Good day, everyone, welcome to the Cintas quarterly earnings results conference call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Mike Hansen, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Sir, please begin.
Thank you, and good evening, and thanks for joining us tonight. With me is Paul Adler, Cintas Vice President and Treasurer. We will discuss our third quarter results for fiscal 2020. 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 SEC. Before discussing the financials, I want to say that our thoughts go out to all of those impacted by the COVID-19 coronavirus.
This is a challenging time for all of us, and we can't thank enough our employees, whom we call partners, for doing all that they can to keep our customers' places of business clean, safe, and ready for the workday. We currently find ourselves at the peak of uncertainty as it relates to the pandemic's impact on the economy. The response of our country and each state evolves daily. A week ago, we hadn't seen much impact to our business, and we were expecting today to increase revenue and EPS guidance based on our year-to-date results and fourth-quarter outlook. However, much has changed in a matter of days, and more changes are likely to come. Due to this uncertainty, including the severity and duration of the pandemic, we are not providing guidance for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020 at this time.
We certainly remain focused, though, on the safety and wellbeing of our employee partners and the care of our customers. Let's move to providing our third quarter results, and then we will open it up for questions. Our fiscal 2020 third quarter revenue was $1.81 billion, an increase of 7.6% over last year's third quarter. Earnings per diluted share, or EPS, from continuing operations were $2.16, an increase of 17.4% over last year's third quarter, adjusted for G&K integration expenses. Free cash flow for this year's third quarter was $300 million, an increase of 17.2%. The organic growth rate, which adjusts for the impacts of acquisitions, foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations, and differences in the number of workdays, was 5.7% for the third quarter of fiscal 2020.
The organic growth rate for the Uniform Rental and Facility Services operating segment was 4.8%, and the organic growth rate for the First Aid and Safety Services operating segment was 12.5%. Gross margin for the third quarter of fiscal 2020 of $824.4 million increased 9.2%. Gross margin as a percentage of revenue was 45.5% for the third quarter of fiscal 2020, compared to 44.9% in the third quarter of fiscal 2019. Operating income for the third quarter of fiscal 2020 of $314.7 million increased 13.1%. Operating margin was 17.4% in the third quarter of fiscal 2020, compared to 16.5% in fiscal 2019. Net income from continuing operations for the third quarter of fiscal 2020 was $234.5 million, and reported earnings per diluted share were $2.16. Excluding the G&K acquisition integration expenses in fiscal 2019, EPS increased 17.4%.
In addition to the solid financial performance, we continue to generate strong cash flow and commit to effectively deploying cash to increase shareholder value. third quarter free cash flow was $300 million, an increase of 17.2% compared to last year. In the third quarter of fiscal 2020, we paid an annual dividend totaling $268 million. The dividend of $2.55 per share was an increase of 24.4% over last year's annual dividend. In addition to the annual dividend, we purchased $393.1 million of Cintas stock in fiscal 2020 to date, including $200 million in March. The amount remaining under our buyback authorization is $1.1 billion. We end our third quarter with fiscal year to date revenue growth of 7.2% and an organic growth rate of 7.1%. Operating income, excluding last year's G&K integration expenses, increased 14.7%. EPS, adjusted for last year's special items, increased 22.2%.
Finally, free cash flow for the third quarter year to date increased 61%. Our employee partners have really done a great job this year. With that, I will turn the call over to Paul for additional details for our third quarter results.
Thanks, Mike. We have two reportable operating segments, Uniform Rental and Facility Services and First Aid and Safety Services. The remainder of our business is included in All Other. All Other consists of Fire Protection Services and our Uniform Direct Sale business. First Aid and Safety Services and All Other are combined and presented as Other Services on the income statement. The Uniform Rental and Facility Services operating segment includes the rental and servicing of uniforms, mats, and towels, and the provision of restroom supplies and other facility products and services. This segment also includes the sale of items from our catalogs to our customers on route. Uniform Rental and Facility Services revenue was $1.45 billion, an increase of 6.6%. Excluding the impact of acquisitions, foreign currency exchange rate changes, and the difference in number of workdays, the organic growth rate was 4.8%.
