Cintas Corporation (NASDAQ:CTAS) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Michael Hansen: Nothing unusual in the quarter. We did see the — we talked in the fourth quarter about some claims getting higher, but not structural. We saw those come back down to something more normal. But as it relates to the quarter, just some puts and takes, nothing of any significance. Our goal is to continue to leverage particularly the G&A piece of that, and we’re going to continue to work at that.

Operator: And our next question comes from Andrew Steinerman from JPMorgan Securities.

Andrew Steinerman: I wanted to talk to you about incremental margins, which were super strong in the quarter and last quarter on a year-over-year basis. I surely know, Cintas historically has targeted 20% to 30% as a range for incremental margins. But kind of given where we are right now, it definitely feels like that kind of low end of the range, the 20%, might not be as appropriate. And so my question is, has your medium-term range for incremental margins been creeping up?

Todd Schneider: Yes. 20% to 30% is our target. We — Q1 was a very attractive incremental margins. And there’s always puts and takes in every quarter as I mentioned. Running a business is not linear. But we will expect that we will be in that 20% to 30% range. I certainly like higher in the range than lower. And we are — and I think our guide speaks to where attractive margin improvement for the year as well.

Operator: And our next question comes from Seth Weber from Wells Fargo.

Seth Weber: I wanted to ask just about the small tick down in Uniform Direct Sales organic growth here in the quarter. It’s the first, I think, decline that we’ve seen there in a while. I know the comp was hard. Is there anything else that you’d call out there for that business?

Todd Schneider: Certainly, what we have seen outstanding performance from that business over the past really 2 years. And — but it is — as we’ve spoken about in the past, the Uniform Direct Sale business tends to be a little bit lumpier based upon rollouts of large programs, whether it’s hospitality or a Fortune 1000-type customer. So nothing more than that. We still are bullish on the future of that business and for the year and moving forward.

Seth Weber: Do you think, Todd, do you think that business could be up for the year? Or do you think that’s kind of flattish or down?

Todd Schneider: I would suspect — well, we expect all of our businesses to grow. So I would suspect that we would see that up. But just the comps are set with the level of what we dealt with hospitality in that vertical, in Fortune 1000, the level of where employees came back so strongly. I wouldn’t suspect that you’ll see anywhere near the level of growth that we’ve seen in the last couple of years, but we expect it to grow.

Michael Hansen: Seth, I might point out that the last 2 years have — they have been a significant recapture of what we sort of lost in that pandemic period of time. In our fiscal ’22, that business grew organically over 50%; in fiscal ’23, it was almost 30%. So there was a lot of recapture going on, but keep in mind that our longer-term goal for that business, Todd expects it to grow, but it’s probably more of a low single-digit to mid-single-digit grower in our portfolio.

Seth Weber: Right. Okay. Understood. And then maybe just on the First Aid and Safety business, given the margin strength that you’re seeing there, can you talk about are you seeing any incremental competition in that space? Are you seeing any bigger players trying to get into that space or just smaller regional players getting more active?

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