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Olive Garden Italian Kitchen. Olive Garden is a division of Darden Restaurants.
Olive Garden in North Olmsted, Ohio

Olive Garden parent company Darden dips after serving up a Q1 earnings miss

The restaurant giant saw strong comps, but is facing higher costs and more price-conscious consumers.

Nia Warfield

Darden Restaurants shares sank more than 9% Thursday morning after the Olive Garden and LongHorn parent company’s first-quarter results came in lighter than expected.

Sales landed at $3.04 billion, just shy of the $3.07 billion expected by analysts polled by FactSet. Adjusted diluted earnings per share came in at $1.97, narrowly below the Street’s $2.00 estimate. Same-store sales rose 4.7%, topping expectations thanks to Olive Garden and LongHorn, while its fine dining segment stayed relatively flat.

Looking ahead, Darden upped its full-year guidance, calling for adjusted EPS of $10.50 to $10.70, sales growth of 7.5% to 8.5%, and plans to open about 60 to 65 new restaurants. Wall Street is forecasting EPS of $10.69 and sales growth of 8.3%.

At Olive Garden, Darden is testing smaller-portioned, lower-priced meals to win over more cost-conscious diners. Already in 40% of locations, the offerings include seven entrees paired with unlimited breadsticks and soup or salad.

After today’s dip, Darden shares are now flat on the year.

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Molina tanks after earnings miss, gloomy guidance

Molina Healthcare tanked after it reported earnings results that missed Wall Street expectations and gave disappointing full-year guidance.

For the last three months of 2025, Molina reported:

  • Adjusted losses per share of $2.75, compared to the $0.34 earnings per share analysts polled by FactSet were expecting.

  • Revenue of $11.3 billion, compared to the $10.8 billion the Street was penciling in.

  • A medical cost ratio of 94.6%, higher than the 93.1% analysts expected.

For the full year in 2026, Molina expects:

  • Adjusted earnings per share of at least $5.00, compared to the $13.66 analysts were expecting.

  • Revenues of about $42.2 billion, compared to the $46.6 billion analysts had penciled in.

  • Its medical cost ratio to sit at 92.6%, while analysts had expected 91.4%.

Health insurers have been under pressure for the past year amid rising health costs. Molina, one of the largest providers of ACA marketplace plans, has taken a hit as tax credits for the program lapsed in January.

Bloom Energy Reports earnings

Bloom Energy surges after topping expectations for sales, EPS

Here’s how the print looked at first glance.

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Roblox surges as it guides for stronger-than-expected full-year bookings, touts AI vision

Kid-centric gaming platform Roblox reported its fourth-quarter results after the market closed on Thursday. Its shares surged more than 20% in after-hours trading.

For the full year ahead, Roblox guided for bookings of between $8.28 billion and $8.55 billion, which would represent annual growth of 22% to 26%. That’s well ahead of Wall Street’s estimates: analysts polled by FactSet expected $8.03 billion.

Roblox forecasts Q1 bookings to land between $1.69 billion and $1.74 billion, compared to the $1.7 billion Wall Street consensus.

An average of 144 million daily users logged onto Roblox in its fourth quarter, beating estimates of 138 million and up 69% from last year. The platform paid out $1.5 billion to creators last year, up from $922 million in 2024.

Roblox engagement surged in 2025, a year marred by several legal issues surrounding child safety on the platform. Late last year, analysts began to warn that some of its most popular titles were past their peaks.

Recently, shares of the company have dropped on investor fears of Google’s Project Genie AI tool, which generates playable worlds. As of Thursday’s close, Roblox had shed more than $10 billion in market cap since Project Genie was launched. On Wednesday, Roblox appeared to answer Genie’s release with the open beta launch of its own “4D” genAI tool. Roblox’s tool lets users generate objects made up of multiple working parts (ex.: a drivable car with spinning wheels) as opposed to static 3D objects.

In its letter to shareholders, Roblox said it was “innovating aggressively in AI to accelerate the creation of content, improve the safety of our platform, and fuel ongoing user engagement, discovery and monetization improvements.”

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