NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Darden Restaurants (DRI) - Get Report are down 0.28% to $63.35 in afternoon trading on Friday despite Oppenheimer's price target increase to $70 from $67, while reiterating its "outperform" rating. 

"Analysis suggests upcoming earnings catalysts aren't properly captured by consensus through 2016," Oppenheimer said, adding that this creates an attractive risk/reward and compelling upside earnings case. 

Earnings sensitivity is high to any improvements against conservatively modeled estimates despite new, aggressive leadership, Oppenheimer said.

Near-term valuation remains the company's biggest pushback, but is calculated against estimates with major revision potential, the firm noted, adding that "hidden value" drivers are not completely unnoticed, but add optionality via real estate and eventual business separation. 

"Analysis suggests OG comps are likely to be 3% owing to better industry sales trends, and easiest OG-specific lap ever," analysts said, noting that this combined with tighter operational execution drives Oppenheimer's earnings estimates to 89 cents per share for the third quarter of 2015.

The firm noted that Darden Restaurants remains a "Top Pick" as earnings power. Darden Restaurants will report third quarter earnings on March 20. 

Insight from TheStreet's Research Team:

Jim Cramer commented on Darden Restaurants (DRI) in a recent post on RealMoney.com. Here is what he had to say:

Finally, let's take Darden (DRI), the parent of Olive Garden. For ages this had been a poorly-run restaurant chain that also included Red Lobster. Results were awful and disappointing quarter after quarter. Then, not that long ago, an activist took a stake, the board acted, replaced management and it has been off to the races ever since.

-Jim Cramer, 'Value in Good Management' originally published on 3/5/2015 on RealMoney.com

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Separately, TheStreet Ratings team rates DARDEN RESTAURANTS INC as a Hold with a ratings score of C. TheStreet Ratings Team has this to say about their recommendation:

"We rate DARDEN RESTAURANTS INC (DRI) a HOLD. The primary factors that have impacted our rating are mixed some indicating strength, some showing weaknesses, with little evidence to justify the expectation of either a positive or negative performance for this stock relative to most other stocks. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures and solid stock price performance. However, as a counter to these strengths, we also find weaknesses including unimpressive growth in net income, disappointing return on equity and poor profit margins." You can view the full analysis from the report here: DRI Ratings Report