Vestis Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
August 6, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: New CEO Jim Barber is sharpening focus on value-based pricing, a profitable product mix and cost optimization to unlock operating leverage and drive sustainable improvement.
  • Negative Sentiment: Q3 revenue declined 3.5% year-over-year to $674 million, as approximately $60 million in churned business losses outpaced $45 million in new conversions and retention dipped to 91.9%.
  • Negative Sentiment: Gross margin fell 200 basis points to 27%, pressured by higher-priced churned contracts and a shift to lower-priced products, only partially offset by reduced delivery costs.
  • Positive Sentiment: Adjusted EBITDA reached $64 million (9.5% margin) and operating cash flow improved to $23 million, driven by working-capital actions that reduced inventory and boosted efficiency.
  • Positive Sentiment: The balance sheet remains strong, with $290 million in liquidity, no debt maturities until 2027 and net leverage at 4.5× (below the 5.25× covenant), supporting flexibility for 2026 initiatives.
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Earnings Conference Call
Vestis Q3 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 7 speakers on the call.

Speaker 5

Welcome to the Vestis Corporation Fiscal Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. To enable others to hear your questions clearly, we ask that you pick up your handset for best sound quality. Lastly, if you should need any operator assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to turn the call over to Stefan Neely with Vellum Advisors.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Operator, and thank you all for joining us on the call this morning. Leading the call with me today is Jim Barber, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Kelly Janzen, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Jim and Kelly will provide prepared remarks, and then we will open the line to questions. Before I turn the call over to Jim, I wanted to remind everyone that today's discussion contains forward-looking statements about future business and financial expectations. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a safe harbor from civil litigations for such forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ significantly from those projected in today's forward-looking statements due to various risks and uncertainties, including the risks described in our periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update our forward-looking statements.

Speaker 2

Further, this call will include the discussion of certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of these measures to the closest GAAP financial measure is included in our quarterly earnings press release and corresponding supplemental materials, which are available at ir.vestis.com. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Jim.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Stefan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Before I begin, I would like to thank Phillip, the board, and the leadership team for helping to facilitate a smooth transition for me into the CEO role here at Vestis. Now that I'm two months into the role, my belief is that this company has tremendous potential and a team capable of achieving great things. I was attracted to this opportunity because I spent much of my career leading businesses with similar route-based, asset-intensive models. Businesses such as this succeed when they execute well at the local level, driven by strong customer relationships that are built upon reliability, excellent service quality, and the ability to control daily operating costs. These outcomes are produced by frontline teams of loyal and capable people, supported by robust, repeatable processes and technology that enhances execution.

Speaker 3

Since starting in June, I spent a great deal of my time getting to know the business through engaging with our teams, visiting with customers, and diving deep into the operational and strategic levers that drive performance. What is clear to me is that while Vestis has faced its share of challenges, it is a company with a fundamentally sound foundation. What I believe this business needs now is a sharp focus on commercial processes, operational discipline, and a clear strategy to unlock operating leverage. To do this, we will focus on the key inputs that drive operating leverage. These are value-based pricing, favorable product mix, and efficient cost of service. Foundational to this is our ability as an organization to efficiently utilize our assets, both our people and infrastructure, to serve our customers. First is pricing. Pricing is one of the most important levers for driving improved operating leverage.

Speaker 3

This focus does not just pertain to setting prices, but also ensuring that they reflect the value we deliver and the cost of our service. The right pricing requires a rigorous, data-driven approach, and we're building out a value-based pricing model designed to optimize product profitability. Price integrity, however, can only be successful when it is supported by service quality. To that end, we are committed to raising our service standards to support long-term customer relationships and improve customer retention. The strength of our customer relationships is built at the local level with our RSRs, and we are investing in the tools, systems, and processes to support and empower them and other frontline team members to succeed in providing customers the best possible experience. The second key driver is product mix. We are looking to evolve our sales approach to prioritize profitability over volume.

Speaker 3

In order to do this, we need to be more selective, managing the mix of the products we sell more deliberately in order to maximize capacity utilization with a focus on margin-accretive growth. We are shifting our mindset from how much we grow to how well we grow. The third driver is optimizing cost of service. Our teams have already made meaningful progress over the last few quarters in identifying and implementing a variety of different cost actions. However, there is still more work to be done. We are evaluating ways to increase our variable to fixed cost ratio, enhance plant reliability, and optimize capacity utilization. None of this can be accomplished if we don't have a strong customer-centric culture. That culture is firmly grounded in our people's determination to serve customers, supported by proper training, infrastructure, and processes.

