Hello, Welcome to EVI Industries earnings call for the third quarter of fiscal 2026. I am Henry M. Nahmad, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of EVI Industries. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this presentation contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed. For additional information, please refer to our earnings press release issued today and to our filings with the SEC, including the Risk Factors section of our most recent annual report on Form 10-K. This discussion will also include a reference to adjusted EBITDA, which is a non-GAAP financial measure. A full definition and reconciliation to net income can be found in our earnings release. Thank you for taking the time to join us.
First, I wanna thank all our dedicated associates across North America for another strong quarter. Your commitment to our customers and focus on execution continues to drive EVI's progress and performance every day. During the three and nine month periods ended March 31, we achieved another set of record financial results, including record revenue, record gross profit, and record gross margin. These results reflect not only the continued expansion of our enterprise, but also the enduring demand for the products and services we provide and the value our team delivers to our customers across North America every day. More importantly, we believe the quarter reflects the continued evolution of EVI into a larger, more capable, more coordinated, and increasingly scalable enterprise.
Over the past decade, we have transformed EVI from a single location business in Florida with just 32 employees into one of the leading commercial laundry distribution and service enterprises in North America. Today, our enterprise includes 32 businesses, approximately 900 associates, more than 200 sales professionals, and over 425 service personnel serving customers across the United States and Canada. Importantly, we believe we have accomplished this growth thoughtfully and strategically. Since the beginning, the execution of our long-term growth strategy in 2016, we have generated compounded annual growth rates of approximately 29% in revenue, 15% in net income, and 26% in adjusted EBITDA.
At the same time, we have significantly improved the quality of our revenue base and the economics of the enterprise, expanding gross margin from approximately 23% in fiscal 2019 to 32.5% and 31.5% for the three and nine month periods ended March 31, respectively. As our enterprise has expanded, we believe EVI is increasingly entering a new phase of its evolution. Over the past decade, our focus has been on building scale through disciplined acquisitions, investing in talent, expanding our service infrastructure, and deploying foundational technology systems across the enterprise. While we remain highly focused on continuing to expand the enterprise through acquisitions and organic growth opportunities, much of the operational foundation necessary to support a significantly larger organization is now in place.
Accordingly, our focus is increasingly centered on operational optimization and enterprise-wide coordination initiatives intended to improve scalability, efficiency, customer responsiveness, and long-term operating performance. In support of these efforts, we have substantially completed the deployment of our ERP system, field service platform, and business intelligence capabilities. We believe these investments are now providing us with significantly greater operational visibility and data-driven insight across the organization and creating opportunities to improve coordination, process execution, inventory management, labor utilization, and overall operational efficiency across the enterprise. We believe this represents an important transition for EVI. Building upon this foundation, we are increasingly leveraging our technology investments and operating infrastructure to create a more coordinated enterprise, both upstream with our manufacturing and supply chain partners and downstream with our customers.
Over time, we believe these efforts will improve operating leverage, strengthen working capital efficiency, enhance customer experience, and create additional long-term growth opportunities across the enterprise. Turning to the quarter itself, we delivered record revenue for both the three months and nine month periods ended March 31. At the same time, the pace of revenue fulfillment during the quarter was affected by severe weather conditions, customer facility readiness delays, and installation timing issues. Importantly, we do not believe these factors reflect deterioration in customer demand. In many cases, projects were delayed rather than lost, and a significant portion of the affected orders remain in backlog and is expected to be fulfilled in future periods. Despite these temporary disruptions, we continued making encouraging progress operationally across the enterprise.
Selling, general, and administrative expenses declined sequentially during the quarter, driven primarily by reductions in general and administrative expenses, despite the inclusion of expenses associated with the Belenky acquisition. We believe these improvements reflect increasing operating discipline, process improvements, facility consolidation efforts, and better enterprise coordination. We're also seeing encouraging operational trends from our modernization initiatives. During the quarter-service appointments supported by our field service platform increased approximately 9% sequentially to more than 27,500 appointments across more than 10,600 customers, while technician productivity improved approximately 3%. We believe these metrics reflect improving operational execution and strengthening customer engagement across the enterprise. In addition, we believe our service organization, installed equipment knowledge, local market presence, and recurring customer touch points create meaningful opportunities to strengthen customer relationships and expand repeat purchasing activity over time.
Another exciting area for us is the continued development of adjacent growth opportunities within our installed customer base. One example is Premier Chemical Solutions, which was developed organically within one of our business units. While still relatively small today, we believe it demonstrates the broader opportunity embedded within the EVI enterprise. The business continues to grow rapidly, adding new customers while maintaining extremely low attrition rates. More importantly, it highlights how EVI can leverage its customer relationships, operating infrastructure, service organization, and installed equipment knowledge to create additional high-margin, repeat purchasing opportunities with relatively low capital investment and customer acquisition costs. We believe there are many similar opportunities across our enterprise over time. Turning to working capital, inventory increased during the quarter primarily due to customer project timing.
Larger industrial installations expected to be delivered in the fourth fiscal quarter and proactive purchasing actions associated with anticipated manufacturer price increases and tariffs. Importantly, approximately 65% of our equipment inventory across our four operating regions is currently allocated to confirmed customer sales order contracts. We believe this demonstrates that a substantial portion of our inventory is already tied to identified customer demand and future revenue fulfillment. As part of our broader operational optimization initiatives, we are increasingly focused on improving demand planning, inventory visibility, and coordination with OEM and supply chain partners. Over time, we believe these initiatives will improve procurement and fulfillment efficiency, strengthen working capital management, and support more consistent operating cash flow generation. Our acquisition strategy remains highly active. During the quarter, we completed the acquisition of Belenky, which became the 32nd business to join the EVI enterprise.
We continue to evaluate attractive acquisition and investment opportunities both within and around the commercial laundry industry. We believe EVI's reputation, long-term orientation, operational experience, entrepreneurial culture, and credibility as a disciplined acquirer position us very well for future opportunities. In closing, we remain very optimistic about the future of EVI. Over the past decade, we have built a significantly larger, stronger, and more capable enterprise supported by a growing service organization, expanding customer relationships, and substantial investments in technology and operational infrastructure. We believe these investments are positioning EVI for continued operational improvement, increasing scalability, improving operating leverage, and long-term value creation in the years ahead. Thank you again for your continued support and interest in EVI Industries. Until next time, be well.