Cintas Corp Q4 FY2026 Earnings Call

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Cintas Corporation Announces FISCO 2026 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Results Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Jared Mattingly, Vice President, Treasurer, and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Ross, and thank you for joining us. With me are Todd Schneider, President and Chief Executive Officer, Jim Rosakis, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Scott Garula, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We will discuss our fiscal 2026 fourth quarter results. After our commentary, we will open the call to questions from analysts. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a safe harbor from civil litigation for forward-looking statements. This conference call contains forward-looking statements that reflect the company's current views as to future events and financial performance. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those we may discuss. I refer you to the discussion on these points contained in our most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I'll now turn the call over to Todd.

Thank you, Jared. And thank you all for joining us. On today's call, I will start with an overview of our fourth quarter and full-year performance. and thoughts on the year ahead. Jim will provide further detail on segment performance, and Scott will walk through additional financial details and assumptions for our fiscal 2027 outlook. We are very pleased with our fourth quarter results to close out fiscal 2026. We delivered robust top-line growth and strong profitability, underscoring the strength of our value proposition across each of our businesses. In the fourth quarter, total revenue increased 8.9% to $2.91 billion. Our organic revenue growth rate, which adjusts for the impacts of acquisitions in foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations, was 8.4%. We continued to execute at a high level across each of our business segments. Turning to profitability, gross margin for the fourth quarter was 51%, the same as the third quarter, which was an all-time high and up approximately 130 basis points from the prior year. Operating income as a percent of revenue was 23.2% and grew to $673 million, an increase of 12.7% over the prior year. Adjusting for universe-related transaction Expenses, adjusted operating income as a percent of revenue was 23.6%, representing a year-over-year increase of roughly 120 basis points. Diluted earnings per share of $1.26 grew 15.6% over the prior year. Adjusted diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $1.29, an increase of 18.3% compared to $1.09 in last year's fourth quarter. These results conclude an outstanding fiscal year for CentOS. For the full year of 2026, the revenue was approximately $11.26 billion, an 8.9% increase over fiscal 2025. Organic revenue growth was 8.3% for the year. This marks the 55th year out of the last 57 years that we have grown both our top and bottom lines. Our strong top-line performance highlights the durability of our business model in all macro environments. It shows how our culture continues to be our biggest differentiator. It shows how we are capitalizing on the opportunity of a total addressable market that is massive. And it shows that we have a long runway for future growth of customers of all sizes across all industries. Gross margin for the year was 50.7%, up 70 basis points from the prior year. Over the last four years, we've expanded our gross margin by 450 basis points, demonstrating our culture of positive discontent, challenging ourselves to continuously improve the business while continuing to provide better products and services to our customers. Physical 2026 operating margin reached 23.1%. When you adjust for the universe-related transaction expenses, adjusted operating margin was 23.3%, expanding by 50 basis points compared to fiscal 2025. This represents an all-time high for our company, achieved while we continue to make strategic investments in the business. Adjusted diluted earnings per share for the year were $4.94, up 12.3% versus $4.40 last year. In March, we gave full-year EPS guidance in the range of $4.86 to $4.90. That guidance excluded universe transaction expenses. Against this guidance, full-year EPS excluding transaction expenses was $4.94. This excellent performance reflects consistent execution by our team, regardless of the macro environment. Our balanced approach to capital allocation remains a key pillar of our value creation strategy. In the fourth quarter and throughout fiscal 2026, we deployed capital across each of our priorities. First, we prioritize investments back into the business in many forms, including our products, technology, and people. Second, we love M&A, and we continue to pursue strategic acquisitions in our route-based businesses. Lastly, we look to return capital to shareholders via dividends and share buybacks. We will continue to prioritize these areas moving forward. Looking ahead to fiscal 2027, our outlook reflects confidence in our business model. As we will discuss in more detail, we expect fiscal 2027 revenue in the range of $12.1 billion to $12.25 billion, implying total growth of 7.4% to 8.7%. We expect fiscal 2027 adjusted diluted EPS to win $5.36 and $5.50, which represents 8.5% to 11.3% growth. Scott will provide more context on our assumptions for the guidance later in the call. Once again, we were named to the prestigious Fortune 500 for the 10th consecutive year. It is an honor to be recognized among the most successful and respected companies. As I've said before, our culture is our greatest competitive advantage. Our employee partners pride themselves on delivering the highest quality products and services to help our customers manage their businesses better. Our drive for continuous improvement is a key component of our culture. We remain positioned to achieve long-term growth and value creation. Before I turn the call over to Jim, I'd like to provide a brief update on our acquisition of Unifirst. Based on the limited due diligence we've been able to complete, we remain confident for the substantial long-term value creation for our combined customers, partners, and shareholders. When we announced the transaction in March, we indicated the merger was subject to approval by Unifirst shareholders, regulatory clearances in both the U.S. and Canada, and other customary closing conditions. The merger was approved by Unifirst shareholders in June. The regulatory process is ongoing. As expected, we did receive a second request from the FTC, similar to what we experienced with the Gene K acquisition. We continue to work toward obtaining regulatory clearance and completing the other closing conditions. We remain optimistic that the deal will close during the second half of calendar 2026. In order to avoid creating speculation, we will not be providing any additional commentary on this process. We will update the market going forward as appropriate. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jim for additional insights on our operational performance.

