Darden Restaurants, Inc.

to the Darden fiscal year 2022 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 one 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 Calicak. Please go ahead. You may begin.

Thank you, Maureen. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for participating on today's call. Joining me today are Rick Cardenas, Darden's President and CEO, 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 in the Investor Relations section of our website at Darden.com. Today's discussion and presentation includes certain non-GAAP measurements and reconciliations of these measurements are included in the presentation. Any reference to pre-COVID when discussing fourth quarter performance is a comparison to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019. This is because the results from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021 and 2020 are not meaningful due to the pandemic's impact on the business and the limited capacity environment that we operated in during those periods. This will be the final quarter that we provide comparisons to pre-COVID. Moving forward, we will provide comparisons to the prior year. We plan to release fiscal 2023 first quarter earnings on Thursday, September 22nd, before the market opens, followed by a conference call. This morning, Rick will share some brief remarks on the quarter and full year before discussing our focus moving forward. Raj will provide details on our Q4 and full-year financial results and share our fiscal 2023 financial outlook, and then Rick will close with some final comments. Now I'll turn the call over to Rick.

Thank you, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. This is our first conference call since Gene's retirement, so I want to take a moment to thank him. Gene never wanted a spotlight on himself. and he's probably listening right now and telling me to move on. But Darden is stronger today and better positioned to navigate any operating environment because of Gene's leadership. And personally, I know I'm better prepared for my role thanks to Gene's mentorship. So on behalf of our 180,000 team members, thank you, Gene, for putting our guests and team members first and for leading Darden with a steady and decisive hand. As you saw from our press release this morning, we had a very good quarter, even in this highly inflationary environment. For the quarter, we exceeded our sales expectations and our earnings were in line with our outlook. Overall, fiscal 2022 was a solid year. Each of our brands strengthened their business models, while our restaurant teams remained disciplined and executed well in a challenging environment. We stuck to our strategy, continued to price below inflation, and ended the year with significantly better margins than pre-COVID. As a result of this business model improvement and our strong balance sheet, we are well positioned as we begin our new fiscal year in what remains an uncertain environment. Raj will share details for the quarter and the full year in a moment. But first, I want to spend my time reiterating Darden's strategy, which is not changing and will remain our focus moving forwards. Our brands benefit from Darden's four competitive advantages of significant scale, extensive data and insights, rigorous strategic planning, and our results-oriented culture. But none is more evident in our financial results than our scale. To quickly dimensionalize our scale advantage for you, our total sales are more than two times our closest full-service restaurant competitor and more than two and a half times the next closest. We also have higher than average annual restaurant volumes, lower overhead costs, which we achieve by centralizing our support functions, and margins that are significantly higher than our competitive set. Our scale creates cost advantages that our brands could not achieve individually. A great example is the fact that each of our specialty restaurant brands, the Capital Grill, Eddie V's, Seasons 52, Yard House, and Bahama Breeze, achieved record results for the year, even in the midst of historic inflation. We will continue to leverage our scale and our superior financial position to make long-term investments in our business. First, we will continue to invest in our brand's value propositions by underpricing inflation over the long term. This is the biggest investment we make every year. Additionally, we will continue to leverage our scale to invest in technology that enhances the guest experience and simplifies operations. Finally, it is our people who bring our brands to life, and we will continue to invest in them so they can grow and thrive and help us do the same. At the restaurant level, our strategy comes to life through our back-to-basics operating philosophy. This philosophy, anchored in food, service, and atmosphere, has never been more important than it is today. Our restaurant teams focused on being brilliant with the basics ensures we put the full in full-service dining. The work our brands are doing to drive execution by simplifying our processes and menus puts our restaurant teams in the best position to deliver great guest experiences, and it's working. Olive Garden's overall guest satisfaction scores are at all-time highs. Additionally, on Mother's Day, the Olive Garden team delivered record performance. Mother's Day was the highest sales day and second highest guest count day in their history. We also continue to make key investments across our portfolio to position each brand for long-term success. For example, Longhorn Steakhouse has made significant investments over the past few years in the quality of their food. They continue to lead the casual dining industry on food quality and taste of food, which propelled them to over $2 billion in annual sales for the first time. Similarly, Cheddar Scratch Kitchen is a value leader, and the investments they have made to simplify their menu and price below inflation has resulted in improvement in their industry-leading value ratings. Finally, as I mentioned, our specialty brands had record performance for the year, which was due to the investments they made during COVID and the scale advantage of Darden. Our strategy remains the right one for the company, and we will continue to execute it to drive growth and long-term shareholder value. As we begin our new fiscal year, we continue to experience significant inflationary pressures, and we will stick to our strategy of pricing below inflation and our competitors over time. While we can't predict the future, we're focused on managing the business for the long term, and the power of Darden positions us to navigate this environment better than anyone else. Now I'll turn it over to Raj.