from our team member ranks, so we believe we're offering growth opportunities to our team members. I think we're doing the right things. We're not out trying to manage to win these awards.
We're just doing the right thing for our team members every single day, and then if we get an award, that's great. I think you can see it in our results. We're doing a good job taking care of our guests. When we take care of our guests, we win.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Will Slabaugh from Stephens. Your line is now open.
Yeah. Thanks, guys. I want to ask you about Cheddar. I know there are a lot of moving pieces there as you integrate the business. Could you talk a bit about its positioning? With such a value bend of the concept, probably a little bit more than the rest of your concepts, does that leave it more vulnerable to improved quality and or better value messaging from QSR or fast casual? Do you think we're simply just seeing the pure dislocation with the integration that you mentioned earlier?
No. I think the exact opposite. I think that this is a way for people to trade into casual dining and have an experience for under a $14 check average, with made-from-scratch food that is at a higher quality than most comparable operations they're competing against. When we look at the data and the research, we're just really impressed with the loyalty. We've been out doing what we call dine arounds, where our team goes out and dines with guests. We continue to learn more and more about the admiration they have for our brand. The accessibility the brand provides for people who probably couldn't go out to eat in a full-service casual dining environment, except that they can go to Cheddar's and make it work inside their budget. This is a very strong brand. I know there's a little bit of concern about where the comps are.
This doesn't surprise us at all. It happened at Yard House. It happened at LongHorn. I believe LongHorn has only ever had one negative full year of same-restaurant sales decline, and that was during the integration in its 30-something-year history. The other thing I would add is that we've acquired two large franchise operations inside of Cheddar's that make up approximately 35% of the system. Those restaurants, there are 54 of them, I believe, or approximately 54, are a significant drag on the base Cheddar restaurants that were the real base of the company-owned operations that we bought. Those restaurants are dragging it down well over 1% as we standardize the menus, because the menus were somewhat different, and their pricing philosophies were somewhat different. As we standardize the menus, we're getting some negative check that's dragging us down too.
These are decisions we have to make for the long term. Lastly, as I mentioned in my remarks, integration is hard. We believe when we look back on a couple of our last acquisitions, we didn't go fast enough. We let integration drag on too long. We made the determination during this one that we were going to push hard and get to the other side quicker. That's what we're doing. We actually integrated the two franchise systems first. They've actually had the most activity because their systems were so weak.
I'll close up by just saying, the most important thing for us to do is to get our POS systems in these restaurants so that we can start getting the data that we get to analyze our other businesses to help us make the right strategic choices as we move forward to drive this brand. Let's not get hung up on short-term quarter-to-quarter comps. This business does 6,300 guests a week, has incredible loyalty, and is the undisputed value leader. Once we get to the other side of this, which will be another six, nine, 12 months, this business will be a good growth driver for Darden.
Got it. One quick follow-up, if I could, on the off-premise question from earlier. Did you give what Olive Garden to-go's growth was in the quarter?
12%.
Great. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Brian Bittner from Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.
Hey, guys. Thanks, and happy holidays to you. As we start to think about 2019, just the synergies from the accretion are significant, and they are accretive. What's going to be the strategy with that extra money as you think about it today? Is it something that you're going to let flow through the P&L and be accretive, or is it something where you're looking to possibly reinvest it back into price or value?
Yeah, I think Brian, every year we start off with a detailed plan for each of our business. The first thing that we look at is what investments do we need to make into the business, either through employee experience into the guest, in order to be able to grow our market share and compete more effectively. We look at our advantages, and we've always come back to that, and how do we make scale work for us? That's really, really important. We're not really talking about next year or next fiscal year, but we're constantly looking at how do we make our experience better.
Thanks for that, Gene. Just following up with a lot of the other questions. You have always said throughout the last couple of years, in at least conversations with me for sure, that when industry trends do pick up, that we should all expect your outperformance gap to narrow. It didn't narrow much. You're clearly participating in this improvement that the industry is seeing. I'd just like to hear your thoughts on that, because on one side, it does appear you're benefiting with the rest of the industry at the Olive Garden brand. On the other token, I feel like you want us to expect the gap to narrow versus the industry if trends remain sustainably healthy. If you could just maybe talk a little more to that, I'd appreciate it.