Thank you, Todd, and good morning, everyone. Our business continued to perform at a high level in the fourth quarter. We're adding many new customers, two-thirds of which transitioned to a management program after initially handling it on their own. Each of these new customers rely on CentOS for their image, safety, cleanliness, and compliance needs. We also continued to sell additional products and services to our existing customer base. Retention rates remained very attractive, and pricing was close to our historical levels. Turning to our segment performance, in the fourth quarter, we saw strong results across all of our business segments. Organic growth by business was 7.9% for uniform rental facility services, 13.2% for first aid and safety services, 10.7% for fire protection services, and uniform direct sale decreased by 4%. As we've done in the past, I'll provide the revenue mix of our Uniform Rental Facility Services segment for the quarter. Keep in mind that mix can fluctuate slightly between quarters. In the fourth quarter, Uniform Rental represented 47% of Uniform Rental Facility Services segment revenue. Dust control was 20%. Hygiene services were 16%. Shop towels were 3%. Linen, including wipes, towels, aprons, was 11%. And catalog sales were 3%. Gross margin percentage by business in the fourth quarter was 50.2% for uniform rental and facility services, 57.9% for first aid and safety services, 50.8% for fire protection services, and 42% for uniform direct sale. Gross margin for the uniform rental facility services segment increased to 120 basis points from last year. Strong top line growth continues to generate leverage, which is helping to expand margins. We also benefited from technology investments, a high-performing supply chain team that is effectively navigating a dynamic macro environment, as well as ongoing process improvement initiatives. Gross margin for the first aid and safety services segment increased to 110 basis points from last year. Our investments continue to generate strong top-line growth that has helped expand margin. These long-term investments are things such as needed route capacity, leadership development, management trainees, technology, and selling resources in this business. gross margin for the fire protection services segment was 50.8%, an all-time high. As we've noted in prior quarters, this segment can see some variability due to revenue mix and ongoing integration of acquisitions. While margins may go up and down from quarter to quarter as we grow our national footprint, we like the long-term fundamentals of the fire business and remain committed to investing appropriately for future growth. Our adjusted incremental profit margins in the fourth quarter were effectively 38%, the highest over the last five quarters. For the year, we finish right at 30% when you adjust for the transaction-related expenses in the current year and the $15 million gain on a one-time sale in the prior year. This is in the heart of our stated range of 25% to 35%, which allows us to invest for long-term growth while still expanding margins. Our value proposition continues to resonate in a dynamic macro environment. All types of customers, regardless of the industry they operate in, seek reliable business partners to help manage their operations, reduce the administrative burden, and ensure consistent service that allows them to focus on running their core business. That demand is creating ongoing opportunities for CENTAS. We serve a diversified customer base, and our solutions are widely utilized across our four strategic vertical markets, healthcare, hospitality, education, and state and local government, which continue to be solid contributors to our growth. Our addressable market remains very large, and our track record shows we can drive growth across various economic cycles. Before I hand it over to Scott, I want to share a brief customer example that shows how Cintas helps businesses elevate their brand and strengthen their image in the marketplace. We recently added a customer on the East Coast, that is in what we refer to as a specialty trade sector. The employees were required to purchase their own workwear to meet the company's appearance standard, which ultimately fell short of ownership's expectations. After learning about the breadth and quality of the Cintas offering through our marketing efforts, they reached out to learn more. We introduced them to our product line, which delivers high-quality, professional workwear for virtually every job imaginable. Once the employees had the opportunity to wear the Syntos Comfort Flex Pro garments, they were pleased with the quality, appearance, and functionality. The owners value the consistent professional image they created, and management now leverages the uniform program as part of its recruiting strategy. This is another example of how the breadth and quality of our products and services helps our value proposition resonate with businesses of all types and sizes. I'll now turn over to Scott for more detail on our financials, capital allocation, and assumptions for our guidance for fiscal 2027.

Thanks, Jim, and good morning, everyone. As Todd highlighted, fiscal 2026 was a year of outstanding financial performance for Cintas. Our balance sheet remains healthy, and we continue to generate significant cash flow. We generated $709.1 million in operating cash flow, our strongest cash flow generation of the year. We invested in the business by making capital expenditures of $96 million during the quarter and making acquisitions totaling $61.9 million. We also returned capital to our shareholders in the form of dividends totaling $180.6 million. dollars. Our effective tax rate for the fourth quarter was 21.2% compared to 22.1% last year. The tax rates in both quarters were impacted by certain discrete items, primarily the tax accounting impact for stock-based compensation. For the full year, the effective tax rate was 20.2%. Throughout fiscal 2026, our capital allocation was in line with our long-term priorities and was supported by robust cash generation. We invested $395.1 million in capital expenditures, representing 3.5% of revenue, which is in line with our historical CapEx intensity. We deployed $164.5 million towards acquisitions in our route-based businesses, adding new customers and expanding our capabilities. In addition, we returned $1.7 billion to shareholders via dividends and share repurchases. This was the second largest return of capital we have made for a fiscal year. Our annual dividend remains an important component of shareholder return, and our share buyback program continues to be executed opportunistically. Todd has already provided our fiscal 2027 guidance ranges for revenue and adjusted EPS. Let me add a bit more context on our assumptions. Fiscal 2027 will have one more workday than 2026. This will positively impact total growth by about 40 basis points. We are not assuming additional acquisitions in our guidance. Our guide assumes a constant foreign currency exchange rate, and we anticipate interest expense net to be around $105 million in fiscal 2027. Our effective tax rate for fiscal 2027 is expected to be similar to the fiscal 2026 rate of 20.2%. The guide does not include the impact of any future share buybacks or significant economic disruptions or downturns, and our guidance excludes non-recurring transaction costs related to the UNIFIRST acquisition. With that, I'll turn it back to Todd for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Scott. As we enter fiscal 2027, we remain encouraged by the momentum in our business. Our results demonstrate the power of our strategy and the critical value we provide in addressing customers' image, safety, cleanliness, and compliance needs. We are focused on delivering exceptional service to our customers while continuing to invest in our company and our people to support sustainable growth and profitability. We appreciate the trust our customers place in Cintas. We will continue to work every day to earn that trust. I want to thank our almost 50,000 employee partners for their dedication. It's your hard work that drives our success. I'll now turn it back over to Jared.