Our Uniform Rental and Facility Services segment gross margin was 45.8% for the third quarter compared to 44.9% in last year's third quarter, an improvement of 90 basis points. Gross margins have strengthened for many reasons, including strong revenue growth and realization of cost synergies from the acquisition of G&K. Our First Aid and Safety Services operating segment includes revenue from the sale and servicing of first aid products, safety products, and training. This segment's revenue for the third quarter was $170.5 million. The organic growth rate for the segment was 12.5%. The First Aid segment gross margin was 48.0% in the third quarter, compared to 48.2% in last year's third quarter. The difference in gross margin was due to revenue mix in the quarter, which consists of service, product sales, and training.
The strong organic revenue growth benefited from more safety and personal protective equipment product sales, which generally have lower margins than the other revenue categories. Our Fire Protection Services and Uniform Direct Sale businesses are reported in the all other category. Our Fire business continues to grow each year at a strong pace. The Uniform Direct Sale business growth rates are generally low single digits and are subject to volatility, such as when we install a multimillion-dollar account. Uniform Direct Sale, however, is a key business for us, and its customers are often significant opportunities to cross-sell and provide products and services from our other business units. All other revenue was $192.1 million, an increase of 9.9%. The organic growth rate was 7.1%. The Fire business organic growth rate was 4.1%.
Fire revenue was weighed down by the loss of a struggling national account in the retail sector that recently disclosed the closing of over 100 stores, by mild winter weather that resulted in less sprinkler repair service revenue from freezing and bursting water pipes, and by a decline in sales rep productivity through the Christmas and New Year's holidays. Uniform Direct Sale business organic growth rate was 11.1% and benefited from additional sales from the rollout last quarter of Carhartt branded garments to a Fortune 100 customer. All other gross margin was 41.3% for the third quarter of this fiscal year, compared to 42.3% last year. Selling and administrative expenses as a percentage of revenue were 28.2% in the third quarter of fiscal 2020 and 28.3% in the third quarter of fiscal 2019. G&A labor expense as a percent of revenue improved year-over-year.
Our effective tax rate on continuing operations for the third quarter of fiscal 2020 was 18.9%, compared to 20.1% last year. The tax rate can move from period to period based on discrete events, including the amount of stock compensation expense. Our cash and equivalents balance as of February 29th was $234.4 million. Of that amount, $144.7 million was in the United States and unrestricted.
Capital expenditures in the third quarter were $63.2 million. Our CapEx by operating segment was as follows: $50.2 million in Uniform Rental and Facility Services, $10.1 million in First Aid and Safety Services, and $2.9 million in all other. Year to date, free cash flow was $745.2 million, an increase of 61% compared to the prior year period. Free cash flow increased because of strong earnings growth and improvements in working capital, particularly accounts receivable, inventories, uniforms and other rental items and service, and accounts payable.
As of February 29th, our balance sheet remains strong. Our leverage was 1.7 times debt to EBITDA. We have an untapped credit facility of $1 billion, no debt maturities in the next 12 months, and no material debt maturities in the next two years. That concludes our prepared remarks. We are happy to answer your questions.
Thank you, sir. At this time, we'll open the floor for questions. If you would like to ask a question, you may do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. First, we have Manav Patnaik with Barclays Capital.
Good evening, gentlemen. Just maybe in light of all the stuff going on, perhaps you could help us with a little bit more detail in terms of where your exposures lie, whether that's restaurants, lodging, and so forth, just so we at least know magnitude of what percentage of revenues are really at risk versus those that could go like 50/50 or whatever it is. I was hoping you could help us with a little bit more color there.
Sure, Manav. As I mentioned a bit earlier, we're really at the peak of uncertainty. As of a week ago, we didn't really see much impact to our revenue, and so we're going about trying to get a better understanding of that as we go through this week and into the future.
Let me remind you, we have a very diverse customer base. About 30% of our revenue's from industrials, 70% from the service-providing businesses. That includes healthcare, retail, distribution centers, food service, hospitality, and all of these are being affected in different ways. If you think about healthcare, for example, they really need us now. They need our scrubs, they need our microfiber wipes, they need our cleaning chemicals, they need our Fire Protection. If you think about restaurants, some are closed, some are open to only carryout, and we're learning as we visit them this week what are their needs. They may still need some Chef Works, some hygiene products, First Aid and Safety, but it's going to take a little bit of time to understand what those needs are.