Speaker 3

All of this should be underpinned by constructive management, employee, and union working relationships. For the remainder of this fiscal year, I'm focused on stabilizing performance and quickly launching initiatives that we expect to result in near-term financial improvement. In addition, the team and I are taking a hard look at every aspect of the business to build a roadmap for success in 2026 and beyond. As part of that roadmap, we are also laying the groundwork for investing in modernizing our technology infrastructure to better support execution and long-term priorities. Smart, scalable systems are fundamental to improving the customer experience, unlocking efficiencies, and enabling data-driven decision-making. In a moment, Kelly will walk through our third quarter financial performance in detail. Before she does that, I would also like to provide some brief context.

Speaker 3

While our results were in line with expectations, we continue to see ongoing revenue pressure as churn outpaces conversion. I believe that our improvement initiatives will soon yield positive results. However, our expectation is that the near-term performance will be similar to what we saw over this last quarter. I want to assure you that I'm committed to seeing Vestis improve in 2026 and look forward to sharing more details, including financial and operational goals, during our fourth quarter call. Yes, there are challenges that we need to address, but there are also opportunities, and I believe we are focused on the right levers to create meaningful, sustainable improvement. With that, I'll turn it over to Kelly.

Operator

Thank you, Jim, and good morning, everyone. Revenue during the quarter was $674 million, down $24 million or 3.5% year-over-year compared to the third quarter of 2024. The decline in revenue was due to an $18 million decrease in rental revenue and $6 million of lower direct sales. Within rental revenue, growth from new business, or conversion, contributed approximately $45 million or 6.7% of revenue year-over-year for the third quarter. We continue to see increases in sales from both our field and national account sales organizations, which collectively installed 20% more recurring revenue year-over-year. The revenue impact in the third quarter from churn or lost business was approximately $60 million when compared with the same quarter in the prior year.

Operator

On a rolling 12-month basis, our business retention, as measured in revenue dollars, was 91.9% at the end of Q3, a slight decrease when compared to what we reported last quarter. Year-over-year, revenue from existing business decreased $3 million due to declines in both price and volume. Upon further analysis of the changes that have occurred in our rental business over the last year, we've observed that the volume, when measured as the throughput we see in our facilities, has indeed gone up in line with our increased commercial effort. However, the difference in pricing between contracts that we've recently obtained and those that we've offboarded has been unfavorable. This, along with a shift to lower-priced products, is the primary reason for our net decline in rental revenue.

Operator

In our direct sales business, revenue decreased $6 million or 14% year-over-year, which primarily reflects the previously discussed loss of a large national account in 2024. When excluding the loss of this account, direct sales decreased approximately $1 million compared to the third quarter of last year. Cost of services in the quarter was $492 million, and gross margin was 27%, down approximately 200 basis points when compared to the third quarter of last year. Our gross margin for the quarter was negatively impacted by churn, which, as I previously discussed, carried higher pricing relative to recent new account installations. These headwinds were offset to some extent by a reduction in our delivery costs.

Operator

As Jim mentioned, we have recently implemented a series of improvement initiatives, some of which are pricing, to help mitigate the impact of the decremental margin on churn and are also actively evaluating several other strategies, including the implementation of a comprehensive value-based pricing model across all markets. SG&A for the third quarter was $122 million, a decrease of approximately $8 million year-over-year. The reduction in SG&A reflects a $6 million decline in stock-based compensation, along with a $4 million decrease in separation-related costs and a $3 million reduction in other administrative costs. Offsetting this overall decrease was an increase of almost $4 million in selling expense related to our field sales team. In the third quarter, the tax rate was 9.7%, and we recorded an immaterial tax benefit during the period. Third quarter reported adjusted EBITDA was $64 million, representing an adjusted margin of 9.5%.

Operator

This compares to 12.4% in the third quarter of last year and 9.4% in the second quarter of 2025, when excluding the non-recurring $15 million bad debt adjustment during the same period. Now moving on to cash flow and working capital. During the quarter, we generated $23 million of operating cash flow and $8 million of free cash flow, reflecting a positive improvement over the last quarter. Net cash provided from working capital was $5 million and includes an increase of approximately $13 million, resulting from our efforts to reduce our inventory levels and improve working capital efficiency. During the quarter, we also paid $9.6 million of federal cash tax payments that we had been allowed to defer from the first half of 2025 due to certain natural disaster relief provisions.

Operator

Consistent with our expectations, we spent approximately $15 million on capital expenditures in the period, and for the year, we still expect total capital investment to be around $60 million, the majority of which is related to market-centered facility improvement. Looking at our balance sheet, at the end of the third quarter, total debt was $1.32 billion, and our principal bank debt outstanding was $1.17 billion. Our liquidity position is strong, with no debt maturities until 2027 and $290 million of available liquidity, including $266 million of undrawn revolver capacity and $24 million of cash on hand. As of the end of the third quarter, our net leverage ratio, as calculated under our credit agreement, was 4.50 times. As a reminder, under our amended credit agreement, the net leverage ratio cannot exceed 5.25 times for any fiscal quarter ending prior to July 3, 2026.