Thanks, Todd, Jim, and Scott. That concludes our prepared remarks. Now we are happy to answer questions from the analysts. Please ask just one question and a single follow-up if needed. Thank you.

If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad now. Please be prepared to ask your question when prompted. You will also be allowed to ask one follow-up question. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your phone now. And our first question comes from Manav Patnaik from Barclays Capital. Please go ahead, Manav.

Thank you. Good morning, guys. I guess, you know, Todd, first question, obviously 55 out of 57 years, you know, always an impressive stat to talk about. But when you look forward, you know, just given the uncertainty of the macro environment, can you just talk about, you know, some of the things you're looking out for that perhaps would, you know, make you pivot one way or the other from the way you're already operating today?

Good morning, Manav. You know, it seems like we've been operating in an uncertain macro environment for so many years now. You know, we stay focused on what we can control. There are certain things that are out of our control, geopolitics and other items that affect inflows and outflows. But nevertheless, we stay focused on investing in our business, controlling what we can control, investing in our people, trying to position our people so that they can be sustainably successful and provide more value to the customers. It's an incredibly competitive environment out there for partners, working partners, for customers, and for shareholders. And we take that very seriously, and we invest appropriately so that we can be sustainably successful. And I think our track record of 55 out of 57 paints a pretty darn good picture. That being said, we're always on edge, and we're trying to see around the corner. and invest appropriately. So we think that the future looks bright, can't control everything, but we're focused on what we can control. And the last thing I would add is that when we look at the future, that total addressable market is so massive that it allows for opportunities for us in various economic cycles. So we're not strictly dependent upon that. We certainly love when GDP is thriving and employment's thriving, all that. We love all that. But because of the opportunity out there and because of how we help customers run a better business, the opportunities are virtually endless for us. And that paints a pretty good picture for the opportunity ahead.

All right, great. That's good to hear. And just on the guidance, you know, I know it's kind of typical the way you start with a little bit of conservatism, but just specific to the implied incremental margins, are there any moving pieces or comps or anything for the rest of the year that we should keep in mind when considering that?

Good morning. This is Scott. I appreciate the question. You know, we really like the guide. We believe the guide is strong. When you look at the midpoint of our EPS, adjusted diluted EPS guide, it implies EPS growth of 10%. And to your question about incrementals, this has been a question that we've received really throughout the year. We finished the year really strong with our incremental margins of effectively 38%. And for the year, when you're taking into consideration the one-time sale, the year finished right at 30% incrementals. And our guide for fiscal year 27 has incremental margins in that range of 30% to 32%, which is right in the heart of our stated range of 25% to 35%. And, you know, as Todd alluded to, you know, first and foremost, you know, the momentum that we have in the business on top-line revenue, you know, is, you know, provides a tailwind when it comes to incremental margins. Our, you know, supply chain continues to be a strategic difference maker for us. and some of the operational initiatives that you've heard us talk about, you know, continue to have an impact on margin expansion and incremental margins.

Mono, this is Todd. I would just add to what Scott said. First off, we feel really good about our guide. It's a very strong guide. You know, our objectives are to grow our top line and, you know, mid to high single digits and grow our bottom line, our EPS, in double digits. and you're guiding right towards that. You know, you'll see, running a business isn't linear, so you'll see items, our results bounce between quarter to quarter, but throughout the year, we're hitting right where our objectives are. Those incrementals might bounce from quarter to quarter, but we ran 30 last year, and we expect to run right around 30 again this coming year. So we feel really good about our guide and our approach and understand that it'll bounce back and forth a little bit, but we like where we're positioned.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And the next question comes from Tim Mulroney from William Blair. Please go ahead, Tim.

Yeah, good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking my questions here. I just want to build on that last one while we're talking about it, because, you know, I just did some back of the envelope math, so I could be wrong. But I was getting to incrementals for 2027 a little bit below that 30 to 32 percent range. There's a lot of moving pieces here, so I could be, you know, just not doing the math right. But maybe asking it a different way is, what do you expect for operating margin expansion on a basis points level, 27 versus 26? And can you also talk about the headwinds and tailwinds, for example, energy cost? What's your assumption for basis points impact there? I think there's an ERP implementation and anything else that might be missing that you would consider material to that.