Office environments, they're looking to stay clean more than ever, we're seeing some nice movement there in terms of our First Aid and Safety, our personal protective equipment like gloves. You think about hotels, casinos, arenas, they aren't doing very much business right now. We're in the midst of better understanding the collective impact to the business, Manav, and gosh, we're so early in that process that it's really hard to break it down. In addition to the details that I just provided, and keeping in mind, if you think about three-digit NAICS codes, we don't have revenue of greater than 10% in any of those three-digit NAICS codes. Also keep in mind, as I talked about revenue per vertical, it's quite different from geography to geography today.
If you think about some of those different businesses that are on the coasts, they may be impacted more severely than those same kind of businesses in the same verticals in the middle of the country. It's going to take a little bit of time for us to really get clarity on the collective impact to the business, and we're just not there yet.
Thank you. Next, we have a question from Andrew Wittmann with R.W. Baird.
Great, thanks. The question that we've gotten a lot this week is how customer closures work and how they affect you, and what the contract says when such things happen. I know there's probably different ways to treat different categories of customers, small customers, large customers, maybe even by end market. For those customers that we know are shutting down, how does that get treated by Cintas, and what is the impact to your financials?
Yeah, that's a great question, Andy, and as I said, we're still working on gaining clarity there. It's going to be all over the board, right? This is not a normal environment. In a normal environment, we may have a business shut down for a week, and we still may be charging the rental of garments and other products. Holiday manufacturing shutdowns are a good example of that. Semester breaks at school is a good example of that. What we're talking about right now is quite different. We have to understand from our customers how long do they think they will be closed, and many of them right now don't know. How long do we think they're going to be closed, and what are the needs of the business today versus maybe where they were a couple of weeks ago.
It's going to be all over the board, Andy, from small businesses to large businesses and different kinds of verticals and different geographies. As I said, we're working through that to gain clarity.
Thank you. Our next question will come from Andrew Steinerman with JP Morgan Securities.
Hi, Mike. Let me give it a try. My sense, I've been doing this for over a decade, looking at Cintas and the group, and my sense is that the uniform rental business really is kind of cyclical on a delay. When you look at your fiscal 2008, it was actually up. It wasn't until 2009 and 2010 fiscals did you have kind of moderate declines, about 5% organic per year for those two years. My question really is, do you think that the impact that you've experienced now will be more immediate, or do you think it's going to be a delay like I described last recession?
Yeah, Andrew, this is not a normal recession or even like the Great Recession. I think there's going to be a more immediate impact, simply because we have so many businesses that have been ordered to close, right? We've got 40 states have closed their schools. I think over 20 states have closed their restaurants. That's unprecedented. It's not like our customers are going out of business over time or even had the chance to reduce their workforce. They're kind of closing, many of them on orders of municipalities. There's going to be certainly a more immediate impact. What is that impact? Look, one of the reasons that we did not provide guidance is it's really hard to tell.
We've never been through a pandemic. In this pandemic, we're seeing things that we really haven't seen in the 90 years of Cintas, of running the business. We need a little bit of time for clarity. As I said, we haven't seen much of an impact as of a week ago. There's going to be an impact coming. That's why we did not provide guidance, because it's just too hard to tell right now.
Thank you. Our next question will come from Seth Weber with RBC Capital Markets.
Hey, good evening, guys. I guess maybe just following up on that line of questioning. I think in 2010, your decremental margins were sort of mid 30%. I guess, Mike, just kind of trying to read between what you're saying here, it seems like the impact could be sort of more of a shock here near term. From a decremental margin framework, should we think about levels above kind of where you were in the last sort of time that organic growth was down? Is that kind of what you're messaging? Thanks. Can you just talk about actions? Yeah.
Sure. If you think about the fixed versus variable and how will we manage the business right through this disruption. Right now, there's a fair amount of uncertainty, as I've mentioned a number of times. We need a little bit more clarity. The clarity as it relates to this is really around what's the depth of this? What's the breadth of this? How long will this last? What's the severity and duration? If we start to believe that, for example, the severity is pretty high, but we don't expect the duration to last very long, then we may not be as aggressive because we don't want to harm the long-term opportunities and the performance of the business as we move into next fiscal year.
