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Text: I'm Steven Sintros, UniFirst's president and chief executive officer.
Actual future results may differ materially from those anticipated depending on a variety of risk factors.
Overall, we are pleased with our results for the first quarter of fiscal 2022.
Our team continues to focus on providing industry-leading services to our customers as well as selling prospective customers on the value that UniFirst can bring to their businesses.
The results for our first quarter were largely as we anticipated, with consolidated revenues growing 8.8% and an overall adjusted operating margin for our core laundry operations of approximately 10%.
The team continues to execute well, producing solid performances in both new account sales as well as customer retention during the quarter.
In addition, wearer additions versus reductions during the quarter were positive, indicating the continued growth and recovery of our customer base.
This is a favorable comparison to a year ago when many customer wearer levels remained depressed due to the impact of the pandemic.
The strong year-over-year growth in the quarter was also impacted by adjustments to customer pricing as we continue to work with our customers through this inflationary environment.
As a reminder, from a profitability perspective, we discussed during our year-end earnings call that going forward over the next few years, we are going to be reporting adjusted results, which exclude the impact of costs that we are expending on three discrete strategic initiatives that are critical in our efforts to transform the company in terms of our overall capabilities and competitive positioning.
As a reminder, these three initiatives are the rollout of our new CRM system, investments in the UniFirst brand, and a corporatewide ERP system with a strong focus on supply chain and procurement automation and technology.
As we have talked about over the last year or two, we continue to be focused on making good investments in our people, our infrastructure, and our technologies.
All of the investments designed to deliver solid long-term returns for UniFirst stakeholders and are integral components of our primary long-term objective to be universally recognized as the best service provider in our industry.
After excluding our costs in our quarter related to these investments, our adjusted operating margin is showing an anticipated decline compared to a year ago.
The comparison of adjusted margin is being impacted by increases in costs we've been highlighting for a couple of quarters now.
Some are simply bouncing back from depressed levels during the pandemic and others are being impacted by the inflationary environment and some are being impacted by both.
As a reminder, these costs include merchandise amortization, costs related to raw materials and the overall supply chain disruption, the cost to hire and retain labor, energy, and travel.
Our solid balance sheet positions us well to meet these ongoing challenges while continuing to make investments in growth and strengthen our business.
Along those lines, during December, we closed on two small acquisitions, which will improve our footprint in key markets.
As we have highlighted before, acquisitions continue to be part of our overall growth strategy.
Despite the challenges in the overall operating environment, we continue to be confident in our ability to manage and execute through these obstacles.
We maintain a sharp focus on taking care of our employees, our customers, and bringing new customers into the UniFirst family.
As we have discussed previously, the pandemic has clearly highlighted the essential nature of our products and services and we feel the company is positioned well to support the evolving economic landscape.
In our first quarter of 2022, consolidated revenues were $486.2 million, up 8.8% from $446.9 million a year ago, and consolidated operating income decreased to $44.8 million from $56 million in -- or 20.1%.
Net income for the quarter decreased to $33.7 million or $1.77 per diluted share from $41.9 million or $2.20 per diluted share.
Our financial results in the first quarter of fiscal 2022 included $5.9 million of costs directly attributable to the three key initiatives that Steve discussed.
Excluding these initiative costs, adjusted operating income was $50.7 million, adjusted net income was $38.1 million, and adjusted diluted earnings per share was $2.
Although our financial results in the prior year may have included direct costs related to these key initiatives, which in our first quarter of 2021 would have primarily been for our CRM initiative, the company did not specifically track the amounts that were being expensed.
This is because the amount was less significant in value and a large number of the costs were still being capitalized.
As a result, we will not be providing adjusted amounts for the prior year comparable period.
Our core laundry operations revenues for the quarter were $428.8 million, up 9.1% from the first quarter of 2021.
Core laundry organic growth, which adjusts for the estimated effect of acquisitions as well as fluctuations in the Canadian dollar, was 8.6%.