Yeah. You're really asking me to look into a crystal ball and try to project what's going to happen. If we continue to make the right investments, whether that's under pricing and inflation, whether that's improving the food quality, whether that's improving the employee experience. The way we look at it is how do we increase our share of the $100 billion category, both through same-restaurant sales growth and new restaurant growth. We look at the value equation for each of our businesses, and we look at Cheddar's and Olive Garden. The price-value relationship is really important. As we move up the continuum, the experience becomes more important. I'm not sure that if the overall industry does continue to improve. I'm telling you right now, we're working as hard as we possibly can to get as much of that share as possible.
However it plays out, it plays out. We look at the benchmarks, we report them out to you guys, but we're not sure that's always the total opportunity. We look at the top five or six players in the industry and say, "If they're doing something, we ought to try to be able to beat them, not just the benchmark.
Appreciate the comments, Gene. Thanks, guys.
The next question comes from David Tarantino from Baird. Your line is now open.
Hi, good morning. Gene, I have maybe a high-level philosophical question about the tax reform. I know you don't want to give specifics on the impact, it does look pretty likely that you're going to see a meaningful benefit from that. How do you think about reinvestment when it comes to the potential benefit you might get from tax reform? You've talked about a lot of reinvestment so far, are there big opportunities or big chunks of investments you think are out there that you might pursue if you get a big windfall from taxes?
Well, I think the biggest thing that we constantly think about is the employee experience, how do we ensure that we have the best team members out there to bring our brands alive. Great brand management is much more difficult in the restaurant space than it is in consumer packaged goods, where you just put your brand up on a shelf and you do some advertising. We have employees and team members that bring our brands to life every single day. When I think about the investment-- if we think about investments in general, they have nothing to do with what's going on with legislation. We think about how do we improve the overall experience, the competition for team members, I think, is going to be the most important element moving forward. How do we get great team members to bring our brands to life?
I guess, just so I can clarify. If you do get a benefit or a windfall from the tax reform, do you think there are meaningful offsets to that in this investment cycle, can you embed those investments in what you're already doing? I guess I just want to understand kind of philosophically how you would approach that savings.
We're not going to talk about anything. You tied this to meaningful benefits of tax reform. We are not talking about anything, I'm sorry, David, about tax reform. We'll talk about general investments and how we think about it, I think I've already answered that question.
Okay, fair enough. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Peter Saleh from BTIG. Your line is now open.
Great, thanks. Just wanted to ask, on wage inflation, sounds like your wage or labor inflation is running around 4%, yet you only had some modest deleverage on the labor line. Can you talk a little bit about the productivity gains that you're seeing? What brands are you seeing these productivity gains, and what kind of gains? Are they going to be ongoing, or should we expect those to kind of lessen as we get through the end of the year?
Yeah, Peter, it's Rick. Yeah, we're seeing productivity gains across the Darden system. I'm not going to tell you by brand how much productivity we're getting, although if you think about what we've been doing over the last few years, we continue to simplify our operation, and the brands that are simplifying are getting the most productivity gains, right? Also, as I mentioned earlier, we did have some same-restaurant sales leverage that helped. Finally, our turnover really hasn't moved much. Right? As you think about turnover, what happens when you have turnover is you have to train a lot more. What we're doing with our training dollars is we're investing in training on getting our team members better at their job to become more productive than just learning their job, which is what happens when you're hiring new folks.
When you think about all of that, we feel really great about the productivity gains we've made over the last few years. There are some brands that still have more to go. Some brands that have actually been farther along the cycle. They might have a little less, but they're not stopping looking for productivity in the future. You did mention, we did say that we had about 4% wage inflation, which is a pretty high inflation, but we were able to offset that with these productivity gains and with the moderate pricing we took.
Great. Then just on the to-go side of the business. I think historically you've had a lot of, I guess, phone-in orders for to-go. Where do we stand, say, I guess, on phone-in versus online orders coming in? Are you seeing more of that growth coming from online orders?
Yeah, we're approximately 30% online now. It continues to grow. We do incentivize people to do that because we get a lot of data when we get that via online. That's an important part of the process that just helps us simplify the operation, and we'll continue to try to migrate as much of that business over as possible. At the end of the day, we get a lot of people calling in orders when they're driving home. It's hard to do those online while you're driving. We'll continue to move people over the best we can.
Great. Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Matthew DiFrisco from Guggenheim Securities. Your line is now open.
Thank you so much. Just had a couple of follow-up questions here. I just wanted to be clear. Did you say then that the -2% at Cheddar's was of the full base, including the franchise stores, and it was negative check, more than negative check, traffic was positive?
