Cintas Corporation Announces Fiscal 2012 Third Quarter Results

Cintas Corporation, headquartered in Cincinnati, has reported results for its third quarter ended February 29, 2012. Revenue for the third quarter was $1.01 billion, representing a 7.9 percent increase compared to last year's third quarter. Organic growth, which adjusts for the impact of acquisitions and the impact of one additional workday compared to last year's third quarter, was 5.9 percent. Recycled paper prices, which declined rapidly during the second fiscal quarter, remained at a relatively low level and negatively impacted revenue growth in the document management segment. This decline in recycled paper prices negatively impacted consolidated revenue growth by $5.6 million, or 0.6 percent, compared to last year's third quarter.

The company's third quarter operating income of $137.5 million was a 26.3 percent improvement as compared to last year's third quarter. Net income increased 28.7 percent to $76.0 million as compared to $59.1 million in last year's third quarter. Earnings per diluted share for the third quarter were $0.58, a 41.5 percent increase over the $0.41 earnings per diluted share reported in last year's third quarter. This was the fifth consecutive quarter that operating income and earnings per diluted share grew in excess of 25 percent.

"Our results continue to reflect our focus on selling value and growing our business profitably," said Scott D. Farmer, chief executive officer of Cintas Corporation. "This high quality growth led us to our third quarter operating margin of 13.6 percent, which is a nice improvement over both last year's third quarter operating margin of 11.6 percent and our second quarter operating margin of 13.0 percent. Our rental uniforms and ancillary products operating segment, which accounts for 71 percent of our consolidated revenue, had an operating margin of 15.6 percent, an improvement over the 12.9 percent operating margin from last year's third quarter."

"We continue to be pleased with the performance of all of our businesses and the execution of our game plan by our very talented team of employees, who we call partners," Farmer added.

The effective tax rates for the third quarter of fiscal 2012 and fiscal 2011 were 37.0 percent and 38.9 percent, respectively. The company expects the effective tax rate for the entire 2012 fiscal year to be approximately 37.0 percent, as compared to 37.1 percent for the entire 2011 fiscal year.

"As we enter our fourth quarter, we remain confident in our ability to execute our game plan of selling profitable business, managing our cost structure and improving efficiencies through process improvement. As a result, we are updating our fiscal 2012 guidance with revenue in the range of $4.09 billion to $4.12 billion and earnings per diluted share in the range of $2.24 to $2.27. This guidance assumes no significant deterioration in the current U.S. economy," Farmer said.

For more information, visit www.cintas.com.