Darden Restaurants, Inc.

Welcome to the Darden Fiscal Year 2021 Fourth 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 1 on your touchtone phone. The conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Kevin Kalachak. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Regina. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for participating on today's call. Joining me on the call today are Gene Lee, Darden's Chairman and CEO, Rick Cardenas, President and COO, and Raj Vinam, 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 on the investor relations section of our website at Darden.com. Today's discussion and presentation include certain non-GAAP measurements, and reconciliations of those measurements are included in the presentation. Any reference to pre-COVID when discussing fourth quarter performance is a comparison to our fourth quarter of fiscal 19. Any annual reference to pre-COVID is the trailing 12 months ending February of fiscal 20. This is because last year's results are not meaningful due to the pandemic's impact on the business as dining rooms closed and we pivoted to a to-go only model during the fourth quarter of fiscal 20. We plan to release fiscal 22 first quarter earnings on September 23rd before the market opens, followed by a conference call. This morning, Jean will share some brief remarks Rick will give an update on our operating performance, and Raj will provide more detail on our financial results and share our outlook for fiscal 22.

Now, I'll turn the call over to Gene. Thank you, Kevin. Good morning, everyone. As you saw from our release this morning, we had a very strong quarter that exceeded our expectations as sales quickly accelerated from the third quarter. During our call a year ago, I talked about the resiliency of the full-service dining segment and the confidence we had in the industry's ability to bounce back from the impacts of the pandemic. And we've begun to see demand come back at strong levels. As we think about the industry, our Consumer Insights team has done a lot of good work to better understand the size of the full-service dining segment. There are multiple sources of data that offer sales estimates for the restaurant industry. And the size of the industry, and the full service industry specifically, varies considerably across these sources. This year, we're adopting Technomic as our data source, which we believe better reflects the sales contribution from independent operators, provides a broader view of the restaurant industry, and aligns more closely with the census data. Going forward, we will be referencing industry data provided by Technomic, which sizes the casual dining and fine dining categories for fiscal 2020 at $189 billion and for fiscal 2019 at $222 billion. Given the strong demand we're seeing and the financial health of the consumer, we believe the categories will return to that size or greater despite having approximately 10% fewer units than before the onset of the pandemic. Over the last 15 months, we have made numerous strategic investments. At the restaurant level, we've invested in food quality and portion size that will help strengthen long-term value perceptions for each brand. We also made considerable investments in our team members to ensure our employment proposition remains a competitive advantage. And we invested in technology, particularly within our to-go capabilities to meet our guests' growing need for convenience and desire for the off-premise experience. Our business model has evolved and is much stronger today. As we begin our new fiscal year, we will remain disciplined in our approach to growing sales. More specifically, our focus is on driving profitable sales growth. Given the business transformation work we have done and the demand we are seeing from the consumer, we are well positioned to thrive in this operating environment. Before I turn it over to Rick, I want to say thank you to our team members and our restaurants and our support center. This was, without a doubt, the most challenging year in our company's history. But thanks to your dedication and perseverance, we've emerged stronger. On behalf of the board of directors and the senior leadership team, thank you for all you do to take care of our guests and each other. Rick.