Yeah, Tim, good question and good morning. I guess to answer the first part of your question, when we're looking at the implied incrementals in the guide being in that 30 to 32 percent range, you know, you need to take a look at the midpoint and the high point of our revenue guide. And that's how you'll arrive at that 30% to 32% incremental margin. In terms of your question about the implied margin expansion, you know, when you look at the guide, it implies margin expansion really throughout the range. On the low end, it's a 10 basis point increase. And on the high point of the range, it's a 60 basis point. So, again, just to reiterate, you know, we really feel good about the guide. You know, we feel that the guide aligns with the state of ranges that we've talked about. And, you know, some of the headwinds you brought up, you know, energy, and this was something that we talked about on the third quarter call, that, you know, certainly higher gas prices had an impact in Q4. Energy costs were up about 20 basis points year over year and sequentially. And if you think about that, you know, Q4 represented one of the most volatile periods of prices at the pump in recent memory, and the impact was minimal. It was 20 basis points, and we talked about that on the third quarter call. And if you think about that and just go through the math, you know, only about 60% of our energy costs are related to fuel for our vehicles, which translates to about 100 basis points. So, if you see, you know, on average a 20% increase in fuel prices at the pump, you know, that's going to translate to 20 bps. You know, if it's 30, it'll be 30 bps. And those are things that we have confidence that we can offset with our operational initiatives. What we've got implied in the guide is we do have – we're assuming an uptick in energy expenses for next year, and think about that in terms of being on par with what we experienced in Q4.

Okay. Thank you, Scott. So, 10 to 60 BIPs, that does help clarify things. energy headwind maybe in that 20-bit range for next year. All very clear. No follow-up needed. Thank you.

And our next question comes from George Tong from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead, George.

Hi, thanks. Good morning. Could you provide some additional color on customer budgets and purchasing behaviors, how they have been trending over the past quarter and what's assumed for fiscal 2027?

Hey, George, this is Jim. I'll take that question. And coming off the year, we were quite pleased with the growth rates on the year. And we certainly saw our customers quite responsive to our value proposition across the board. And we're expecting similar based upon the guide moving into the next fiscal year. Maybe if I can unpack that a little bit more and you think about where some of those growth levers are coming from and what are the key contributors to it. Number one, a lot of credit is to our employee partners who do a fantastic job and execute at an extraordinarily high level. We often speak about our culture being a key differentiator for us. And of course, our frontline employee partners are the ones that are creating that culture and that passion for customer satisfaction and growth out in the field. It also speaks a little bit to the size of the opportunity that's out there and the fact that there's 16 to 20 million businesses in North America, and even after all the years of success that we've had, we only have a little bit over a million business customers. So it's just vast opportunity for us to continue to get our value proposition out and understood. And really, the third component is how much our value proposition resonates in all economic cycles. And especially today, as we began the call in Q&A, looking at macro uncertainty, that uncertainty creates a tremendous amount of opportunity for us as people are looking to really focus on their core business and outsource and becomes a really attractive lever for them to go to. So when I think about the growth inputs that are part of our algorithm, we always start with new business and new business continues to be strong. We are able to convert customers over and about two-thirds of that new business continues to be from the programmers. Certainly nice contributions from our verticals. So new business continued well last year, and we'd expect that moving forward. Retention rates are at all-time highs, so we really like, again, how customers are receiving our services and how much they're satisfied with it. Pricing is really right at historical levels and maybe slightly above historical, but immaterial in nature. And then penetration of our current customers and cross-sell continues to be performing quite well. So you think about the backdrop of growth, really attractive opportunity for us and how that manifests is all four of our growth levers are performing well and we'd expect that moving forward.

Very helpful. Thank you.

And our next question comes from Andrew Steinerman from JPMorgan Securities. Please go ahead, Andrew.

Yes. Hi. Can you hear me? This is Alex Hassan for Andrew Steinerman. Just wanted to maybe touch briefly on the gross margin expansion. Obviously, there's a lot in the news about supply chain pressures and fuel costs and you guys just had a pretty significant step up basically across the business uh on the gross margin front could you maybe uh outline you know you guys speak to supply chain excellence a lot but what that sort of looks like in practice uh for you guys at which we should expect on that line for next year and then just just i know people keep hitting uh hammering on the incremental margin question but when you guys are running that comparison for us. Are you comparing adjusted to adjusted, gap to gap? Are there any sort of, you know, add backs we need to be thinking of when we're building our models out? So thank you very much.

Alex, this is Todd. I'll start and just to answer the back half of your question, it's adjusted to adjusted is the way you should be thinking about it. Going back to the gross margin, you're right. There's plenty of uncertainty out in the marketplace, and we've dealt with whether it's tariffs or which, and not only tariffs, how they impact us, but how they affect our customer base. You know, fuel prices have been, as Scott mentioned, you know, bouncing around all over. But we stay focused on extracting out inefficiencies in our business, and our team has done a great job. our supply chain team is a strategic advantage they've done an outstanding job they have the advantage of being able to source you know through multiple vendors across very diverse geographic opportunities so it's been a real advantage for us so that we can have the products available for our customers and do so at rates that are very competitive. So we feel really good about that. I think Jim will speak a little bit about some of our operational efforts there with operational excellence that has helped us to extract that inefficiency in our business and improve that gross margin. Jim?

