Unifirst Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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January 8, 2025

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Earnings Conference Call
Unifirst Q1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 8 speakers on the call.

Operator

Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

Operator

I would now like to hand the conference over to President and Chief Executive Officer, Steven Sintros. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you and good morning. I'm Steven Sintros, UniFirst's President and Chief Executive Officer. Joining me today is Shane O'Connor, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I'd like to welcome you to UniFirst Corporation's conference call to review our Q1 results for fiscal year 2025. This call will be on a listen only mode until we complete our prepared remarks, but first a brief disclaimer.

Speaker 1

This conference call may contain forward looking statements that reflect the company's current views with respect to future events and financial performance. These forward looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. The words anticipate, optimistic, believe, estimate, expect, intend and similar expressions that indicate future events and trends identify forward looking statements. Actual future results may differ materially from those anticipated depending on a variety of risk factors. For more information, please refer to the discussion of these risk factors in our most recent Form 10 ks and 10 Q filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Speaker 1

To start the call today, I'd like to briefly address the news regarding Cintas Corporation. As we stated in our press release yesterday, the UniFirst Board in consultation with its independent financial and legal advisors carefully evaluated the unsolicited non binding proposal from Cintas and unanimously determined that it was not in the best interest of UniFirst, our shareholders and our other stakeholders. In making this determination, the Board considers the offer price execution and business risk, feedback from some of the company's largest shareholders by voting power and the company's future growth and value creation opportunities. The UniFirst Board and management team remain confident in the strategy the company is executing and will continue to take actions to create shareholder value. With that, I will turn to our results for the quarter.

Speaker 1

We are pleased with the results from our Q1, which represent a solid start to our fiscal year and were largely in line with our expectations. I want to sincerely thank our team partners who continue to always deliver for each other and our customers as we strive toward our vision of being universally recognized as the best service provider in the industry, all while living our mission of serving the people who do the hard work. We serve the people who do the hard work as they are the workforce that keeps our communities up and running. They are our existing and prospective customers as well as our own UniFirst team partners. Our mission is to enable those employees and their organizations by providing the right products and services to do their job successfully and safely.

Speaker 1

Whether that means providing uniforms, workwear, facility services, 1st aid and safety, clean room or other products and services, our goal is to partner with our customers to ensure we have the right structure, the right program structure, products and services for their businesses and their team, all while providing an enhanced customer experience. 1st quarter revenues were $604,900,000 increase of 1.9% from fiscal 2024. Operating income and adjusted EBITDA increased by 4.5% and 5.9% respectively compared to the Q1 of fiscal 2024. As we discussed last quarter, as the market has emerged from a period of significantly elevated inflation levels, a more challenging pricing environment has developed, which has had a corresponding impact on our retention rates. This has impacted our overall growth in our core laundry operations.

Speaker 1

Although these are certainly not the growth rates we ultimately aspire to deliver, as we discussed last quarter, we do feel like there's reasons to be positive about some of the trends we are experiencing in our leading indicators that should translate into improvements in revenue trends and retention as we move through this cycle. During the quarter, our sales organization continued to perform well selling prospects on the value that UniFirst can bring to their businesses. We also continue to be encouraged by the pipeline of large account opportunities that we are currently working on. From an ads versus reductions perspective, net wearer levels for our existing customers declined during the quarter, showing some incremental weakness compared to a year ago at this time. We are pleased with the progress we continue to make in areas of operational execution and margin enhancement, which allowed us to show solid improvements in operating income and adjusted EBITDA during the quarter despite the modest growth.

Speaker 1

These improvements, which were primarily in core expense areas such as merchandise and plant production expenses, were partially offset in the quarter by higher healthcare costs and legal environmental as compared to a year ago. We also continue to see strong improvements in operating cash flows, which were up 27.3% compared to the same quarter a year ago. As a company, we will continue to focus on investments in the business to enhance our ability to attract new customers, sell additional products to existing customers as well as enhance our customers' experience and drive improved retention. We believe that there is ample runway to improve our profitability with ongoing efforts focused on the consistency of our operational execution and driving productivity. In addition, areas such as strategic pricing and account profitability as well as strategic manufacturing and sourcing continue to represent significant opportunities.

