Darden Restaurants saw its IBD SmartSelect Composite Rating rise to 96 Wednesday, up from 94 the day before.
The revised score means the stock currently tops 96% of all other stocks in terms of key performance metrics and technical strength. Winning stocks often have a 95 or higher score in the early stages of a new price run, so that's a good item to have on your checklist when looking for the best stocks to buy and watch.
Darden Restaurants is currently in a flat base, with a 156.00 buy point. Earlier today, it just cleared the pivot, but with lower volume. Ideally, we are looking for the stock to break out in volume at least 40% above average.
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One weak spot is the company's 72 EPS Rating, which tracks quarterly and annual earnings growth. Look for that to improve to 80 or better to show it's in the top 20% of all stocks.
Its Accumulation/Distribution Rating of C- shows a roughly equal amount of buying and selling by institutional investors over the last 13 weeks.
Earnings Update
The company posted 21% EPS growth for Q3. It has now posted accelerating EPS growth for two consecutive quarters. Sales growth climbed 14%, up from 9% in the prior quarter. That marks two quarters of rising growth.
Darden Restaurants earns the No. 9 rank among its peers in the Retail-Restaurants industry group. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Chuy's Holdings and Texas Roadhouse are among the top 5 highly-rated stocks within the group.
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