Operator

Our guiding principles for capital allocation are to maintain a strong balance sheet and allocate capital toward high-return opportunities with a focus on delevering. Our prudent balance sheet management and working capital actions aim to provide a flexible foundation from which to support our business. As Jim mentioned, our results were in line with expectations. However, we continue to see ongoing pressure from customer losses and lower penetration, partially offset by new business wins and cost actions. We believe several of our fourth quarter initiatives will be fruitful as we remain focused on driving sustainable improvement in our operating leverage. However, I expect our near-term financial performance to continue to reflect trends similar to what we saw in Q3.

Operator

Our goal is to finalize our operating plan for 2026 over the balance of the remaining fiscal year, and we look forward to providing details of our expectations for the coming year during the next call. Now, I would like to turn the call back to the operator for your question.

Speaker 5

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. At this time, if you have a question or comment, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question is answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Again, we ask that you pick up your handset when posing your question to provide optimal sound quality. Our first question will come from Ronan Kennedy with Barclays, on behalf of Manaf Pettiniak. Please go ahead. One moment.

Speaker 6

From Manaf, can you hear me?

Speaker 3

We can hear you.

Speaker 6

Apologies. Sorry. Ronan Kennedy on from Manaf. Thank you for taking my question. Jim, may I ask, you alluded to spending a great deal of time with the business, engaging teams, visiting customers, diving deep into operational and strategic levers. Could we just have a recap of your initial assessment of the strengths and weaknesses? I know you highlighted the opportunity, but also foundationally, the culture and potential work to be done there.

Speaker 3

Sure, I appreciate that. I guess first I would say that I think it's important to know why I came here. I think that having spent about 40 years of my career in these network-based businesses that have heavy assets in them, I saw Vestis as the same thing before I came across. My background in understanding how to create this operating leverage in these businesses was why I came, a big piece of it. I think Vestis could have used some of what I learned over my career to help them as they move forward. That's first why I came. The second comment after about eight weeks would be the networks are very, very similar, the two of them. Both of them should be designed the same way to get at this leverage point. Both of them should be founded on great service to our customers.

Speaker 3

The core of that is going to be around making sure your plants are reliable, that they're invested in properly because they're the engine of the network. I think also to that end, I do think that the human capital and the employees in this business make a difference. I think we've got some opportunity in our areas of turnover in this business and plants that make it as not as optimal as it could be. I think that in the very end, I think we've got the foundation already after about eight weeks to understand that in 2026, we're going to create different value going up in this business that you've seen after the last couple of quarters. I think the alignment is great, quite frankly, and I think there's so many similarities.

Speaker 3

The acronyms are different, I can tell you that, but at the end of the day, it's the same type of business taking care of customers. That's after eight weeks of a view of this.

Speaker 6

Got it. Thank you. Appreciate that. May I confirm, it sounds like there's going to be a shift from, I think, volume or the amount of growth to the profitability. It sounds like, you know, changes to capital allocation and investment levels. Can you just give, cognizant that we'll get the financial and operational update on strategy on the fourth quarter call, it sounds like, what are the kind of the main things we can think about for changes coming for now?

Speaker 3

Yeah, I guess I would start with the fact that my past has looked through the lens of penetration of the customer base that you already have, and then this business has about $2.8 billion of revenue. Looking back, it really hasn't grown the way, in my opinion, it should be, and there's lots of factors to that. We can talk about those later going forward. At the end of the day, we've got to be able to create the value for our customers that allow that penetration growth to happen. That should then be supplemented by conversion and a betterment of churn. You're going to get growth in three different ways. Second comment is there's no question, I think, that we're going to create some new tools around here. Kelly mentioned in some of her comments opening the value-based pricing model. We need that.

Speaker 3

We've already got teams in play building the cost models beneath it. In eight weeks, I'm confident that's going to come very quickly for us to be able to price differently. Quite frankly, in these networks, the key is to match the type of volume you want to your network and your customers that creates operating leverage. I think in eight weeks, again, the similarities for me keep coming forward between my past and Vestis now, and we're going to stick to those, and we'll keep investing in those. I think you'll hear a lot of those specifically underpinning not how and why we're going to get better in 2026, but by an issue that we talk about here on this call today.

Speaker 6

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Speaker 5

We will go next to Tim Mulroney with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Hi, good morning. This is Luke McFadden for Tim Mulroney. Thanks for taking our questions today. Maybe one just kind of thinking more at a macro level, non-farm payrolls for July came in a bit light, and both the May and June readout were revised lower. I'm just curious to hear what you're seeing in terms of hiring behavior amongst your customer base and whether you would characterize net wear levels as a headwind, tailwind, or neutral to the quarter.