Speaker 1

Although some of these benefits going forward will be more significantly enabled through the implementation of our ERP, We continue to focus on these areas and others we feel can move the needle in the near to mid term. Speaking of our ERP project, we are generally on track with our project timelines and continue to be excited about the benefits that the system can bring to our business. That said, I'll turn the call over to Shane, who will provide more details on our Q1 results as well as our outlook for the remainder of fiscal 2025.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Steve, and good morning. In our Q1 of 2025, consolidated revenues $604,900,000 up 1.9 percent from $593,500,000 a year ago and consolidated operating income increased to $55,500,000 from $53,100,000 or 4.5 percent. Net income for the quarter increased to $43,100,000 or $2.31 per diluted share from $42,300,000 or 2 point 26 dollars or $2.26 per diluted share. As discussed in the prior quarter, the company migrated to an adjusted EBITDA metric that we believe is more meaningful and is defined as net income before interest, income taxes, depreciation and amortization, further adjusted for share based compensation expense, acquisition costs and other items impacting comparability. We believe that this more wholesome non GAAP measure will provide a more refined view of the company's profitability and is a better indication of the company's capacity to generate future cash flows.

Speaker 2

The adjusted EBITDA metric does not adjust for the key initiative costs we incur, but the company will provide visibility to those items separately. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA increased to $94,000,000 from $88,700,000 in the prior year or 5.9%. Our financial results in the 1st quarters of fiscal 2025 2024 included approximately $2,500,000 $2,900,000 respectively of costs directly attributable to our key initiatives. The effect of these items on the Q1 of fiscal 2025 2024 decreased operating income and adjusted EBITDA by $2,500,000 $2,900,000 respectively. Net income by $1,800,000 $2,400,000 respectively and diluted EPS by $0.09 and $0.12 respectively.

Speaker 2

Our Core Laundry operations revenues for the quarter were $532,700,000 an increase of 1.7 percent from the Q1 of 2024. Core Laundry organic growth, which adjusts for the estimated effect of acquisitions as well as fluctuations in the Canadian dollar was also 1.7%. The organic growth rate was primarily the result of solid new account sales and pricing efforts over the last year. Core Laundry operating margin increased to 8.1% for the quarter or $43,000,000 from 8% in prior year or $42,100,000 And the segment's adjusted EBITDA margin increased 14.8% from 14.4%. Costs we incurred related to our key initiatives were recorded to the Core Laundry Operations segment and decreased Core Laundry operating and adjusted EBITDA margins for the Q1 of fiscal 20252024 by 0.5% and 0.6 percent respectively.

Speaker 2

Segments operating and adjusted EBITDA margin comparisons benefited from lower merchandise and other operating input costs as a percentage of revenues, which were partially offset by higher healthcare, legal and environmental and selling costs in the Q1 of 2025 as a percentage of revenues. Energy costs in the Q1 of 2025 were 3.9% of revenues. Revenues from our Specialty Garments segment, which delivers specialized nuclear decontamination and clean room products and services increased to $45,900,000 from $44,700,000 in prior year or 2.9 percent. And the segment's operating margin was 26.5%. Strong operating results from our European nuclear operations were partially offset by a slight decline in our cleanroom business.

Speaker 2

As we mentioned in the past, this segment's results can vary significantly from period to period due to seasonality as well as timing and the profitability of nuclear reactor outages and projects. Our First Aid segment's revenues increased $26,200,000 from $24,900,000 in prior year or 5.4% driven by double digit growth in our van operations. Segment had a nominal operating income of $300,000 during the quarter as the segment's results continue to reflect the investments we are making in the First Aid Van business. At the end of our 1st fiscal quarter, we continue to reflect a solid balance sheet and financial position with no long term debt and cash, cash equivalents and short term investments totaling $181,000,000 In the 1st 3 months of fiscal 2025, we continue to see solid improvement in our cash flows from operating activities, which increased 27.3 percent to $58,100,000 primarily due to improved profitability and lower working capital needs of the business. We continue to invest in our future with capital expenditures of $33,600,000 repurchased $6,400,000 worth of common stock and acquired 3 small first aid businesses for which we paid a total of $2,800,000 I'd like to take this opportunity to provide an update on our outlook.

Speaker 2

At this time, we expect our revenues for fiscal 2025 to be between $2,425,000,000 $2,440,000,000 We continue to expect diluted earnings per share to be between $6.79 $7.19 This outlook continues to include an estimated $16,000,000 of costs directly attributable to our key initiatives that we anticipate will be expensed in fiscal 2025. Although there's been a recent decline in the value of the Canadian dollar, this outlook assumes a constant Canadian exchange rate of $0.74 consistent with our original guidance, due to the uncertainty in how the foreign currency will fluctuate over the remainder of the year.

