UniFirst Corporation (NYSE:UNF) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

UniFirst Corporation (NYSE:UNF) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript March 29, 2023

Operator: Greetings, and welcome to the UniFirst Corp. Second Quarter Earnings Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the conference over to the President and CEO, Mr. Steven Sintros. Please go ahead.

Steven Sintros: 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. We would like to welcome you to UniFirst Corporation’s conference call to review our second quarter results for fiscal year 2023. The 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 factors €“ these risk factors in our most recent Form 10-K and 10-Q filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We are pleased with our strong top-line performance in the quarter which was partially fueled by our ongoing efforts to mitigate the cost pressures that we’ve been experiencing in our business. As always, I want to thank our over 14,000 team partners who continue to always deliver for each other and our customers. We are also pleased with the progress we are making advancing our technology and infrastructure initiatives. As we have discussed, we continue to be focused on making long-term investments in our business designed to accelerate growth and profitability, as well as ensure we are providing industry-leading services for years to come.

Consistent with the theme of making long-term investments, I am happy to announce that on March 13, we successfully closed our previously announced purchase of Clean Uniform and officially welcome the Clean team and their customers into the UniFirst family. Founded in 1938, and headquartered in St. Louis Missouri, Clean is one of the largest independent uniform workwear and facility service program providers in the United States with locations servicing Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma. Over the years, Clean has built a highly respected business with a market-leading reputation for quality service with a strong customer focus. We believe that the combination of the two companies will provide a foundation for us to deliver an enhanced service experience for all customers in the markets that we serve together.

Due to the strong leadership and service reputation that Clean brings with it, as well as the complexities of where we are in our technology transformation, we will be strategic and patient in the integration of the two businesses to minimize the impacts and risks on Clean’s most valuable assets, its employees and its customers. Currently, the Clean business is operating at an EBITDA margin of approximately 10%. We believe that over the next two to three years, we will be able to more than double that performance as we bring the companies together. Shane will provide more details shortly regarding the impact we expect Clean to have on our fiscal 2023 operating results shortly. As we’ve discussed in prior calls, we continue to be focused on three large initiatives designed to transform the company in terms of overall capabilities and competitive positioning.

These initiatives are the rollout of our new CRM system, a corporate-wide ERP system and investments in the UniFirst brand. The last several quarters we have reconciled the impact of these initiatives out of our operating results, so that investors could get a better perspective of our performance excluding these costs related to these transformational projects. Based on new guidance provided by the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding non-GAAP financial measures and a comment from the SEC in a recent SEC comment letter we are going to be modifying our disclosure going forward and no longer providing adjusted operating results excluding these costs. We will however generally continue to provide disclosure in quantification of these initiative cost, so investors can clearly understand the impact that they are having on our overall results and profitability.

With respect to our CRM systems project, we are making good progress deploying our new system in line with our internal schedule. As of today, we have deployed approximately 75% of our U.S. core laundry locations and we expect the remaining U.S. locations to be deployed by the end of fiscal 2023. The deployment of our smaller Canadian and cleanroom operations will carry over into fiscal 2024. Over the remainder of fiscal 2023, we will also continue to be focused on the global design phase of our ERP project. The implementation of our new Oracle Cloud ERP will be a multi-year initiative designed to transform our supply chain and procurement capabilities, as well as provide an overall technology foundation for growth and efficiency. All of our investments are designed to deliver solid long-term returns for UniFirst stakeholders in our integral components of our primary long-term objective to be universally recognized as the best service provider in our industry.

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As we continue to go through the fiscal 2023, we will be watching the dynamic market conditions closely. During the quarter, we did not see a significant change to the operating environment and where a level that our customers have been stable. When and what the impact higher interest rates will have on our customer base and the overall market remain to be seen. Over the years, our business has proved resilient in many different economic cycles in regardless of what the next cycle brings, we are confident in our ability to execute against our plan. We are pleased with the execution of our team which continues to deliver solid performances in both new account sales, as well as customer retention. Continuing the trend from prior years, the strong revenue growth also reflects the impact of price adjustments from throughout the year as we work with customers to sharing cost increases we have experienced related to the inflationary environment.