As we go into this, if we feel like the duration is going to be longer, then we may take different steps to pull down some of those variable expenses. We're going to need a little bit of time to understand what our best expectations are for severity and duration, and we'll manage accordingly to that. I can tell you, as we sit here today, we are generally, and we have been for a long time, in a mode of growing the business and adding routes and adding laundry capacity. As we sit here today, we have not or at least we've slowed CapEx, for example, to only those things that are essential. In other words, we're not looking to add routes right now. That will reduce CapEx. We're not looking to expand capacities in our wash alleys, open new processing facilities.
That's going to reduce CapEx. Along those lines, that means we likely won't be hiring people to staff those new routes, to staff the added capacity. There's certainly things that we can do today to say we expect to get into a period where the growth isn't going to be what it was in the first three quarters. We can pull back on that a little bit. That certainly is going to help the cash flow. As it relates to then being more aggressive, we're here for the long term. If we feel like this is a short duration disruption, we'll likely treat that a little bit differently than a longer-term duration.
Thank you, sir. Our next question will come from George Tong with Goldman Sachs.
Hi, thanks. Good afternoon. Oil prices have contracted sharply in recent weeks. What are your expectations for your industrial and manufacturing verticals, and what factors could potentially cause Cintas to perform differently during this energy downturn compared to the prior 2014-2016 downturn?
I think, George, if we were looking at this only in the lens of the oil and gas vertical, I'd say a couple things. One, it's a smaller piece of our business than it was at the beginning of that last downturn. That will not have as big of an impact on us as it did last time. The lower gas prices will certainly help us today. If we're just looking at the lens of that particular or maybe a few verticals, I think we fare really well during that. We did several years ago as well. This is broader. This is certainly broader than just that one lens. It's going to be really hard to tell exactly how do we think we performed in that one vertical compared to what's going on in the rest of the United States.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Gary Bisbee with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Hey, guys. Good afternoon. In your earlier question about cost actions, you referenced variable versus fixed, but actually didn't, unless I missed it, give us the mix of the two. Can you take a shot at that? Maybe just at a high level, if you do decide that this could be longer duration, what are the kind of actions you would take? Is it just headcount, or are there other actions you would take to reduce costs in the business? Thank you.
Well, Gary, if you think about our business, there are many variable costs in the business. The question is, are they variable to the point where we can turn them off immediately and do we want to turn them off immediately? That's the biggest question that we're dealing with. I think it'd be irresponsible of me to give you a % of just total variable costs because we have to manage the business, and we're managing it for the long term. I don't want to throw out some variable number where you think we will cut to the bone our business. Let me give you some examples, though. When you think about the material cost of the business, we've got a lot of cost of disposable products like paper, soaps. We have Direct Sale like our catalog business.
Those are highly variable, and if we're not selling them, we don't have those costs. We also have the gas, water, and energy. The gas for our trucks, the water and energy for running the facilities. There certainly is a variable component of that. There's also a bit of a fixed, and it just depends on how much of that capacity we may decide or not to pull back on. If you think about the laundry capacity, there are a lot of different pieces that go into that, including labor. When you think about our route capacity, we've got the cost of our drivers. There are a lot of variable costs. Our goal is to make sure that our business remains strong for the long term.
If we start to see a longer duration, then there are certainly some things that we will do, like pull back even a little harder on capital expenditures and other growth pieces of what we do. We may do some things through attrition. We'll have to make sure we understand the capacity utilization and knowing that we want to manage to that. If you go back to 2009 and 2010, we did close facilities. That was a little bit different in that it was a longer period of a recession. This is potentially deep, but we just don't know the duration, and we do not want to impact the business for the long term until we really have to.
Thank you, sir. Our next question comes from Hamzah Mazari with Jefferies.
Good evening. Thank you. Mike, if you could just provide just a little more detail on your contract structure, and what I mean by that is, if a customer goes bankrupt, clearly you see that right away if it's a closure. How quickly do your contracts adjust to permanent headcount changes? Just any sense as to how defensive your portfolio is. Specifically, what's the lead lag to headcount changes that may be permanent? I realize absences don't impact your business.