Speaker 1

Aside from the tightening of

Speaker 2

our revenue range now 1 quarter into the year, all other assumptions that we detailed out last quarter remain largely unchanged. As a reminder, fiscal 2025 includes 1 last week of operations compared to fiscal 2024 and guidance does not include the impact of any future share buybacks or significant changes in the regulatory or broader economic environment. This concludes our prepared remarks. Before we open the call for questions, I'd like to remind you all that our focus today is our Q1 financial results and 2025 outlook. As a result, we won't be commenting further on Cintas.

Speaker 2

Liz, we can now open the call for questions.

Operator

Our first question will come from the line of Andrew Wittmann with Baird.

Speaker 3

Yes, great. Good morning, guys. I have to ask the question. You're welcome to comment to the extent that you can, but it's important and so I wanted to ask it. The Cintas' $2.75 offer clearly could have some upside as they outlined in their performance.

Speaker 3

The cost synergy opportunity that they outlined at $375,000,000 at least, not to mention the revenue synergies. I mean, this is all obviously a substantial premium what they're offering and to where your stock is today and probably would be for some time. You're controlling shareholders obviously have a lower basis in the company. There's other factors, I'm sure, at least from the outside. But when you look at the offer that's been on the table and the company's decision to pass on it, it seems like there's more than just the financials that are being considered by your board.

Speaker 3

So if I'm right in saying that, would you be comfortable in discussing some of the other reasons that your board has decided to pass on this for the benefit of your non controlling shareholders?

Speaker 1

Yes. I appreciate the question, Andrew. I think we're going to go back to what we commented, which basically says that we considered several factors in making the determination, including the offer price, execution, business risks, feedback from some of our company's largest shareholders and the company's future growth and value opportunities. And at the end of the day, we determined unanimously from the Board that it was not in the best interest of UniFirst and our shareholders and our other stakeholders. So it's really all we have to say about the opportunity.

Speaker 3

Okay. Felt like it was important to try at least. I did want to just have you drill in a little bit on one of the comments on your script as well. And you mentioned you did say you mentioned this last quarter. I just thought we'd go for an update on some of the reasons to be positive.

Speaker 3

Obviously, you talked about the challenging pricing and how that's impacted the revenue line, including some of the retention. But if you could drill in a little bit to the reasons that you're seeing some of the positivity reasons to be positive, you talked about some of the large accounts. Maybe you could drill into that a little bit more or some of the other things are leading indicators that are causing to be a little bit more optimistic maybe?

Speaker 1

Sure. I talked about some of them a little more specifically last quarter and we continue to see some of our internal metrics that measure contract renewal rates. I talked about our NPS program, which continues to emerge and we continue to get larger samples and continue to see positive trends in that area. And other internal metrics that we think are leading indicators toward retention and contract renewals have been consistently improving. So we feel like we're coming out of the cycle a bit and we should start seeing better results in that, I'd call it customer and price retention area that we think can start to move the revenue trends in a better direction.

Speaker 1

On the sales side, I know you mentioned that as well. We continue to have a robust pipeline, feel like we're executing well in that area and seeing a lot of opportunity.

Speaker 3

Okay. I'll leave it there. Thanks guys.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Manav Patnaik with Barclays.

Speaker 4

Hi, good morning. This is Ronen Kennedy on for Manav. Thank you for taking my questions. Just as a follow-up to Andy's question there, balancing the challenging pricing environment corresponding impact on retention and the impact on sequential revenue trends. How should we think about those sequential revenues trends?

Speaker 4

What's contemplated in the guidance for the remainder of the year? And how should we think about exit into 2026?

Speaker 1

Yes. What I would say is we really don't give quarterly guidance, Ronen, but we think that's mostly going to be consistent. I think the idea would be that by the end of the year, we've created some more momentum headed into 2026. And we'll continue to update the group as we go through upcoming quarters. But still being 1 quarter in, we're not kind of providing quarterly guidance for the remainder of the year.

Speaker 2

Ronen, one thing I can add to that is sort of going into the year, we had said that the expectation was that our organic growth in the Core Laundries was going to be about 1.8%. When you take a look at the Q1, the organic growth rate was 1.7%, right, relatively in line with the organic growth that we're forecasting for the year. So that probably will give you an indication of whether there's some more lumpiness in that experience throughout the year.

Speaker 4

Understood. Thank you. And then as a follow-up, can you please help us to understand where you are, I guess, holistically in your transformation, the journey as a company in terms of innings? I know there's a lot of initiatives to enhance service, operational execution. You alluded to, you're not currently at the levels of growth that you aspire to.