No. Let me clarify. The -2% is inclusive of the two franchise systems what they call the Greer restaurants that were purchased by Cheddar's right before we bought them, then we purchased their next largest franchisee, which we refer to as a CMP, shortly thereafter. They make up 35% of the overall system. In essence, we're doing three integrations at once, their system has grown dramatically. Now, what I said, maybe I wasn't clear, was that the 35% of the restaurants that were franchised and now company-owned are dragging same-restaurant sales down by 100 basis points.
Were they in 1Q as well?
Yes. No, CMP wasn't. Just the Greer Companies.
Okay.
We have negative check in the approximately 45 Greer restaurants that we bought because we had to standardize the menu. That negative check is part of the drag. These are great restaurants, great people, but a franchise system that was run a little bit independently of the core company-owned restaurants. There's going to be some effort and energy to get them up to the operating standards of the company restaurants.
Completely understand. It wouldn't be correct to compare the down 1.4% to the down 2%, and that you had a little bit of a different composite of the base?
Yes, that would be correct. You could do that.
Okay.
Because CMP restaurants are a drag.
You mentioned the middle of FY 2019 is now the target ahead of schedule for the integration, correct?
Yes. It is the middle of 2019.
Does that imply?
I'm sorry, Matt, it's for the synergies, not the integration. The integration, we expect to have most of the integration work done on the system side by the end of this fiscal year. We do expect them to have to continue to learn how those systems work and then take those systems and use the data that we have to help improve the performance in fiscal 2019, et cetera. That's where I think we were saying the integration is going to take 18 months. It's the integration of the systems is going to take less time than that. It's just the learning and the understanding of the data is going to take a little longer.
We do expect that the synergies on a run rate basis, we will get by the middle of fiscal 2019 versus the run rate basis we thought we'd be at the end of fiscal 2019. Sorry, I messed up the question there.
No, I misunderstood. That's great, though. I guess if everything's moving forward, would it be correct then to assume that potentially you could be looking to re-accelerate growth of the Cheddar's brand or bring it back to a little bit more meaningful growth perhaps sooner than maybe what you would have thought, say, six months ago?
Yeah, Matt. Just because the integration's going a little bit faster, it still takes time to find sites and other things, when you've got a site pipeline that could be 18 months, it'll take us a little longer just to rebuild that pipeline. We do expect to open restaurants in FY 2019. We'll talk about the number of openings, et cetera, when we give you the fiscal 2019 outlook. It's just going to take us a little while to build up that pipeline. Again, using the data that we use to help find the greater sites.
Understood.
I would still expect us to open restaurants at least at the pace that we're opening them today in fiscal 2019, we'll tell you more about that when we talk about 2019.
Understood. Last question, is there anything that you want to tell us about the hurricanes as far as on the cost structure? Did they impair? Did you have any waste of food in the quarter that should be noted or called out that was meaningful to the margins or disparity in same-store sales as far as recoveries happening a little, maybe regionally seeing a little bit of stronger strength in pockets or is it pretty much everything that you've reported is sort of national trends?
Yeah, Matt, thanks for that. What happened for the quarter, when we originally talked about the quarter, we thought we'd be down 60 basis points in same-restaurant sales and down $0.03 in EPS. What it turned out was, the restaurants that we had in Florida impacted, they were closed for quite a while, that impacted us in total by about 50 basis points in closed days. Those are higher volume restaurants than the system average. We did get some bounce back in Florida. Each brand was impacted differently. For the company, for Darden, it was slightly negative in comps for the entire quarter. It wasn't negative 60 basis points, it was just slightly negative. On an EPS basis, it turned out to be about $0.02 unfavorable instead of $0.03 because the comp impact wasn't as bad.
The $0.02 is primarily proactive things that we did to make sure that the restaurants were boarded up. They didn't have as much damage. We did have some food inventory write-off. We had some restaurants that were closed maybe a week, and that food has to be written off. We're also very proactive before the hurricanes come to help mitigate any food write-offs. Again, it was about $0.02 for the quarter instead of $0.03, and it was about slightly negative in comps instead of down 0.6%.
Excellent. Thank you so much.
The next question comes from Sara Senatore from Bernstein. Your line is now open.