We will continue to manage cost in areas we can control while assuring that we don’t impact our ability to execute on our transformational initiatives or adversely affect our customer service levels. And as always we will maintain a sharp focus on taking care of our employees, our customers and bringing new customers into the UniFirst family. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Shane, who will provide more details on our second quarter results.

Shane O’Connor: Thanks, Steve. In our second quarter of 2023, consolidated revenues were $542.7 million, up 11.5% from $486.7 million a year ago, and consolidated operating income decreased to $20.7 million from $22.6 million or 8.4%. Net income for the quarter decreased to $17.8 million or $0.95 per diluted share from $18.5 million or $0.97 per diluted share. Our financial results in the second quarters of fiscal 2023 and 2022 included approximately $9.1 million and $6.7 million, respectively, of costs directly attributable to the three key initiatives that Steve discussed. In addition, we incurred costs related to the acquisition of Clean Uniform during the second quarter of fiscal 2023 of approximately $2 million. The effect of these items on the second quarters of fiscal 2023 and 2022 combine to decrease operating income by $11.1 million and $6.7 million, respectively, net income by $8.3 million and $5.1 million, respectively and EPS by $0.44 and $0.27, respectively.

Our Core Laundry Operations revenues for the quarter were $477.1 million, up 10.2% from the second quarter of 2022. Core Laundry organic growth, which adjusts for the estimated effect of acquisitions, as well as fluctuations in the Canadian dollar was 10.1%. This strong organic growth rate was primarily the result of strong pricing efforts over the last year to share with our customers the cost increases that we have incurred in our business due to the ongoing inflationary environment, as well as continued solid sales performance and customer retention. Core Laundry operating margin decreased to 2.9% for the quarter or $13.6 million from 4.3% in prior year or $18.7 million. The costs we incurred related to our key initiatives and the Clean acquisition were recorded to the Core Laundry Operations segment and combine to decrease the Core Laundry operating margin for the second quarter of fiscal 2023 and 2022 by 2.3% and 1.6% respectively.

Excluding these items, the segment’s operating margin continues to be impacted by increase in merchandize costs resulting from the inflationary effects on our cost of our products, as well as higher levels of merchandize put in service with our customers in 2022 to support solid new account sales, increased activity in our energy-dependent markets, elevated wear additions at our customers, as well as certain national account investments. Partially offsetting these headwinds was lower healthcare and casualty claims expense during the quarter compared to prior year. Energy cost increased to 4.8% of revenues in the second quarter of 2023, up from 4.7% in 2022. Revenues from our Specialty Garments segment, which delivers specialized nuclear decontamination and cleanroom products and services, increased to $42.1 million from $35.5 million in prior year or 18.5%.

This increase was primarily due to strong growth in our cleanroom operations, and increased project work in our North American nuclear operations. The segment’s operating margin increased to 19.1% from 10.8%, primarily the result of its strong top-line performance. The segment’s operating performance from both a top-line and profitability perspective was very strong in what is normally a seasonally down quarter and exceeded our expectations. 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 segment’s revenues increased to $23.5 million from $18.1 million in prior year or 29.9% with both the wholesale distribution and van operations contributing to the growth.

However, the segment had an operating loss of $1 million during the quarter. These results reflect our continued investment in expanding the First Aid van business and building out the infrastructure necessary to eventually support a much larger business. At the end of our second fiscal quarter, we continued to reflect a solid balance sheet and financial position with no long-term debt and cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments totaling $345.1 million. We did not repurchase any additional common stock under our current stock repurchase program during the quarter. Cash provided by operating activities for the first half of the year increased to $64.2 million, compared to $44.9 million in prior year, primarily due to lower working capital needs of the business.