Speaker 4

Also in consideration of the Cintas transaction, potential transaction, you considered your opportunity for future growth and value creation. Where are you in this journey holistically? And when can we expect to see potential inflection points both in organic growth and margins?

Speaker 1

Yes. Great question, Roden. I mean, I think we've been transparent with investors over the last couple of years that we are in a period of significant investment, people, technology, in a number of areas that will take multiple years. I know we talked about the ERP as sort of one of the overarching things that has sort of a long tail to it because there are a number of things that will be enabled by the ERP. But that's not the only areas of investment that we're making.

Speaker 1

And so I didn't kind of go over all those items in the call today, but if you kind of go back through the last couple of years and we talk about the journey we're on in First Aid and Safety And we're talking about additional investments we're making to enable further capabilities in direct sales and in product development to better upsell to our existing customers. There's a lot going on right now that we feel very excited about, but we'll take a little time to sort of accumulate to the ultimate goal, which we've sort of roughly talked about getting back to closer to mid single digit growth and EBITDA margins sort of in the high teens, right? We believe that's achievable and but it is going to take a bit of time, which is why we haven't been as upfront about that this is a late fiscal 2025 or 2020 6 inflection point. And I understand the question, but we continue to have a lot of confidence in those things that we're investing in.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Operator

Our next question comes from Kartik Mehta with Northcoast Research.

Speaker 5

Hey, good morning, Steve. Sorry about that. I was hoping maybe just to drill down a little bit on pricing. And in the past you've said, maybe new customer pricing has been maybe a little bit more aggressive. And I'm wondering, are the pricing trends the same for existing customers and new customers or has that changed at all?

Speaker 1

I would say for new accounts Kartik, we've talked about this before. I mean the industry has always been very competitive for new business and that continues. I'm not sure I'd characterize it as more or less aggressive than a couple of years ago. I think for existing accounts, this is where as we went through this heavy inflationary period, we were all trying to recover some additional pricing with the cost increases we were seeing. And that leads to challenges upon renewal when customers are saying, hey, inflation is kind of moderated a bit.

Speaker 1

And it's really a it's a complex dynamic and it really goes back to a lot of the things I've talked about before. If you're partnering with your customers, if you're providing a superior customer experience then they're going to see the value in what you're providing and that's going to allow you to drive and keep good pricing with your customers. So I think that existing customer dynamic is always a little bit different than the new customer dynamic. And I think our ability to execute and provide value to our customers at a very high level will allow us to obtain that pricing. The other thing I'd say is that on the flip side of that, as we experienced a lot of cost increases with our vendors, I think we're doing a good job right now working to recover and work through from a sourcing and procurement perspective as our supply chain capabilities continue to mature and recover some of those cost increases we're taking and you're seeing that in some of our core expenses coming down and we're excited and we think there's a lot more opportunity there for the future as well.

Speaker 5

And then just a follow-up, just on the ad stop metric, I know you've talked about retention. I'm wondering about just number of ads or maybe number of deletions in terms of employees at your customers, how that's trending?

Speaker 1

Yes, we did make that comment in the script that that was a little weaker this quarter. So just to give you a little perspective, I think a year ago at this time, we would have said that that was very stable and sort of hovering right around even in terms of ad reductions, right? Last quarter, we said it had gone incrementally negative, but not still characterized as stable. I think it's got a little bit more negative this quarter. And I think as you've seen in some of the surveying done on our industry, yes, I think that's broadly there's been a little bit of a weakening of the existing customer base.

Speaker 1

The one other dynamic we are seeing with our customers is there's less turnover in the employees that are at our customers, which probably creates a little less revenue opportunity from our perspective, but does create a little bit more cost advantages as we're investing less garments to deal with that turnover. So I think there is a bit of a slowdown in the employment environment, but not one that we're overly overreacting to, I would say.

Speaker 5

Perfect. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Josh Chan with UBS.

Speaker 6

Hi, good morning, Stephen and Shane. Could you talk a little bit about what drove the very slight guidance narrowing on the top line and what did you see in the quarter that caused that?

Speaker 1

Yes, kind of good segue from our last question. I think as Shane had mentioned, 1 quarter into the year, kind of makes sense to tighten the range a little bit. And with some of the weakness in the wears that we experienced, we felt it was prudent to kind of tweak down the top end a bit.

