Zacks Industry Outlook Highlights: Darden Restaurants, Brinker International, Ruby Tuesday and California Pizza Kitchen

Chicago, IL – August 3, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the latest Industry Outlook. Today’s outlook from Zacks Equity Research analyst Ann Northrop discusses the Restaurants sector. Highlighted stocks include: Darden Restaurants (DRI - Analyst Report), Brinker International (EAT - Snapshot Report), Ruby Tuesday (RT - Snapshot Report) and California Pizza Kitchen (CPKI - Analyst Report).

Driving the restaurant stock rally, was a slew of better-than-expected earnings reports – and upward earnings estimate revisions -- including those by Darden Restaurants (DRI - Analyst Report), Brinker International (EAT - Snapshot Report), Ruby Tuesday (RT - Snapshot Report) and California Pizza Kitchen (CPKI - Analyst Report). With the exception of Darden, however, the out-performance was driven by strong cost controls, decelerating commodity prices and conservative assumptions.

Darden was the only operator that saw customer traffic improve and had limited same-store sales declines to the low single-digits (down 3.2% in its latest quarter). The remaining three earnings out-performers saw same-store sales fall at a mid-to-high single digit rate in 1Q09, and those results were bolstered by menu price increases, masking steeper drops in customer traffic.

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Disclaimer: Past performance does not guarantee future results. Investors should always research companies and securities before making any investments. Nothing herein should be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any security.

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