Speaker 3

I would just say neutral from my perspective. I think our job in any of these networks is to deal with headwinds or tailwinds properly and just focus on our model, getting it better, and creating the leverage we're talking about here. I would say neutral at this point. Obviously, I'd take tailwinds, but neutral is fine for now.

Speaker 1

Understood. Maybe looking at free cash flow, it looks like working capital was a big source of cash in the fiscal fourth quarter of last year and was also a source in the fiscal fourth quarter of 2023. Are you expecting a similar dynamic here in the fourth quarter of this year?

Operator

What I can tell you is that I think we had a great quarter that related to working capital management, and obviously contributed to positive cash flow in the third quarter. We're going to continue to manage our working capital very tightly and our cash in general. I certainly expect us to have cash as a focus going forward.

Speaker 1

Understood. Thank you very much.

Speaker 5

Once again, if you do have a question, you may press star one on your telephone keypad at this time. Our next question comes from Anna Wu with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Hi. Thank you. Good morning. This is Anna Wu on for George Tong. I wanted to start with a high-level question, wondering if you could share some thoughts around the overall health and the competitive landscape of the uniform rental industry in the near term. Additionally, can you provide some color around the sales environment in each of your end markets? I have a follow-up after this. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Could you repeat the second part of the question for me, please? I missed it.

Speaker 4

Yeah, just can you provide some color around the sales environment in each of your end markets?

Speaker 3

Sure. Let's retake the first half. Look, the health of this segment, in my opinion, is one that I think continues to be one that is just fine. What I mean by that is, if I look at the last month or the last quarter we just finished, what I saw was that almost 45% of our growth came from non-programmers in this business. That is a stat I'm not used to having in my background, which means that the total addressable market continues to grow. I think that's a great positive step forward. I think, ultimately, the products and the industry itself, secondarily, I don't see as one that megatrends are after. I think that the other, very positive I've found in this industry already is this concept of the network itself. Inside of our organization at Vestis, it's essentially not one network. It's 120 closed-loop networks.

Speaker 3

What that means is that we can experiment differently. We can put projects and initiatives in flight in parallel versus a serial nature to it. We've already begun that. You start to get into these businesses that the general managers have really great breadth of perspective to grow in this business profitably. We're just going to help them tune the lens a little bit better to make sure that the work that they're putting into their individual networks creates value for our shareholders. The second half, again, it was something about the sales side. What specifically is your question?

Speaker 4

Each of your end markets' verticals, like hospitalities or restaurants, and how do you think about working to provide some colors around the selling environment there?

Speaker 3

Yeah, it hasn't shifted quarter over quarter. You're still into hospitality, into healthcare, into retail. Same ones going forward. I still like the non-programmer side of it because I'm not used to that. That also could probably lead us to other growth avenues that I might not have seen in my background. That's how I think about both of those.

Speaker 4

Yeah, super helpful. Thank you so much. Just a quick follow-up. On the previous earnings calls, we learned that the company has retained strategic advisors for some potential transactions. Is that due to an option on the table for you? I am just wondering if there are any updates regarding the alternative options for the business at this stage.

Speaker 3

No, I'll just look forward on that. I can tell you what we're doing. We've already had three sets of advisors I think can help us speed this up coming from the outside to help the core business, not any transactions or anything else. We're focused on the tools we've already talked about in cost models and pricing tools. They're coming into play right now. We've got some work in the technology area. I think we can help us going forward. We've got some opportunity from other outside looks. All of those are going to be supplemental to what we're going to do as a leadership team and group around here. For the rest of it, I'm looking forward to optimizing this business, not quite the outside just yet.

Speaker 4

Got it. Super helpful. Thank you so much.

Speaker 5

Once again, if you do have a question, you may press star one on your telephone keypad at this time. This concludes the Q&A portion of today's call. I'd like to turn the call back to Jim Barber for closing remarks.

Operator

This is Kelly. Before we give it to Jim, I just wanted to mention that we put some revised materials out on our website. You can access those after the call at ir.vestis.com. Jim?

Speaker 3

Thanks, Kelly. Let me just say this quickly to close, I think that we're on the right track already after eight weeks. I'm really anxious to come forward and next time we talk, discuss the Q4 results. We've got a lot of activities going the right way there. I'm really excited to roll out a plan for 2026 that all of our stakeholders, I think, will stand behind and be supportive of and be proud to deliver on everybody's behalf. I appreciate the time this morning. Thanks.

Speaker 5

Thank you. This concludes today's Vestis Corporation Fiscal Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Please disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day.

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