Speaker 6

Perfect. Thank you. And then I know you said you're not commenting on Cintas, but you did comment kind of on your own kind of growth and value creation opportunities. So I was wondering if you can elaborate on what those may be and what shareholders of UniFirst can look forward to absent some sort of transaction, and then maybe what timeline to think about? Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yes, I think that's similar to the question that was asked a couple of questions ago. And again, there's a number of different areas we continue to invest in, in terms of technology, sourcing, supply chain tied into the technology, procurement, strategic pricing, first aid and safety. I mean, there's a number of areas that we just think there's a lot of opportunity to unlock that we have the ability to do over the next few years. And again, I'll say what I said a couple of questions ago. Yes, it is a little bit of a journey that we're on here and this isn't a next quarter, next year 100% realized plan.

Speaker 1

But clearly the runway is there in these areas if we can get through these investments and take advantage of them, which we're confident in doing.

Speaker 6

Great. Thanks for the color and thanks for your time.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question will come from the line of Tim Mulrooney with William Blair.

Speaker 7

Yes. Shane, Steve, good morning. I thought the Coral Laundry margins held in pretty well in the Q1, up a little bit from last year. But I think your guide for the segment was expecting it to be down year over year for the full year. Is that the case for your Core Laundry business?

Speaker 7

Is the pressure that you're expecting more back end loaded?

Speaker 2

Yes. I think the expectation for the year is very similar to last year's experience. Oftentimes when you take a look at the profitability of our quarter, our Q1 is usually the most profitable quarter and the Q2 again is sort of somewhat the unwind of that as the profitability in that quarter is the lowest. What I'll say about the quarter is sometimes our quarterly experience is impacted by some timing. Some of the benefits that we saw in our Q1, we have been cautious as to whether some of the benefits were related to the timing of the expense realization.

Speaker 2

And we aren't necessarily carrying those forward to subsequent quarters. So some of that profitability, I guess our expectations haven't changed, largely they're in line. And the trend from a profitability perspective will sort of mirror last year.

Speaker 1

And just one clarification there, I can't remember if you said at the outset of the question whether you were looking at sort of operating income or EBITDA. From an EBITDA perspective, that's the guidance at the beginning of the year. We said that the margin was going to be relatively flat from the year before. We probably do have incremental kind of depreciation and amortization compared to last year. So if you're looking at the operating margin, yes, the full year guidance might have been somewhat down, but I think the EBITDA margin was in line.

Speaker 7

Yes, I was talking about OI, but it's good to get the clarification on both. So thank you. And as my follow-up, it's been asked a couple of times a couple of different ways. I'm going to take a crack at it. I know you're not answering questions on Cintas, but look, I respect that.

Speaker 7

But like Andy, I just I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't at least ask the question that I think should be asked. So I'm going to go at this from a slightly different angle. I'm curious if there's a way to help investors understand the Board's perspective and presumably your perspective as well regarding the decision to reject the large premium by providing maybe a way to do this, guys, is can you provide some longer term targets and where you expect revenue and earnings to be a few years down the line to help frame what the true value of the company is? That way that I mean, what I'm saying is like that way I think we can all better understand why you consider that offer price that you received to be undervaluing the company. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1

Certainly understand the question. I mean, I think it ties into a couple of answers that I've given so far on the call. And again, without kind of pegging a particular year or exact numbers, I think I said a few minutes ago that our goal is to drive our growth to mid single digits and hopefully beyond and EBITDA margins into the high teens, right? And I do think we feel that there's a lot of value to be created with the execution of that. And I think and hopefully that answers I think partially your question.

Speaker 1

From the Board's perspective, I kind of deferred back to the comment I made earlier about what we went through in evaluating the opportunity.

Speaker 7

Yes, yes, the multiple different reasons. And the mid single digit and high teens, that is helpful. Thank you. If I'm just going to sneak one more in, I noticed that you called out executive transition costs as a discrete item in that non GAAP reconciliation table. I'm just not sure I've seen that before because executives come and go and we typically kind of think about that as a normal course of business.

Speaker 7

Can you help us understand what that discrete cost is?

Speaker 1

Yes, that was really around partially around the onboarding of our new COO as well as departure of 1 of our senior operating Vice Presidents.

Speaker 7

Okay. Hey, thank you very much. Good luck.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Operator

That concludes today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back to Steven Centros for closing remarks.

Speaker 1

I'd like to thank everyone as always for joining today to review our Q1 results. We look forward to speaking with you again in April when we expect to report our Q2 performance. Thank you and Happy New Year.

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