Can you stay for dinner tomorrow night?

Darden Restaurants (NYSE:DRI) is set to post its fourth-quarter results after the market close on Wednesday, so I am going to draw back to my days as a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians to whip up a little parlor trick for you.

Wall Street is guessing that Darden (the company behind the Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and tasty Bahama Breeze restaurants) will earn $0.38 a share. Let me roll up my sleeves, wave a magic wand, and be the first to break the news that Darden earned $0.39 -- quite possibly a penny or two more -- to kick off fiscal 2004.

If I'm right, I'll share my secret with you. It's not magic; it's logic. Darden has managed to top analyst projections for nearly every single quarter on this side of the millennium. While a cynical wink goes out to those who believe that Darden is one of the many companies out there managing their earnings by feeding low projections to gullible analysts, let me do this trick one misdirection better by blowing away the smoke and smashing the mirrors.

While Darden's shares have more than tripled over the past three years, its run of market-besting quarters hasn't really meant that the company is on some kind of amazing tear. Actually, earnings of $1.31 a share in fiscal 2003 were essentially flat with the previous year's $1.30 a share production. Think Darden posting earnings of $0.40 a share tomorrow afternoon would be a blowout quarter? Nope. That's exactly what it earned last year.

By talking down numbers, the company has been able to achieve an earnings surprise party nearly every time out, even if the end result is that the fundamentals are stuck in neutral.

The thing is that restaurant stocks are an easy lot to figure out. Such companies as Applebee's (NASDAQ:APPB), Outback Steakhouse (NYSE:OSI), and Brinker (NYSE:EAT) are blessed with predictable results and perpetual same-store sales reports. Last-minute dramatic hits and misses are rare. However, underselling by a penny or two happens way too often.

So, please, do us all a favor and play it straight. Otherwise, I just might lose my lunch.