Darden Restaurants (DRI) will reinstate its quarterly dividend with a new payment of $0.30 per share in the fourth quarter of 2020. Earlier this year the full-service restaurant company suspended its dividend after a 17.3 percent in 2019. 

The next dividend is payable on November 2, 2020 to shareholders of record at the close of business on October 9, 2020. The new annual dividend rate yields 1.3% at a stock price of $90 for Darden.

In Darden's press release today, reporting fiscal 2021 first quarter results, the company's Board of Directors also announced that it has reinstated a quarterly dividend and declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.30 per share on the Company's outstanding common stock, without further commenting on this decision.

The new dividend rate of 30 cents quarterly is 65.0 percent less than the $0.88 per share quarterly dividend paid by Darden before the COVID-19 pandemic. The new annual dividend rate of $1.20 per share translates into an estimated annual dividend payment of $156 million. 

Darden announced a double digit dividend hike every year from 2016 to 2019. With a current market cap of $11.7 billion the company is one of the bigger listed restaurant stocks. Year-to-date the stock price is down 17.4 percent based on Wednesday's closing price of $90.

Darden Restaurants, Inc. is a full-service restaurant company with operations in the United States and Canada. Its brands include Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen, Yard House, The Capital Grille, Seasons 52, Bahama Breeze and Eddie V's.  Darden Restaurants is a Florida corporation incorporated in March 1995. The company initiated a dividend in 1995 and temporarily suspended its payment in 2020 because of COVID-19. In the fourth quarter of 2020 the dividend was reinstated.