This strong organic growth rate was primarily the result of customer reopenings, solid sales performance, and improved customer retention in fiscal 2021 as well as efforts to share with our customers the cost increases that we are seeing in our business due to the current inflationary environment.
Core laundry operating margin decreased to 8.5% for the quarter or $36.5 million from 12.4% in the prior year or $48.9 million.
Costs we incurred during the quarter related to our key initiatives were recorded to our core laundry operations segment.
And excluding these costs, the segment's adjusted operating margin was 9.9%.
The decrease from prior year's operating margin was primarily due to higher merchandise amortization, which continues to normalize from depressed levels during the pandemic, as well as the effect of large national account installations, which are providing additional merchandise amortization headwinds.
Also, inflationary pressures and the overall supply chain disruption continued to impact our other merchandise costs.
During the quarter, the adjusted operating margin was also impacted by higher travel and energy costs as a percentage of revenues as well as wage inflation we are experiencing, responding to the very challenging employment environment.
Energy costs increased to 4.3% of revenues in the first quarter of 2022, up from 3.6% in prior year.
Revenues from our specialty garments segment, which delivers specialized nuclear decontamination and cleanroom products and services, increased to $39.5 million from $38.1 million in prior year or 3.5%.
This increase was primarily due to growth in our cleanroom and European nuclear operations.
The segment's operating margin increased to 21.9% from 18.8%, primarily due to lower merchandise costs as a percentage of revenues.
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 $17.8 million from $15.5 million in prior year or 14.8%.
This increase was due to improved top line performance in both our wholesale distribution as well as our first aid van business.
However, the segment had an operating loss of $0.3 million during the quarter primarily due to continued investment in the company's initiative to expand its first aid van business into new geographies.
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 $478.1 million at the end of our first quarter of fiscal 2022.
During the quarter, our net cash provided by operating activities was impacted by our reduced profitability as well as heavier than normal working capital needs of the business.
Contributing to these higher working capital needs were elevated supply inventory balances related to the ongoing supply chain disruption as well as increases to rental merchandise and service as our balance sheet position continues to normalize coming out of the pandemic-impacted period.
Capital expenditures for the quarter totaled $31.1 million as we continued to invest in our future with new facility additions, expansions, updates, and automation systems that will help us meet our long-term strategic objectives.
Now that our CRM project has transitioned from a development phase to deployment, the majority of the costs are now being expensed.
As a result, the capitalization of costs related to our CRM project in the quarter totaled only $1.7 million.
During the first quarter of fiscal 2022, we repurchased 22,750 common shares for a total of $4.8 million under our previously announced stock repurchase program.
I'd like to take this opportunity to provide an update on our outlook.
At this time, we now expect our full-year revenues for fiscal 2022 will be between $1.94 billion and $1.955 billion.
This revised top-line guidance includes the anticipated impact of the two small acquisitions we closed in December that Steve discussed.
These acquisitions are expected to add approximately $10 million to our fiscal 2022 revenues.
We further expect that our diluted earnings per share for fiscal 2022 will now be between $5.50 and $5.80.
This earnings per share guidance assumes an effective tax rate of 24% and continues to include an estimate of $38 million worth of costs directly attributable to our key initiatives that will be expensed during the year.
Please also note the following assumptions regarding our guidance.
Core laundry operations adjusted operating margin at the midpoint of the range is now 9.2%, which reflects continued pressure from costs that trended lower during the pandemic and the current inflationary environment.
Our assumed adjusted tax -- our assumed adjusted tax rate for fiscal 2022 is 24.25%.
Adjusted diluted earnings per share is expected to be between $7 and $7.30.
Guidance does not include the impact of any future share buybacks or potential tax reform, and guidance assumes a stable economic environment with no pandemic-related headwinds, including potential expenses related to government COVID-19 mandates.

user
q1 revenue $486.2 million.
q1 earnings per share $1.77.
now expect revenues for fiscal 2022 to be between $1.940 billion and $1.955 billion.
expect 2022 diluted earnings per share to be between $5.50 and $5.80.
2022 adjusted diluted earnings per share is expected to be between $7.00 and $7.30.

assistant