Yeah. Alex, I'll start on what are our key inputs towards driving gross margin expansion? And maybe worth noting that, you know, we do expect that gross margin can move a little bit quarter to quarter. We don't expect that it's going to just continuously rise. As you know, running a business isn't linear and you'll have different investments from time to time. But with that said, we are very focused on revenue growth as a key contributor to our gross margin expansion. That creates leverage and leverage shows up in the form of route density, you know, overall size of individual customers. It certainly shows up in capacity utilization of our plants and our routes in our other business units. So that would be a really important key contributor for us on margin expansion. Todd mentioned a little bit on material cost and the great work that our supply chain team continues to do in managing that. And we've talked about our strategy and how well diversified we are in our global supply chain team, not only from different vendors but different sources and geographically diverse across the globe. that continues to be a strategic advantage for us. Our garment sharing program that we've deployed in the rental business in particular, that's a piece of technology that has been really important to us in managing our material costs, specifically while we're growing as we are growing today. That has been led to great customer satisfaction, recognition of revenue, and cost control. And we have runway on our process there. Operational excellence in our production facilities has been one that's been really valuable to us and will continue to be valuable to us. That is both labor and overall energy control within the plants. And then, of course, we round out with SmartTruck across our service platform. And when you take the revenue and then you put SmartTruck in, we really get some nice leverage on service. And we'd expect to be able to continue that moving forward. Maybe worth noting also that we always have other initiatives that we are working on, and those initiatives are to support our overall financial goals. Todd talked about that as being part of our culture. That's part of our standard operation procedures that we're working towards those, finding other ways to become more efficient, extract that those inefficiencies. So we expect to continue that movement forward.

Thank you.

And our next question comes from Joshua Chan from UBS.

Please go ahead, Joshua. Hi, good morning, Todd, Jim, Scott, Jared. I guess my first question is on the TAM penetration that you guys are talking about. Within the rental business, where do you see kind of the biggest movement in terms of shift towards a rental program? And what verticals are you having more of a success in this penetration?

Josh, this is Jim. Thanks for the question. And again, we continue to see high demand in all of our product lines. So we're experiencing growth across all of our product lines, and we're really indifferent as to how we start the relationship with the customer. It can start with any one of our products and or services, including inside and outside of the rental business. And any way that we can begin to establish a relationship and trust and get to know that customer, we're okay with that. And we've got multiple examples of how that would continue to work. The verticals are all performing quite well for us. I did bring an example of one customer to just illustrate a little bit of what this may look like in practicality. What is this penetration and cross-selling? How does that play out in real life? So we had a longstanding uniform customer, well over 20-year uniform customer in the retail automotive industry with multiple sites. And in a business review, we had a conversation with them about what challenges they were seeing in the marketplace, obviously a dynamic macro environment. and one of the core principles that they were working towards is getting their local management team to focus more on their customers and focus more on their core business. And we looked for ways that we could help them with that scenario. We identified that they were spending a lot of time managing things like hygiene supplies for their restrooms, cleaning chemicals, and PPE, and that it was the local general manager who was responsible to order all of that through their distribution center, maintain stock inventories. I think you get the picture. They ultimately decided to give us a chance to leverage our route infrastructure and the fact that we're on site with them on a regular basis. After trialing it at a few of their stores, they recognized right away that this was a cost savings, a time savings, and a much more efficient way for them to go meet that need. So they took that spend that they had with someone else, They redirected over to us, and we were able to go ahead and penetrate those products, further penetration in our rental business, and cross-selling with our first aid and safety business as well. So it shows up in a lot of different ways, but the opportunity is quite large.

Great.

Yeah, thank you for the color, Jim. That makes a lot of sense.

And then on First Aid, I think there was some understanding that in the prior year, we were lapping some kind of one-time type of revenue, but yet the First Aid growth was pretty strong this quarter. So I guess, was there anything one time this quarter as well? And maybe you can talk about any new products that you're launching within First Aid that's driving growth also.

Josh, you're right. You know, last year, the first aid business grew 18.5% in Q4, and this year was 13.2% organic to organic. So just outstanding performance. That was a heck of a comp that they had to overcome, and the team is executing at a high level. As far as items and products in the pipe, we don't give away too much. You know, we like having a competitive advantage in the marketplace and launching our products. But I'll say this, part of our culture is we're constantly working on improving our products, existing products, and identifying additional products and services that we can bring to the marketplace. And the first aid business is really good at that. all of our businesses are, but the opportunity out there for the first aid business is so large because there's so many businesses that we don't do business with. And Jim talked about in his example earlier that we'll have people that will redirect monies to us, but they're all solving for these objectives somehow. They're spending monies on these subjects. We just wanted to redirect them to us because we think we can do it better for them, and that's working quite well in each of our businesses, and First Aid's been a shining star for many years now.

That's great. Thank you, Todd, and congrats on a good quarter.

Thank you, Josh. Our next question comes from Jasper Bibb from Truist Security. Please go ahead, Jasper.

Hey, good morning, everyone. I was just hoping you could maybe unpack the contribution to organic growth this quarter from net wearers. And then I guess if you could outline how you're thinking about the wearer levels in your fiscal 27 guidance too, that would be great.

