USA: UniFirst Announces Financial Results

UniFirst Corporation today announced revenues and earnings for its fiscal 2000 fourth quarter and full year, which ended August 26, 2000. Revenues for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2000 were $132.2m, a 5.7 per cent increase from $125m in the same period a year ago. Fourth quarter net income was $5m, or $0.25 per share, as compared with last year's $0.1m, or $0.01 per share. Net income in last year's fourth quarter was adversely affected by a special tax reserve of $5.5m. Net income would have been $5.6m, or $0.28 per share in last year's fourth quarter without this additional tax provision. For fiscal 2000, revenues were $528.7m, an 8.5 per cent increase from $487.1m in fiscal 1999. Net income was $19.9m, or $1.01 per share, a 17.6 per cent decrease from last year's $24.1m, or $1.18 per share. "Fiscal 2000 was our 32nd consecutive year of record revenues," said Ronald D. Croatti, UniFirst's president and chief executive officer. "Earnings were negatively impacted by a comparative year-to-year increase in merchandise expense, due to the one time benefit we realised last year resulting from a change we made effective July, 1998 in estimated lives for rental merchandise in service, from primarily 12 months to primarily 15 months." The board of directors declared regular quarterly cash dividends of $0.0375 per share (3.75 cents) on the company's Common Stock and $0.03 per share (3.0 cents) on the company's Class B Common Stock. Both dividends are payable on January 3, 2001, to shareholders of record on December 11, 2000. The board also recognized the significant contributions of Reynold L. Hoover, who is retiring after 17 years of service.