Thank you. Just a couple of follow-ups if I could. First on the to-go, that 12% growth is sort of the same as last quarter. I was wondering if that's a signal about what the steady state pace of growth might be or if you have any sense of where you think to-go mix might max out over time. That's the first question. Then I wanted to ask about LongHorn, and the SKU reduction that you were talking about. I guess I hadn't recognized that it was 30% reduction in menu items. Sometimes we see that at restaurants, and it has a negative impact on comps. It doesn't seem like that's been the case. Maybe you can talk about where those menu items came out, and what do you think the key is to sort of reducing the menu size without impacting traffic? Thanks.
All right. Let's start with Olive Garden. The 12% quarter, I think is a really strong to-go quarter. We think about the future
The consumer need state is going to need to continue to increase for the convenience for us to continue to grow that. We're doing well over half a million dollars on average inside an Olive Garden box in To Go. We've got restaurants that are doing well over $1 million in To Go. As we think about going into the future, we need the consumer need state to continue to grow. We'll continue to innovate. I think one of the biggest things we can do on Olive Garden To Go is improve our operations. As the business has improved, Dave and Dan and the team continue to work on coming up with better systems to handle the volume. It's actually an interesting business because they do a lot of pickup like at 11:15 A.M. or 11:30 A.M..
They can use the diner before it fills up to handle the volume. I think there's some operational improvements that we can make. We can continue to improve the offering to stay relevant to the guest and continue to remind the guest that it's available. We've said, we're publicly on the record saying that we think over time, if the consumer need state continues to grow, that this can be 20% of our business. Primarily because the type of food travels so well, and we can do it more so than just entrees, that we can do bulk, and bulk is where we want to be. Let me move to LongHorn. We've been making great investments in LongHorn for the last two years.
Todd and his team have done a great job of, we've increased the size of the steaks, we've removed complexity in the kitchen, as we've mentioned, we've taken the SKUs down. Some of that through the menu, some of that through the promotional activity that we've done, reducing the number of new items that we introduce on a quarterly basis. What we're finding is we had a lot of menu items on our menu that really were duplicative in the need they were filling for the consumer. We removed them, and it just helps us operate much more efficiently. I believe all our businesses, all our brands, our menus are too complicated, too complex. We have items that continue to work and do the same thing over and over and over again, versus having one great fried appetizer instead of having three great fried appetizers.
The more we can simplify the operation, the better the execution gets, the quality increases, and the overall value to the consumer is having an impact. LongHorn historically has been a high food cost, low labor cost operation. We have simplified that operation to be able to bring the labor cost down and increase the productivity while improving the overall quality of the food product. Even as much as we've reduced it already, I think there's still further reduction to be done in the LongHorn menu to improve and simplify the operation. Those are very small kitchens that have to stay simple in order to be able to cook great steaks in a timely manner.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Chris O'Cull from Stifel. Your line is now open.
Thanks. Good morning, guys. Gene, how do you ensure that all the changes that are occurring at Cheddar's do not create a difficult work environment for employees and that could eventually impact the guest experience?
That's fairly easy. The systems haven't been invested in those restaurants. They are working on very old POS systems. Big difference in this integration than some of our others where the Cheddar's team's actually pulling from us to get this information in restaurant, where some of our past integrations, there's been a little pushback because they had good systems, and we were just changing the systems to change the systems. Here, our systems are superior. They want the systems as soon as they can get them, and they've been great to work with. We believe overall the benefits package is going to be much stronger for those team members. We think there's a huge upside in Cheddar's in increasing their retention. Right now, their employee retention's about the average of the industry.
We believe that if we can take them from 120% team member turnover down to our norm of 70, it's going to have a huge impact on the overall operation. We believe, and all indications are that they like the systems that we're bringing. Ian has done a great job working with his teams and talking about the systems that we're implementing and getting feedback. I think this is going to really enhance their performance over time.
You have not seen any changes to the guest satisfaction scores at Cheddar's through this process?
No.
Okay. Just one last question clarifying the menu changes at LongHorn. You mentioned a reduction in SKUs, but in terms of consumer-facing menu items or what the consumer would experience, what is the % reduction that you've taken on the menu or through promotional items?
Yeah. It's almost 30%. We got different tests out there, and we got different products in different markets. It's approximately 25%-30%.
Okay.
The management team has done a really good job there of getting back on a pathway of delivering that brand to the consumer differently than how Olive Garden delivers their brand to the consumer. It has a lot to do with the promotional cadence, and new product introductions.