Jasper, thanks for the question. We don't give a specific KPI on wearers, but I'll say this. Each of our areas of our business are performing well. Jim spoke about our growth from current customers is doing quite well. And some of that shows up in wares, and it shows up in other areas of our business. But when we have people in our customer's place of business on a regular basis, those employee partners have eyes, ears, and minds, and they see opportunities, whether that opportunity is additional wares or products and services that we can help solve for the customer better than what they're currently doing it uh that's uh that's where our focus is uh in addition to taking great care of the customer it all goes together uh and and obviously um driving new business uh so uh it all goes into the formula and um uh and it's uh it's working for us quite well um we haven't really touched on the fire yet that's been a really nice growth story for you

guys i was hoping you could maybe just talk about you know broad expectations for that business next year, and obviously you're doing, you know, some pretty significant investments in the tech platform, too. Just hoping you maybe could refresh us on how you're thinking about the long-term margin opportunity for that business.

Sure. I'll start on the fire business, and we're really pleased with the fourth quarter of the fire business, and obviously they perform well, highest gross margin that we've seen within that business, and so we're pleased with the execution, great work by the team. I would expect that you'll see some variability to gross margin in that business moving forward. That business, as you know, a little bit can be impacted by revenue mix in a particular quarter. But also, we're still building on our national footprint in the fire protection business. And as we do that, we will make strategic acquisitions. And some of those acquisitions will run at productivity numbers and profitability that are far below CentOS. And it takes some time for us to go in and implement our playbook and get the overall productivity up to Syntax performance standards. That takes a little bit of time, but as we've demonstrated this past year, certainly something that we're comfortable being able to go and do. We will have an NSAP implementation in FHIR that was scheduled for this upcoming fiscal year that will have about 100 basis point annual headwind for the FHIR protection business. So we're expecting a little bit of volatility in that gross margin. But overall, we do love the fundamentals of the fire business. We'll continue to invest in the fire business for long-term growth and believe that it can be a good contributor to Cintas in the future.

Thank you for taking the questions, guys. And our next question comes from Jason Haas from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead, Jason.

Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. I'm curious if you could talk about the impact that automation and manufacturing has had on your business historically. And do you foresee any, I guess, potential headwinds there as maybe some more manufacturing processes get automated?

Jason, thanks for the question. This is Todd. You know, first off, our customers have been automating for years. So that is internally in our run rate of what we've experienced in the past. We are automating and throughout our facilities as well. We're not in the technology business, but every business is in the technology business. So automation plays a role for us internally and for our customers. and you know to think about it from that standpoint automation plays a probably a larger role in manufacturing goods producing than it does in services providing and our business 25 years ago was 70 percent of our customers were goods producing and 30 percent were services providing and today it's exact opposite it's 30 percent goods producing and 70 percent services providing. So certainly, you know, automation plays roles in our business and our customer's business in different ways, depending upon the business. But it's absolutely plays a component. And as that occurs, it doesn't change our outlook whatsoever from our perspective, because the opportunity out there is so massive for us. We do business with a little over a million customers. There are 16 to 20 million businesses out there. And they're all solving these needs that we can provide in some manner. So we just want to redirect those monies to us because we think we can do it better. And it's our job to position our people to make that clear to our customers and our prospects. And we're working diligently to do just that.

That's great. Certainly makes sense. And then as a follow-up, I just want to circle back on pricing and just to understand, given that there's maybe some more inflationary factors you talked about, fuel costs, are you taking a little bit more price to offset some of that? And what's the customer reception been to those price increases?

Yeah. Thank you very much for the question. And yeah, I would say our pricing is generally in line with our historical levels. as we mentioned earlier, maybe slightly elevated, but immaterial in nature. And our philosophy is really to take a long-term approach when it comes to pricing. We know customers have choices of ways that they can go satisfy the needs here, and we want to continue to ensure we're providing the most valuable program possible. So as Todd mentioned earlier, our objective is that we want to remove inefficiencies out of our business as our primary way of expanding margins. It's expedient to just pass pricing along to the customers, but not great for the long term. So we want to make sure we continue keeping that long-term approach. Now, if we believe it's strategic and the environment calls for some price increases, as we saw back in 22-23 with persistent and historical levels of elevation and wage increases, we certainly have demonstrated we can take pricing, but it's not our preferred method and not a large component of our growth algorithm.

Totally makes sense. Thank you very much.

And our next question comes from Seth Weber from BNB Paribas. Please go ahead, Seth.

Hey, guys. Good morning. I wanted to ask about your comments about growing the FIRE business into a national platform. Can you just talk about the competitive environment when you're out bidding for a deal, bidding for other assets, It's just sort of, you know, how you're positioning that business relative to some of the other, you know, growing competitors that are out there. Thank you.

Hey, good morning, Seth. You know, we really like the fire business. It's, you know, it's the only business that we're in where you legally have to have it for our customers. And so as a result, the TAM is some word beyond massive. It's, so it is, the opportunity out there is incredible. It's a service business. And, you know, because everybody is served in some manner, unless you're talking about new construction, which really isn't a focus for us. So it's a service business. We were investing appropriately to have a footprint. As Jim mentioned, as you plant new flags in markets, short term, there's some headwinds on margin, but we see the opportunity is so large that we want to make sure that we're investing appropriately to provide those levels of service to customers across the country. That being said, you know, technology plays a role in that. As we roll out SAP, we think that will provide some real value to not only our people, but to our customers to help them with the levels of service that we can provide them. So we're big fans of the business, seeing an incredible runway, and we're investing appropriately to attack that opportunity.