We continue to invest in our future with capital expenditures during the period of $74.8 million and the acquisition of four businesses for which we paid $7.1 million. As Steve mentioned, on March 13, we closed on our previously announced purchase of Clean Uniform for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $300 million. This acquisition was financed with our cash reserves and availability under our existing line of credit. As a result of this acquisition, on March 9, we exercised the accordion feature of our existing credit agreement, which increased the aggregate commitments under the credit agreement by $100 million resulting in a total commitment of $275 million. Our current assumptions regarding the impact of the Clean acquisition on our operating results for the year, which will be recorded to the Core Laundry operations include an increase in revenues of $42 million, a decrease in operating income of $0.5 million, which includes $3 million of purchase-related intangible amortization expense and acquisition-related expenses of $4 million, which includes the $2 million expense in our second quarter of 2023.

I would like to highlight that we have estimated the impact of the purchase price accounting on Clean’s operating results, using assumptions from due diligence, but we’ll need to confirm and update if necessary those assumptions as we finalize the purchase accounting process. I’d like to take this opportunity to provide an update on our outlook which now includes the assumed impact of the Clean acquisition. At this time, we expect our full year consolidated revenues will be between $2.21 billion and $2.22 billion. And our diluted earnings per share will be between $5.02 and $5.37. This revised guidance also assumes our Core Laundry operation’s operating margin at the midpoint of the range of 5.2%. An estimate of $40 million of costs directly attributable to our key initiatives, as well as $4 million of Clean-related acquisition costs.

These two items combined to decrease the Core Laundry operation’s operating margin assumption by 2.2% and EPS by $1.76. Our revised guidance reflects continued pressures impacting our Core Laundry operations, most notably, merchandize costs, which are being partially offset by a stronger than previously expected operating performance during the quarter in our Specialty Garments business. Our revised guidance further assumes an effective tax rate for fiscal 2023 of 25% and does not assume any future share buybacks or unexpected significantly adverse economic developments. This concludes our prepared remarks, and we would now be happy to answer any questions that you might have.

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Q&A Session

Operator: Our first question comes from Andrew Steinerman with JP Morgan. Please proceed.

Andrew Steinerman : Hi, Shane. I was hoping you could break down the $9.1 million into the three key initiatives in the quarter. And then also give us a sense of what the cost related to the three key initiatives will be in the second half of the year. And if it’s okay, I’m just going to get my second question as well. Do you have a sense yet when the or Oracle Cloud ERP system will go into deployment, meaning starting deployment?

Shane O’Connor: Yeah, sure. So I’ll start with the breakout of the key initiatives for the quarter, as well as the expectations for the remainder of the year. So, for the quarter, about two-thirds of those costs really related to the CRM project, most notably the deployment of that system. I think as we’ve spoken about in the past, right now, we are deploying that system to our locations and we have numerous teams that are going and supporting our locations throughout that deployment. When I take a look at the costs that I’m going to incur throughout the remainder of the year, similar assumption on the CRM cost about two-thirds of the cost for the year will be supporting that deployment as well. Largely, we’re going to be the lion’s Share of the cost related to the deployment will be throughout the remainder of this fiscal year – by the end of the fiscal year.

Our expectation is that our domestic locations will be largely deployed. Some of those costs will carry into 2024 as we as we continue to deploy some of our cleanroom in Canadian locations. But the majority of the costs related to the CRM deployments will take place in this fiscal year. Right now, when you take a look at the other two initiatives, the majority of that one-third at this point in time is the ERP cost. And again for the remainder of the year, the remainder of the one-third is ERP as well. My quarterly experience, CRM, ERP and then some residual branding carrying over from last year when we spent the majority of the cost supporting that initiative, my quarterly breakout was very, very similar. What I’m expecting for the full year.

Steven Sintros : The only thing I’ll add to that, Andrew, is that the branding is – Shane, mentioned the branding work having some tale of cost into this year. That’ll continue to reduce over the next couple of quarters.

Andrew Steinerman : Okay.

