Unifirst Corporation

Greetings and welcome to the Unifirst First Quarter Earnings Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press the 1 followed by the 4 on your telephone. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star 0. I would now like to turn the conference over to Stephen Sintros, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Steven Cintros, Thank you, and good morning. I'm Steven Cintros, Uniforce President and Chief Executive Officer. Joining me today is Shane O'Connor, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We'd like to welcome you to Uniforce Corporation's conference call to review our first quarter results for fiscal year 2021. This call will be on a listen-only mode until we complete our prepared remarks. But first, a brief disclaimer. 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 10Q and 10K filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As I have said the last couple of quarters, I want to start by saying that first and foremost, our thoughts are for the safety and well-being of all those dealing with the impact of this virus. I also want to once again sincerely thank our team partners for the tremendous effort they continue to put forth taking care of each other and our customers during these challenging times. Overall, we're pleased with the results of our first quarter, which came in mostly as expected from a top-line perspective. Consolidated revenues for the quarter were $446.9 million, down 4% from our fiscal 2020 first quarter. These results were impacted by a strong quarter from both the nuclear and cleanroom operations of our specialty garment segment. Fully diluted earnings per share for the quarter was $2.20, which exceeded our expectations as many variable expenses trended lower than our projections. As we have discussed, the pandemic has clearly highlighted the essential nature of our products and services. We believe the need and demand for hygienically clean garments and work environments positions our company well to support the evolving economic landscape. Like many businesses, we expect the quarters ahead to be uneven and bumpy, but we continue to be confident in the company's position to weather the storm. We also continue to position our sales resources to take advantages of opportunities that exist in the market today and as the economy recovers. Some positive trends of note for the quarter include new business installs at roughly the same level as the first quarter a year ago, as well as improved customer retention. In addition, although reductions in wearers continue at higher than normal levels, the significant reductions experienced in our energy dependent markets during the third and fourth quarters of fiscal 2020 have started to moderate. Overall, the outlook continues to be difficult to forecast. Vaccine optimism is being balanced by uncertainty as to when and how quickly the vaccine will create positive movement in the economy. In addition, the recent surge in positive COVID cases has started to cause increased business restrictions in certain states, provinces, and municipalities. The impact of these or further potential restrictions could have an impact on our results moving forward. As a result of the ongoing uncertainty, we will not be providing any guidance at this time. As we've talked about over the last year or two, we continue to be focused on making good investments in our people, infrastructure, and technologies. All of our investments designed to deliver solid long-term returns to all UNIFER stakeholders and our integral components to our primary long-term objective to be universally recognized as the best service provider in our industry. Our solid balance sheet positions us well to meet the ongoing challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic while continuing to invest in growth and strengthen our business. Certain investments scheduled for this year will continue as planned, including the deployment of our new CRM system. As we have talked about before, some of these investments will pressure on margins in the near term. However, we feel strongly that keeping these improvements to our company on schedule will be critical to our long-term success. And with that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Shane, who will provide the details of our results for the first quarter.