Yeah. Our contracts are generally five-year contracts, and they provide for a steady stream of revenue. Generally, there is some minimum level of revenue that we require. Hamzah, we're in a little bit of a different time today. So there's going to be a customer by customer conversation about what makes sense, and that's going to take a little bit of time to get through. Again, this is not a normal kind of ramping down, a trending down of the business. This is kind of an abrupt closure of a lot of different customers. Let's remember something else about our business. As I mentioned a little bit earlier, there are many businesses that really need our products and services, and I don't want that to be lost.
There have been a couple municipalities and areas within the country, particularly on the coasts, we have been identified as an essential provider. Even though other businesses may be shutting down, we are operating because our customers need us. Over the course of the next few weeks, we're going to understand the collective impact. Let's keep in mind that while some of our customers are going to be impacted negatively, there are others that really need us. We're seeing an increase in what they need, we're going to do everything we can to take care of them. It's a mix, it's going to take a little bit of time to understand that and give some clarity.
Thank you, sir. Our next question comes from Tim Mulrooney with William Blair.
Yeah, good afternoon. I understand this slowdown is very different, Mike, but if you go back to the last recession, and I can't remember if you broke this out or not, how did customer retention look through that period? I'm trying to figure out how much of that mid-single-digit organic decline in 2009 and 2010 was due to a deterioration in retention rates versus new customer sales or pricing, for example.
Yeah. The retention was not negatively impacted that much. It was more about customers reducing their headcount. That contributed to a little bit of a higher lost business number. Generally speaking, our retention was really good then. I think our retention, outside of possible businesses that actually have to go out of business, I think our retention is going to be very good here. There's going to be some period of disruption that we have to work ourselves through. I think we have to be careful about comparing this to a prior recession. This is a pandemic that's quite different. The disruption is going to be a little bit more abrupt and immediate. The question is how long will it last?
Boy, if we can get through this as a country in the next 60, 90 days, we look forward to getting back to normal operations, but we got to see what that looks like first.
Thank you, sir. Next, we have a question from Shlomo Rosenbaum with Stifel Nicolaus Investments.
Hi. Thank you for taking this. Can you talk about how many of your contracts, let's say, or percentage-wise, like in First Aid and Safety, are those primarily consumption-based contracts, or are they contracts that are on kind of a recurring revenue, you charge us about per month? Can you go into that a little bit more? First Aid and Safety has been a very good growth portion of the business. I was just wondering how those contracts work.
Yeah. There are some recurring revenue streams. I would tell you the bulk of that is consumption-based, and it's a business that's performing very well right now, as you can imagine, with the need for sanitizing personal protective equipment. That's a business that is performing very well. It has for the whole year, and we're getting a lot of customer requests for more ways to help. When you think about the needs of many businesses today, the cleanliness and the safety aspects have really risen, and we've got a lot of products and services that can help in those areas. Those have been asked for quite a bit over the course of the last couple of weeks, and I expect that those kind of things will perform well.
Thank you, sir. Our next question comes from Kevin McVeigh with Credit Suisse. Kevin, make sure you're unmuted.
Yep. Great. Thank you so much. Hey, can you give us a sense of not only the client mix, but what was the revenue trends the last week or so, just to get a sense of how much the business came off? Then just, is there any way to think about it geographically? Because it sounds like California, New York, Washington, maybe that's been a little bit weaker than the interior. Just any thoughts on kind of trends the last week or so, and then is there any way to kind of just frame it out within a little more context geographically?
Unfortunately, Kevin, through last week, we didn't see much disruption to the revenue. In our Uniform Direct Sale business, we did start to see the incoming orders start to come down. That was probably the early signs. Through last week, not a lot of impact. There has been certainly some impact on the coasts. For example, all of our customers in New Rochelle. They're hard to get to, as you can imagine, with the National Guard patrolling the streets there. That's been difficult. There are others that have been difficult on the West Coast as well. Collectively, it wasn't that big of an impact. I expect that we will start to see some impact as we go through the rest of this week and certainly then in next week.