Appreciate that. And then just maybe on CapEx, it was, I think, 3.5% this year. It had been maybe closer to 4% in the last couple of years. Do you think while you're waiting for the Universe deal to close, does CapEx kind of come down a little bit while you're waiting to see what happens with the acquisition and then as you sort of figure out what assets are where and where you can utilize the Universe assets? Or do you think CapEx kind of stays in the 3.5% to 4% range for this year?

Yes, Seth, this is Scott. I appreciate the question. CapEx for the year came in at that 3.5% of revenue right within the range that we've stated, 3.5% to 4%. And like other things, you know, CapEx can vary from quarter to quarter and year to year based on the timing of different initiatives. You know, Jim mentioned, you know, one of the initiatives, Operational Excellence, and that really is centered on, you know, increasing the capacity of our production facilities on the uniform space without investing in capital, really through process improvement and engineering, and that would be an example of an initiative that would have a positive impact on our CapEx spend. So I'm not expecting, you know, any variation in fiscal year 27 or really beyond relative to CapEx and still believe that we'll be in that 3.5% to 4% range.

Seth, I'll just add that first off, the deal has not closed. We're running two separate businesses. And I wouldn't read into the 3.5% saying, well, they're getting ready for, universe so they're not investing appropriately. We're running our business in the normal course when we close and we'll be able to make a really good assessment and give you a better view of what that will mean for us moving forward. But we're running separate businesses and running it in the normal course.

Appreciate it, guys. Thank you. Thank you.

And our next question comes from I'm Tony Kaplan from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, Tony.

Thanks so much. Earlier you were asked about automation, and I was hoping you could give some examples of what you're doing in the automation and robotics side within your own business to try to maximize efficiencies.

Good morning, Tony. Thanks for the question. We don't like to give away too much of where we're investing, but I'll just give you a little color. Yeah, there's certain areas like supply chain, you know, distribution, manufacturing, where automation is a little bit more clear. We've been investing in automation in our rental facilities to help us with things like automatic sortation that is really bearing fruit for us. And then there's other areas of automation that we consider automation that may not be a robot or might be another nature of automation, such as the garment sharing that Jim spoke of and such as SmartTruck. So all that plays into the role of automation. It's throughout our business and has been and will continue to be.

Terrific. And then I wanted to ask about the different verticals that you're in. Have you noticed any really accelerating or any more on sort of hold? Which markets have been good and bad for you at this point?

Hey, Tony, this is Jim. I'll take that question. And overall, we really like the verticals that we've organized around. You know, those are verticals that are performing quite well for us. And we're seeing strong performance really across the board there. Certainly, I made note earlier or spoke about healthcare. Healthcare continues to be a tremendous avenue for us for revenue. Our customers really appreciate the value proposition we bring in the healthcare space. So we continue to plant new flags in healthcare and then certainly cross-sell and upsell with our current customer base. Really like the state and local government business, and that continues to perform well. education continues to perform well, hospitality. So they all perform above the overall company growth, and that certainly speaks to why we organize around those spaces. And it's not just a sales strategy we organize around them. We organize our product line around them. We organize our service model around them. And we think that we've picked a lot of the right verticals, and they are performing quite well for us.

Thank you.

And our next question comes from Connor Cerniglia from Alliance Bernstein. Please go ahead, Connor.

Thank you for the question. Maybe just building off the prior question, can you talk a little bit more about the healthcare vertical, given healthcare employment has been really one of the only sectors that has been adding jobs at HealthyClip, how has your progress been? Is it well outperforming other verticals, or is it pretty balanced? And then within healthcare, is growth coming from new account wins, or is it more same account growth from existing customers who add more headcount?

Thank you for the question, Connor. Yeah, our healthcare business is going quite well. And you're right. You look at how healthcare as a component of GDP, how it's growing, the jobs. So we chose wealth in picking that vertical. So, and it's not, don't just think about it as, hey, they sell customers in that area. We organize around that vertical. So, we think of products. We think of services. We think of technology. We think of dedicated routing structures so that way we can solve those needs for those customers better and better and better. and uniforms play a role in that but we have plenty of products and services that we service into the healthcare sector and you asked about is it growing faster anytime we have a focused vertical we expect it to grow faster than the average because there's that much focus and efforts and resources put on that And the healthcare business is growing better than average for us, and we expect it to, just like we do all of our verticals.

Great. And then just a follow-up, even margin expansion has been pretty healthy this past quarter. My math might be wrong, but I thought it was 120 basis points if you account for the universe transaction costs. It seems like the investments you've been making over the past year are starting to pay off. Looking ahead, can you talk about the incremental investments you plan on making, if any? My sense is it would be smaller than the ones we saw in the past year, but any color on that front would be helpful.