Thanks, Steve. As Steve mentioned, in our first quarter of 2021, consolidated revenues were $446.9 million, down 4% from $465.4 million a year ago. And consolidated operating income decreased to $56 million from $60.1 million, or 6.7%. Net income for the quarter decreased to $41.9 million, or $2.20 per diluted share, from $48.2 million, or $2.52 per diluted share. Our effective tax rate in the quarter was 25% compared to 22.1% in the prior year. which unfavorably impacted the EPS comparison. Our core laundry operations revenues for the quarter were $393.2 million, down 5.6% from the first quarter of 2020. Core laundry organic growth, which adjusts for the estimated effect of acquisitions as well as fluctuations in the Canadian dollar, was also 5.6%. Throughout our quarter, our weekly revenues remained relatively stable, However, as expected, our organic growth rate trended unfavorably compared to our prior sequential quarter due to the timing of certain annual pricing adjustments in the prior year. Core laundry operating margin decreased to 12.4% for the quarter, or $48.9 million, from 12.9% in prior year, or $53.8 million. The decrease in the segment's profitability was primarily due to the impact of the decline in rental revenues on our cost structure, which was partially offset by lower travel-related healthcare and energy costs. However, the segment's operating income exceeded our expectations due to a slightly stronger revenue performance combined with a number of other costs that trended favorably compared to our expectations. As we have discussed in the past, Some of our expenses can be variable from quarter to quarter and difficult to forecast in the short term. We do expect that a number of these costs that have been trending favorably will eventually normalize and pressure margins in the quarters ahead. Energy costs decreased 3.6% of revenues in the first quarter of 2021, down from 3.9% in prior year. Revenues from our specialty garments segment. which delivers specialized nuclear decontamination and cleanroom products and services, increased to $38.1 million from $33.4 million in the prior year, or 14.2%. This increase was primarily due to higher direct sales and project-related work in the U.S. and Canadian nuclear operations, as well as continued growth in the cleanroom operations. Segment's operating margin increased to 18.8% from 14.6%. This increase was primarily due to lower production and delivery costs as a percentage of revenues, as well as lower travel-related healthcare and energy costs. These items were partially offset by higher merchandise expense as a percentage of revenues. The specialty garment's quarterly top line and profit performance significantly exceeded our expectations. as certain direct sales and project-related work that had been deferred in the second half of fiscal 2020 related to the COVID-19 pandemic were finally realized, as well as some additional direct sale activity that was anticipated later in fiscal 2021 came through early. As we've mentioned in the past, This segment's results can vary significantly from period to period due to seasonality and the timing of nuclear reactor outages and projects that require our specialized services. Our first aid segments revenues were $15.5 million compared to $15.7 million in prior year. However, the segments operating profit was nominal compared to $1.4 million in the comparable period of 2020. This decrease is primarily due to reduced sales from the segment's higher margin wholesale business combined with continued investment in the company's initiative to expand its first aid van business into new geography. We continue to maintain a solid balance sheet and financial position with no long-term debt and cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments totaling $473 million at the end of our first quarter of fiscal 2021. For the first three months of fiscal 2021, capital expenditures totaled $41.8 million as we continue to invest in our future with new facility additions, expansions, updates, and automation systems that will help us meet our long-term strategic objectives. Our quarterly CapEx spend was elevated primarily due to the purchase of a building in New York City for $14.1 million, which will provide us a strategic location for a future service center. During the quarter, we capitalized $2.9 million related to our ongoing CRM project, which consisted of license fees, third-party consulting costs, and capitalized internal labor costs. As of the end of our quarter, we had capitalized a total of $25.5 million related to the CRM project. As discussed on our last call, we are piloting a number of locations and expect that we will start a broader deployment in the second half of this fiscal year, at which time we will begin depreciating the system. Eventually, the depreciation of the system combined with additional hardware we will install to support our new capabilities like mobile handheld devices for our route drivers, will ramp to an estimated $6 to $7 million of additional depreciation expense per year. During the first quarter of fiscal 2021, we repurchased 41,000 common shares for a total of $7.2 million under our previously announced stock repurchase program. As of November 28, 2021, the company had repurchased a total of 355,917 common shares for $59.5 million under the program. As Steve discussed, due to continued uncertainty regarding how states, provinces, municipalities, and our customers will respond to the recent surge in positive COVID cases, as well as how quickly the vaccine will provide pandemic relief to the economy. We will not be providing guidance at this time. However, I will remind you that our second fiscal quarter tends to be a lower margin quarter due to the seasonality of certain expenses that we incur. As we have done in our recent quarters, we also wanted to provide you an update on our current revenue trends. Throughout December, The weekly rental billings in our core laundry operations have been trending down compared to the comparable weeks in prior year by approximately 3.5% to 4%. This concludes our prepared remarks, and we would now be happy to answer any questions that you might have.