Steven Sintros : And as far as the ERP, the ERP project is still very early on in that project right now. We are largely involved in in design work – in designing the system and how it’s going to interface with other ancillary systems that support our business. That’ll be going on throughout the remainder of the year. And coming out of that design work, we will also be finalizing the timeline and the roadmap for the deployment of the different modules. But we expect that will €“ the deployments and the implementation of that system will be over a number of years. Because since we haven’t finalized that roadmap and we will be working the remainder of this year to do that at this point in time, I can’t definitively say exactly when that deployment is going to take place. We do expect that it will be a multi-year project.

Andrew Steinerman : Understood. Thanks for the time.

Shane O’Connor: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Andy Wittmann with Baird. Please proceed.

Andy Wittmann : Yeah. Great. Thanks for taking my questions this morning, guys. I guess, I wanted to ask about the profit margins and the revised guidance to make sure that I’ve got this right? I think you gave us the gap Core Laundry, plus the items. I get that to be on an adjusted basis of about 7.5%. I think last quarter, you guys were saying we’re like 7.7% and that was despite, it sounded like a little bit better quarter than you expected out of the Specialty segment. So I guess the question is, what is the incremental change? It’s been merchandize cost for the last several quarters and I think and it’s reiterated that again in this quarter that the merchants – a lot of the merchandize costs have been driven by new infusions or redressing, whatever happened in 2022.

So, I would expect, all else equal that those garment cost would be close to being in the annualized base. But it seems like there’s something else that’s changed. So, maybe, Steve, could you just talk a little bit about the dynamic of the merchandize costs today? And what other factors are leaving you to have this revised outlook on your margins today?

Steven Sintros : Sure. I’ll start and then, Shane can probably jump in, as well. With respect to merchandize in particular, as you know following us for a long time merchandize sort of ebbs and flows, right, in different economic cycles. Certainly, during the pandemic, the amount of merchandize we were putting in for a lot of reasons really dipped. And that obviously started to trend back up over the last 18 months or so. We’ve continued to see a lot of merchandize put in. You’re right. It is the factors we talked about. We did have some large infusions last year, but we continue to sell strategic accounts and so on. So, there are a number of pieces continuing to influence it. I think the one piece I’ll add to that is – and we probably haven’t discretely said this as much but, as we talk about inflation, inflation is impacting merchandize, as well.

I think the amount of units we’re putting in, is mostly in line but we’re still paying more for merchandize. Some of that comes from outside vendors. Some of it comes from internally manufactured. Some of that goes down to the cost of raw materials, which continues to be high although we do expect with things like cotton and other things starting to moderate that that we should start to get some relief on the cost of merchandize as I don’t even want to say as the year goes along, because as we procure that those raw materials that kind of gets to our supply chain, then we got to put the garments and service and amortize them. We’re probably not going to get the benefit from some of those lower costs until next year. So the combination of the factors we’ve talked about, as well as the cost of merchandize continue to impact us as we go.

And I think Shane can give you a little bit of the breakdown closing the gap, but the biggest piece and it’s a, it’s probably about a quarter of a point from our prior expectations is merchandize and then there’s just a couple other smaller pieces that we’re seeing. So, I’ll let Shane fill in the gaps there.

Shane O’Connor: Yeah. So when we’re talking about our current guidance for the year, yeah. I think, I think that sort of what you articulated excluding the impact or after the impact of my key initiatives and the transaction-related cost that I’m going to incur, you sort of spot on there. I think when you take a look at the guidance that we had last year, I was sort of indicating that after the effects of those two items that was largely in line with last year. Right now my guidance is about 60, 70 basis points lower than that previous guidance. When I, when I unpacked that change, about 20 basis points of that relates to the Clean acquisition. And obviously some that being influenced by the purchase accounting assumptions that I had articulated earlier.

I had even last quarter, I had indicated that my expectation of the headwind-related merchandize on the year was still going to approximate about a point of headwind on my margin. At this point in time, my assumption is, is slightly heavier than that with about 20 to 30 basis – 20 to 30 basis points of additional headwind, compared to that previous assumption. And then, Energy, because based on where Energy was I guess tracking towards in our assumptions, I thought that we were going to get a little – slightly larger benefit from Energy – from my Energy comparison than I think now. So that’s sort of like a 10 basis point headwind compared to that prior guidance, as well. So those three items are really largely explaining that change.