Well, Connor, we're always investing because we see the opportunity ahead. We had a great Q4, great margin expansion, incrementals. But you're going to see it from quarter to quarter. Certainly, incrementals will bounce a little bit, and we're thinking long-term. We're thinking long-term as we approach customers and investments in our business, but over a year, we would expect that we'll hit our guide, and I think if history is any indication of the future that will occur, but we're pleased with our Q4 and our year, and we're pleased with our guide ahead, but we're not slowing up. We're running separate business from Unifirst. We're investing as appropriate, running it just as we always would.

And maybe I'll just add one little bit of color on that. Just regarding the incrementals in the fourth quarter, coming at 37.7 adjusted, 37.7 effectively, 38. That didn't represent a step change in our strategy. You know, we are continuing to invest in our business. We continue to look at the opportunity in front of us with the unsurved marketplace, the robust amount of wearers that are available out there. I mean, there's 180 million people that go to work in North America. They're all wearing something. We only have 5 million wearers. There's over 100 million of those are in NAICS codes that we're organized around. So just a tremendous amount of runway. So we're going to continue to invest. And a little bit of what you saw this past year was some comps from the prior year had a little bit more of an influence on that incremental margin as we had really outsized performance in the first half of fiscal 25 relative to incrementals. And then we got a little bit more favorable comp in the fourth quarter. So we sell that to say that we're going to continue to invest in the business and we're comfortable anywhere in the range of our incrementals. And we're less focused on one quarter versus the next quarter. But holistically over the year. We expect to deliver strong, you know, mid to high single digit growth rates, expand margin and deliver 10 plus percent EPS growth.

Great. Thanks so much. I'll pass it on.

And our next question comes from Curtis Nagle from Bank of America. Please go ahead, Curtis.

Great. So maybe just first a very quick one, just which quarter is the extra workday going to hit in, just that would be helpful for the model. And then secondarily, just going back on the supply chain efficiencies, maybe just in terms of kind of rank ordering or maybe putting in innings some of the larger opportunities you called out, like the plant efficiency, smart truck, kind of where does that stand? Where do you see the biggest ops for this year and kind of anything new coming into the mix for this year that you're excited about?

Curtis, this is Scott. I'll answer the question on the workday differential. As I mentioned, there is one more workday in fiscal year 27 compared to fiscal year 26, which represents about 40 basis points on revenue growth. When you look at it quarter by quarter, the first quarter of fiscal year 27 has one extra day than fiscal year 26. The second quarter has the same number of workdays. The third quarter has one less workday. And then the fourth quarter has one more workday than fiscal year 26. So really, when you look at each of the quarters, there's a workday differential in each quarter with the exception of Q2 for one extra day for the entire year.

Curtis, regarding supply chain and business efficiencies and extracting out those inefficiencies. yeah i would they all contribute they're all important to us we have a culture here of positive discontent we are we always have initiatives because we want to extract out those inefficiencies to run a better business you know jim talked about that we operate in a very competitive environment as you know costs go up and people want to be paid more we don't just pass that along to the customer because we recognize customer safe choices so as a result we have to find other ways to improve our business and we always have a long list of initiatives and that's part of our culture and and we will continue to execute upon that and those opportunities continue to be in front of us so we feel quite good about where we're positioned there. And that culture is what drives us to be constantly seeing ahead around the corner and leveraging our positive discontent to get better.

And our last question comes from Ashish Savadra from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead, Ashish.

Hey, good morning, guys. This is Will Chee on for Ashish Savadra. I appreciate you guys squeezing us in. Maybe just a bit on the macro side. I wonder if you could get a little bit more color, I guess, on visibility for hiring trends across the verticals. I know healthcare has been strong, but just any other kind of vertical commentary you might be able to provide.

I'm happy to start, Jim. You can speak to anything we're seeing in the customer base. But, Will, we are you know, we read the same prints that you do. We understand where the employment picture is. as i mentioned we're not dependent upon employment we love it when employment is strong that usually bodes well for the economy and gdp but we're not employment dependent and i think we've demonstrated that over the years that we grow in multiples of employment we grow in multiples of gdp and there are certain sectors that are doing better than others uh jim mentioned i think we've chosen very well, our verticals. They seem to be some of the shining stars on the employment side. But we can help customers in so many different ways. And as mentioned earlier, they're spending money on solving for these image safety, cleanliness, and compliance needs already. Just we're trying to redirect it to us because we think we can do better. Jim, anything you're seeing in the customer base on those types of trends?

Yeah, I mean, I think the only thing maybe I would add to that is we have an extraordinarily broad customer base, so we see puts and takes across all the customers, and that is pretty typical that we would see on a normal basis. But, you know, if you go into digging beneath the headlines on the jobs reports, it certainly supports a narrative that Todd just gave. You know, you continue to see nice growth in healthcare, education, hospitality. You see some in state and local government. Especially trades is an area that continues to perform fairly well, and the biggest headlines as far as the weaker areas tend to be around white-collar jobs, which is not as important and marked for us for our uniform rental business. So I'd say, you know, puts and takes across the board. We like where we are, but we do not need that robust revenue growth to continue to grow the organization.

Thank you, guys. Congrats on the quarter. Thank you.

And the question and answer period has concluded. I will turn the call back over to Jared to close out the call.

Thank you, Ross, and thank you for joining us this morning. We will issue our first quarter of fiscal 2027 financial results in September. We look forward to speaking with you again at that time. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.