That's when we're going to start to be able to get a little clarity on what's the initial response of our customers and what might their needs be as we move to. Like I said, there are going to be some customers where their needs have really increased. There are going to be others who have closed, and we're going to be talking about a different conversation there. We need to get through all those conversations, though.
Thank you, sir. Our next question comes from Scott Schneeberger with Oppenheimer & Co.
Thanks. Good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess, you've alluded to CapEx a few times. Just looking at it year-to-date, you're trending, I think your guide at the midpoint this year was the same as what you did last year, but you're trending about $17 million below, per my numbers. I'm just curious if we could delve into CapEx a little bit more, and I think you had said you'd already taken some actions with regard to what you've been seeing over the last weeks or months. Just kind of delve in a little bit more on what you would be thinking about on a go-forward basis as well. Thanks.
Sure. When I mentioned that we've made some decisions to reduce CapEx, that's a very recent type of conversation. When we think about CapEx, we love to grow the business, and we have been expanding the routes as necessary and expanding capacity. We've also, keep in mind, we've gotten some capacity through the G&K deal, and we've gotten some efficiency through projects within the facilities. Our routes, the revenue per route has been growing, and so we've become a little bit more efficient. So we've been pretty efficient and I'd say prudent in CapEx throughout the year. Having said that, going forward, we've been at a, let's call it a $60 million-$65 million quarterly clip. Certainly, that's going to come down probably by half.
Now, that's not a scientific measurement, but it's going to come down quite a bit as we think about the fourth quarter. Beyond the fourth quarter, it's going to get back to our expectation for the severity and duration of this.
Thank you. Our last question in the queue comes from Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley.
Thank you. Saved the best for last.
That's right.
I'm gonna take the road less traveled and ask a question about the quarter. Could you talk about the organic growth deceleration within the uniform rental space? It sounds like it wasn't related to coronavirus since you hadn't really seen an impact from that yet. I guess just what were the main drivers of the deceleration within rental? Thank you.
Yeah. We've talked a little bit over the last 2 quarters about the choppiness that we had seen in industrials, and we certainly saw that pick up a little bit in our 3rd quarter. Whether that has to do with China in the early parts of the quarter, not sure, or the uncertainty around this, that's really hard to put our finger on. We certainly did see some choppiness in that side of the business, and that contributed to a little bit of a deceleration there. Pricing was a bit more aggressive in the quarter. We talked a little bit about that in our 2nd quarter, and that remained here in the 3rd quarter. The holidays, I mentioned this in the 2nd quarter call back in December, the holidays are tough when you've got 2 holidays on a Wednesday.
Generally speaking, our salespeople have a really hard time of setting appointments. If you think about a two-week period of time where you've got many customers, because it's on a Wednesday, taking the whole week off or in and out, it's really hard to set appointments. We did see some impact to our sales rep productivity. Paul mentioned in Fire, and also in Rental. That was a bit of a contributor as well. Collectively, those things were what we saw in the third quarter. Let's set aside the pandemic. The business has been operating at a very healthy pace, and we really like the execution of it. While the disruption is coming, we think we're poised pretty well to manage through that and get back on to our business once we get through this.
All right. Thank you, sir. That concludes the question and answer session for today's call. I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Hansen for closing remarks.
Thank you. Before ending the call, we'd like to leave you with a couple final comments. First, I want to say again that our thoughts remain with those impacted by the COVID-19 coronavirus as our country works to get through this difficult situation as quickly as possible. Secondly, our business has performed well, very well, over the course of the last 10 years, with strong revenue, income, and EPS growth. In fact, we've grown our sales and profits in 48 out of the last 50 years. Although we're entering a period of disruption, we and all Cintas partners remain excited about the future opportunities of our business and look forward to getting back to business as usual.
In the meantime, we are well positioned to enter this period of disruption with a strong cash flow, a very solid balance sheet, and an untapped $1 billion dollar credit facility. We feel good about our ability to manage through this and come out the other side with a very strong business. Thank you again for joining us tonight. We'll issue our fourth quarter financial results in July, and we look forward to speaking with you again at that time.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's teleconference, and you may now disconnect. Please enjoy the rest of your day.