My question was, has that gone through enough purchase cycles so you can see whether there's been a change to frequency of those guests with that menu reduction?
Yeah. We're definitely seeing increase in frequency in LongHorn. We measure that every quarter with our tokens.
Great. Thanks, guys.
Next question comes from Jason West from Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.
Yeah. Thanks. Given the upcoming holiday shift, can you guys quantify how that impacted you last year, or how you think it may impact the current quarter with the movement in holidays and any other shifts like that we should be aware of?
Yeah, Jason, the holiday impact is minimal versus last year. The holiday shift moving Christmas basically from a Sunday to a Monday, it's really not going to be much different than it was last year.
Let me just add, though, there are key days in our fiscal third quarter that cannot be weather impacted or also have a major impact, could have an impact on the quarter. We got New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day, which are big days in our quarter. A major weather event that covers a large geographic area could have impact.
Yeah. Last year's holiday shift was about 20 basis points unfavorable. It shouldn't be much different than this year, so pretty much flat to this year.
Okay. That's helpful. I know, Gene, it's hard to gauge what's going on with the consumer from month to month, but we have seen a decent pickup in the industry in the last couple of months. I don't know if you had any thoughts on what's driving that, and overlapping some of the election cycle stuff from last year. I don't know if there's anything else that you've seen, or do you see in your regional data that a lot of it is driven by the hurricane bounce backs, or does it look more broad-based? Thanks.
The industry's fighting for the consumer's discretionary dollars. I've said on this call before, we're not just fighting amongst ourselves, we're fighting for those dollars that are being spent in other places. I do think that overall, the industry is being a little more rational. I think there's been some okay innovation, and I think we're attracting consumers again. I don't think there's a macro trend out there that says that we're pushing people, and I think the industry's doing a better job.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Gregory Francfort from Bank of America. Your line is now open.
Hey. I had two super quick questions. One is just on the 2% comp guide. Is that for the legacy brands or is that ex-Cheddar's, or does that include Cheddar's? My other one is for Gene. It seems like the high-end category specifically has had a pretty big improvement the last couple of months, and I think you definitely saw it in your businesses. What do you think is driving that, and what is the reason for the improvement, particularly at the high-end steakhouse and also on Eddie V's?
Yeah, Greg. This is Rick. The 2% comp is for the legacy Darden brands. As Kevin mentioned on the beginning of our call, anytime we talk about comps for this fiscal year, it'll exclude the Cheddar's restaurants.
Yeah. Good observation on the high-end category, because our high-end brands, with the hurricanes, travel really came to a halt, and they were disproportionately impacted, and they really came back strong, both Capital Grille and Eddie V's. I would also say that Texas has not stopped being a drag. That business was for 18 months. We have pretty good presence in our high-end restaurants in Texas, and that had really been a constant drag, and that's kind of flipped for us now. The Texas restaurants are doing better and they're not dragging. On the high-end, the consumer, it feels really good out there. The consumers out there, people are celebrating. I think our brands are very well-positioned. John Martin's doing an incredible job leading Eddie V's and really maximizing those restaurants and put up a great number at 6.8%. Very excited about that.
We're opening a few restaurants in Eddie V's, which is really good growth for us.
Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.
Next question comes from Jeff Farmer from Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.
Thank you. I did hear you guys loud and clear on the reluctance to discuss tax reform. Just having quickly said that, should reform become a reality by the end of this week, by the end of this year, when would you guys expect to be able to share any form of assessment of what reform might mean to your business? I'm specifically pointing to either ICR in January, or is this a situation where we might have to wait till late March when you next report to get some more detail as to what tax reform could mean to your P&L and cash flow?
Hey, Jeff. We expect to analyze the bill when it's signed. We're beginning to analyze it now. We expect to have the impact of tax reform in early January, ahead of ICR.
Thank you very much.
Next question comes from Andy Barish from Jefferies. Your line is now open.
Hey, guys. You're bumping up pretty close to your $200 million buyback here in the first half. Just any thoughts or further comments on cash to shareholders, free cash usage?
Yeah, Andy, we are, as you said, bumping up close to our high end of our long-term framework. That's just that. As we've said, there are years that we could be above it, years where we can be below it. Right now, we have given you our share count for the year, which is 126 million shares. You could probably see that we don't anticipate buying a whole lot right now. We did last year, go over our $200 million. As we think about our return of capital, we'll see what other uses we have for that capital and whether we're going to go ahead and buy back shares. Right now, we've given you, I guess, the best indication of what our share count will be for the end of the year. Well, actually for the average for the year.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Karen Holthouse from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.