Andy Wittmann : Okay? I might follow up a little bit more offline to get a little bit more detail on that, but that’s helpful discussion. I guess, stepping back and thinking about the fact that the CRM is 75% installed and some of these locations it’s been installed for a while now. I guess, Steve, can you talk about how much benefits to your margins is being harvested already from the systems that are live? And I know that some of the locations where it is live, it’s still kind of being phased in where the old isn’t completely gone yet. So, I recognize that it’s not – you’re not getting the full benefit of this. But can you just talk about how much benefit if any, you are getting today? And as you turn the page to the next couple quarters, and maybe even the next fiscal year, when do you expect the benefits to your profit margins are going to wrap more substantially, as a result of that investment?

Steven Sintros : Yeah, I think when you look at the CRM, you’re right, we’re still, we’re still in the midst of it. Even though we’re through about 75% of the U.S. laundries, there’s still a lot of, what I’ll call learning and change management going on for locations adopting the new system. I think broadly, as we kind of go through that deployment. In fact, in the months, probably up to six months surrounding a deployment is probably not a net advantage, because there’s a lot of time and training and data conversion and a lot of work that’s being done. And so we’re seeing it takes locations six to nine months to sort of hit their stride, and using the new system. That’s not to say there aren’t benefits immediately, right? We’ve talked about enhanced merchandize control.

We’ve talked about time for our route drivers and additional efficiency effectiveness on the routes. Some of that is recognized immediately. Some of those are soft benefits versus hard benefits, as well. But we are seeing better merchandize controls resulting in our ability to, control garments coming back, making sure we’re charging appropriately for garments and we think that will continue to advance as we go through the remainder of the year and into next year. And then, I think, really as the as the last year, a year and a half has been so focused on deployment. I think, we will kind of go through an optimization phase where, the locations and we learned to sort of optimize the capabilities of the new system. And we think that that’ll happen over the course of the next year or so.

So, there are a lot of learnings with the new system. When anytime you’re coming off a system that you’ve been on for 30 years, you put in the new system. There’s immediately advantages. There’s opportunities to improve certain things and we’re still working through some of those things. But, as you think over the next year or so, there’ll be optimization there and we can start to see some of that improvement. And again, some of the Improvement I talked about merchandize controls, it may be hard to see because we’re still seeing such of a ramp up coming off the depths of the pandemic and we’re seeing the inflationary impact of higher merchandize costs. So, part of our effort has to continue to be working pricing angles where we can to recover some of that margin.

So, a lot of moving pieces, for sure. But we do feel good about where we are in terms of the deployment of the technology and our ability to optimize it going forward.

Andy Wittmann : Okay. I’ll leave it there, guys. Thanks a lot.

Steven Sintros : Thanks, Andy.

Shane O’Connor: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Tim Mulrooney with William Blair. Please proceed.

Sam Karlov: Hi guys. This is Sam Karlov on for Tim. Thanks for taking my questions.

Steven Sintros : Absolutely.

Sam Karlov: Can you give us an idea of how much of that 10.1% organic growth this quarter was from pricing? And if you could break that down further, how much of that comes from your fuel surcharge?

Shane O’Connor: Yeah, so we’ve never really kind of got into that granular level of detail and we really won’t now. The ones €“ the couple of comments I can make is that pricing activities over the last couple of years has been a meaningful factor in our growth. One thing I will say about the energy surcharge and we did not mention this in our prepared remarks, but as energy peaked last year is when we kind of put in that surcharge. We did take the surcharge a small step down as energy cost, particularly fuel has come down a bit. That was sort of a commitment to our customers that we would look to do that when some of the energy came back and we still are retaining some of it, because as Shane mentioned energy as a whole still remains relatively high.