Hi. We've had a couple of quarters now of more positive commentary on comp trends in LongHorn, outside of core markets, also pretty strong profit growth there. How should we think about that tying into plans for unit growth and sort of two years or two and a half years out from a pretty proactive decision to pull back on unit growth, how far you would want to be in this process, and maybe tying in menu simplification and whatnot before you would potentially really re-accelerate?
Hey, Karen, it's Rick. In relation to LongHorn unit growth a couple of years out, what we have talked about over the last few years is that our long-term framework for Darden is about 2% to 3% new unit growth, sales from new units. Some of that will come from LongHorn. We're very reluctant to talk about accelerating rapidly any one brand, because we know that speed kills, and we opened 40 LongHorns two years in a row, and we're kind of catching up to that right now. As we think about LongHorn in the future, I think we've talked this year it's going to be in the teens, the high teens, number of openings. I wouldn't anticipate that getting way out of line from there. We'll give you a little bit more about FY 2019 in a few months or actually by the end of June.
Right now we're looking at pipeline. We're looking at filling in sites in markets that we already have restaurants in. We think that's a really good strategy for LongHorn, and then continuing to find new markets where we can generate a beachhead and grow from there.
One other question on guidance. If you look at the midpoint of EPS growth and then account for that legal settlement you saw this quarter, it would seem that pre-tax profit growth is decelerating from sort of high teens in the first half towards something that's more mid-teens in the second half, despite what I would think would be more of a benefit from Cheddar synergies into the back half. What are the other drivers of that? Are there individual line items of inflation we should be focused on to just think about that cadence?
A couple of things. One is, we're wrapping on a really strong last half of last year as you think about growth. Inflation, as we said, for the year is going to be 2%, around 2%, and it's just slightly higher than where we had anticipated. It's still around 2%, slightly higher on the around 2% range than before. We still have, you've done the math, somewhere in the double-digit growth rates in the back half of the year. While we consider that a deceleration, it's still above our long-term framework growth rate. If you think about earnings after tax in our long-term framework, we say 7%-10%, that would still be above that.
All right. Great. Thank you.
Next question comes from Howard Penney from Hedgeye Risk Management. Your line is now open.
Hi. Thank you so much for the question. I have two, if you don't mind. First one, you attributed your success at LongHorn to the smaller menu, increased execution, and increased frequency. One of your largest competitors in the casual dining space, Chili's, is also deploying a similar strategy. I was wondering how you view that competitive dynamic as they go from a down 7% to a +2% or +3% as a fairly big market share shift in casual dining. Thanks.
Yeah. When we think about LongHorn, we're fine-tuning the menu as we pull it back. I think it's a little bit different than the competitor that you mentioned. We had a lot of menu items that really weren't working that hard for us, and we were introducing a lot of new products on a quarterly or every 6-week basis that weren't working hard. You're very familiar with old LongHorn, Howard, and a great LongHorn experience is a Flo's Filet and a hot baked potato with sour cream and butter, real butter. As we simplify our operation, we're executing at a higher level. We need to get the steaks cooked correctly. We need to get the food out faster. That's what simplification has done for us. I'm really not going to comment on our competitor's strategy.
I just wish you'd have a LongHorn closer to where I live. I'm just trying to understand your hesitation towards delivery. The survey work that we've seen on delivery suggests that the biggest opportunity or what consumers are saying they're using delivery for is a replacement from a meal at home. That would obviously be very incremental to the casual dining industry. I detected a hesitation. If I'm wrong about that, you can correct me, but is it that you don't know who to go with delivery or do you want to do it yourself? Or maybe you just don't see the opportunity as being that big. Thank you.
Well, I think there's two parts to your answer. It's we don't know who we're going to partner with yet, and number 2, I don't like the current economics of the partnership. We're trying to understand their profit model, and we're trying to understand our profit model, doing it internally. Once we get a pretty good understanding of both those models and they're well developed, I think I'll have some leverage in negotiating this with a third party or doing it ourselves. I'm not hesitant on the business. The business is a good business. I'm just not going to live with their current economics. We'll do it ourselves before we live with their economics.
Got it. Sorry to keep coming over you. It's not that you don't see the growth in delivery as taking share from other categories. It's just you just don't understand the economics.