So, I won’t break down the components any further there, other than say that we continue to push price in some ways. It is a difficult analysis to be honest. To really fair it out exactly how much pricing we are keeping because, we’ve said this before, but new accounts come in at lower prices than accounts in some cases that you’ve had for a little while. And so the net impact of price continues to be something that we work on. And I think we still have opportunities there. And our customers have been receptive understanding the environment and it’s something we’ll continue to work through.

Sam Karlov: That’s helpful. Thanks. And then one follow-up. You updated your guidance – sorry your updated guidance includes about $60 million to $65 million of additional top-line growth for the full year with $42 million of that coming from the cleanroom or Clean Uniform acquisition. How much of that additional $20 million was from strong performance in the second quarter versus higher growth expectations for the second half of the year?

Steven Sintros : It’s a good question. I think a lot of it is based on the estimates or the performance through the six months of the year. As Shane mentioned some of it relates to the Specialty Garment segment. Some of that Specialty Garment strength probably continues to the back half of the year and contributing it to, as well. But I think I think a fair amount of it is from the first half of the year. Maybe two-thirds of it and I’m going off the top of my head a little bit.

Sam Karlov: That’s helpful. Thanks.

Steven Sintros : Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Kartik Mehta with Northcoast Research. Please proceed.

Jack Boyle : Good morning. This is Jack Boyle on behalf of Kartik Mehta. Good morning, everyone.

Steven Sintros : Good morning.

Shane O’Connor: Morning.

Jack Boyle : Just a quick question regarding the Clean Uniform acquisition. You guys have said that you plan on doubling the EBITDA margins from 10% to 20% percent in the next two to three years. Could you just give us a little more color as to maybe what strategy you are planning to pursue to do that? Or maybe what opportunities you saw within Clean Uniform?

Steven Sintros : Sure. I think, as I mentioned, one of the things that attracted us to Clean, the most is their service reputation in that market. When you look at that market, we have a decent presence in the some of the markets they service, but in others we really don’t have that significant of a presence. So, when you think about the ability to integrate operations, optimized routes, synergize sales forces, the supply chain efficiencies, working together on sourcing products, some of our self-manufactured goods. So, it’s really all of the typical things you would think of when you think about what we can gain from integrating with any sort of acquisition in our industry. I think the one that made this, even more attractive is, some of these markets aren’t some of our top performing markets.

And that’s really as a result of scale and density, which we’ve said for a long time is really key to profitability in all of our markets. And so, really the combination of the two companies will provide us a strong platform in really all of the markets that Clean and UniFirst serve commonly in that in that Midwest area. And so, as I mentioned before, it’s going to take a little time, because we’re still deploying technology. I don’t think I mentioned this, but they are deployed on the same ABS software that we’re deploying. Now, both different versions of ABS have different bells and whistles that we sort of have to synergize as we work through it. But that will help us as well in terms of trying to put the companies together.

Jack Boyle : Great. I appreciate that. And just as an extra follow-up, could you go into any more detail as to, maybe some of that footprint overlap? Could you quantify how many or how much you guys had existing service in the area? Maybe how much that was unserved by you?

Steven Sintros : Yeah, I would say that every market that they’re servicing, we service, as well. So a good example would be St. Louis, which is really their own market. They have three operating plants in the Greater St. Louis area, all within 30, 40 miles of St. Louis, and we have one branch. Our nearest plant is Springfield Missouri. So that’s a good example of how, well eventually our depot facility in St. Louis will be merged into their St. Louis operations. And there’s some other operations in different markets like Tulsa and Kansas City that go in the other direction. But every market we do commonly serve together, but it’s amount of scale who has a processing facility and being able to kind of merge those operations to optimize the markets.

Jack Boyle : Very good. Thank you for the additional detail.

Steven Sintros : Thank you.

Operator: Gentlemen are no further questions at this time.

Steven Sintros: Okay, I’d like to thank everyone for joining us today to review our second quarter results, and we look forward to speaking with everyone again in June, when we expect to be reporting our third quarter performance, as well as our outlook for the remainder of 2023. Thank you, and have a great day.

Operator: That does conclude the conference call for today. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your line. Have a great day everyone.