I understand them. They're just not favorable enough for me. I'm not going to give them their discount. There's too much profit in there because they don't have scale yet. We're trying to understand what that model looks like and what it looks like for us from a profitability standpoint. We can pinpoint what their profit is, and we got to get to a better resolution if they want to do it for us. If not, we'll do it ourselves.
Awesome. Thank you so much.
The next question comes from Alex Mergard from J.P. Morgan. Your line is now open.
Hi, thank you for the question. I have a follow-up on how the pipeline is shaping up, and I heard your comments on LongHorn. Would you consider exceeding your long-term guidance for 2%-3% new restaurant growth? Do you consider that more of a self-imposed cap in order to execute on that growth? Any color there would be helpful.
Yeah. Alex, the 2%-3% is the long-term framework we have for a couple of reasons. One is people. We have to make sure we have enough people to open these restaurants and open them strongly and doing a great job with it. We think if we get too high above the 3% across Darden, it puts a strain on the people that we have and knowing the brand. There are some brands that are going to be above the 3% range and some brands are going to be below the 2% range. Across Darden, we think 2%-3% is the right investment. We do know that all of these restaurants on average are creating significant amount of value. We also have other ways to return capital and to spend our capital, whether it's in dividends or share buyback.
We want to balance all of our capital spending, including new restaurants, so we think 2%-3% is the right amount.
All right. No, I appreciate that. One final follow-up, and that is on the strength of independent restaurants versus chain restaurants. It's a trend that we've been seeing for some time now. Are you seeing any changes to that dynamic and how it may or may not be impacting your business? Thank you.
Yeah, I think the independent growth is happening in more of the big cities. We see that, and we see that more of a real issue for our upscale brands. In a Yard House, in Seasons 52 and Bahama Breeze, where they're located more in these upscale suburban areas or urban areas. We're not seeing an influx of casual dining restaurants in suburbia that are privately owned. This is an urban phenomenon and not really impacting LongHorn and Olive Garden.
All right. Appreciate the color. Thank you.
The next question comes from Andrew Strelzik from BMO. Your line is now open.
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I just have one quick one here. The beef outlook that you provided through May is a pretty attractive low single digit deflation. We're seeing in some of the steak cuts, you're seeing some inflation now. I guess I'm wondering, in terms of the outlook, is that due to the coverage that you have currently, or is there something that you see in the beef markets or what you're hearing that makes you more optimistic going forward?
Yeah, we're fairly long right now on beef. We're covered, our teams made some good decisions along the way.
When I look at the LongHorn margins, you've talked a lot about some of the initiatives and things that are going on there. We did see a nice sequential step up in the pace of margin expansion. Is it reasonable to assume then that we might start to see that moderate, or do you think you reached a point in terms of the initiatives that this is a more sustainable type of margin growth at LongHorn? Thank you.
Yeah, Andrew. We've had a lot of work at LongHorn in simplification to improve labor productivity. Again, they've also had some beef deflation over the last few years to help margins. We still think there's margin improvement for LongHorn going forward. Maybe not to the level that we've seen over the last couple of years, because eventually the beef deflation is going to become beef inflation, and we're going to continue to invest in quality at LongHorn. We're just not ready to talk more about individual brand margins going forward. Although, if you look across Darden compared to our competitors, we are the only ones growing margins really over time, over the last few years, or actually the last six months. We feel good about where our margin is.
We don't want to go too high on our margin because we think value is important and not getting too far out of line with what the consumer is willing to pay. We still have costs that we can go after. We still have productivity gains that we can do to continue to expand our margins across Darden 10 to 40 basis points, which is what's in our long-term framework.
Great. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Stephen Anderson from Maxim Group. Your line is now open.
Yes, thank you for taking my question. Thank you for taking most of my questions have been answered already. Just for modeling purposes, just want to ask when your next 53-week fiscal year will take place.
Give us a second to find that out. It's probably in a couple of years, it's not next fiscal year, I'm pretty sure. 53-week year. I think it's Kevin, can you get back to him on that?
Yeah, we'll get back to you on that.
All right, thank you.
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Thanks, Gene. I think we're ready to conclude the call. I want to remind everyone that we plan to release third quarter results on Thursday, March 22nd, before the market opens with a conference call to follow. Thanks everyone for participating in today's call, and have a happy holiday season.
That concludes today's conference. Thank you all for your participation. You may disconnect at this time.