Cintas (NASDAQ:CTAS) held its fourth-quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday. Below is the complete transcript from the call.
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Summary
Cintas Corporation reported strong financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of fiscal 2026, with total revenue increasing by 8.9% to $2.91 billion for the quarter and $11.26 billion for the year.
The company achieved a gross margin of 51% in Q4, matching an all-time high, and an operating income increase of 12.7% over the prior year.
Cintas provided a positive outlook for fiscal 2027, expecting revenue between $12.1 billion and $12.25 billion, and adjusted diluted EPS growth of 8.5% to 11.3%.
The company emphasized strategic investments in its business, including technology and acquisitions, and returned significant capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.
Cintas highlighted growth across its business segments, particularly in first aid and safety services, and continued strong customer retention and pricing levels.
Management expressed confidence in long-term growth opportunities, citing a large addressable market and successful strategic initiatives such as the potential acquisition of UniFirst.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Good day everyone and welcome to the Cintas Corporation announces Fiscal 2026 4th 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.
Jared Mattingly, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations
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 Guerula, 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.
Todd Schneider, President and Chief Executive Officer
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 and 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 Cintas. For the full year 2026, 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 and 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 have 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. Fiscal 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 unifirst 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. 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 between $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 in 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 US 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 GK 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.
Jim Rozakis, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
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 managed rental program after initially handling it on their own. Each of these new customers relies on Cintas for their image, safety, cleanliness, and compliance needs. We also continue to sell additional products and services to our existing customer base. Retention rates remain 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 MIPS 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 120 basis points from last year. Strong top-line growth continued 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 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, managing 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 finished 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 Cintas. 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 the 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 Cintas Comfort Flex Pro garments, they were pleased with the quality, appearance, and functionality. The owners valued 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 help our value proposition resonate with businesses of all types and sizes.
I'll now turn it over to Scott for more detail on our financials, capital allocation, and assumptions for our guidance for fiscal 2027.
Scott Garula, Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
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. 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.
Todd Schneider, President and Chief Executive Officer
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.
Jared Mattingly, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations
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.
OPERATOR
If you would like to ask a question, please press Star one 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 one on your phone now. And our first question comes from Manav Patnaik from Barclays Capital. Please go ahead, Manav.
Manav Patnaik, Analyst at Barclays Capital
Thank you. Good morning, guys. I guess, Todd, first question, obviously 55 out of 57 years. Always an impressive stat to talk about, but when you look forward, just given the uncertainty of the macro environment, can you just talk about some of the things you're looking out for that perhaps would make you pivot one way or the other from the way you're already operating today?
Todd Schneider, President and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning, Manav. It seems like we've been operating in an uncertain macro environment for so many years now. 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 are 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, 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.
Manav Patnaik, Analyst at Barclays Capital
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?
Scott Garula, Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
Manav, good morning, this is Scott. 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, diluted, adjusted, diluted EPS guide, it implies EPS growth of 10%. And to your question about incrementals, you know, this has been a question that we've received really throughout the year. You know, we finished the year really strong with our incremental margins of effectively 38%.
And for the year, when you take 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, provides a tailwind when it comes to incremental margins.
Our supply chain continues to be a strategic difference maker for us and some of the operational initiatives that you've heard us talk about continue to have an impact on margin expansion and incremental margins.
Todd Schneider, President and Chief Executive Officer
Manav, 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. Our objectives are to grow our top line in 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.
Manav Patnaik, Analyst at Barclays Capital
Got it. Thank you very much.
OPERATOR
And our next question comes from Tim Mulrooney from William Blair.
Tim Mulrooney, Analyst at William Blair
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% 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 vs 26?
And can you also talk about the headwinds and tailwinds, for example, energy cost, do you think is that. What's your assumption for, you know, basis points impact there? I think there's an ERP implementation and anything else I might be missing that you would consider material to that. Thank you.
Scott Garula, Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
Tim. Good question and good morning. I guess the answer to the first part of your question, when we're looking at the implied incrementals in the guide being in that 30 to 32% range, you need to take a look at the midpoint and the high point of our revenue guide. And that's how you arrive at that 30 to 32% incremental margin. In terms of your question about the implied margin expansion, when you look at the guide, it implies margin expansion really throughout the range.
On the low end it's 10 basis point increase, and on the high point of the range it's 60 basis points. So again, just to reiterate, you know, we really feel good about the guide. You know, we feel that the guide aligns with the stated 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 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, 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 20bps. You know, if it's 30, it'll be 30bps. 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.
Tim Mulrooney, Analyst at William Blair
Okay, thank you, Scott. So 10 to 60bps, that does help clarify things. Energy headwind, maybe in that 20bp range for next year. All very clear, no follow up needed. Thank you.
OPERATOR
And our next question comes from George Tong from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead, George.
George Tong, Analyst at Goldman Sachs
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?
Jim Rozakis, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
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 and 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 outsourcing 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 or at all time highs. So we really like the 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 4 of our growth levers are performing well and we'd expect that moving forward.
George Tong, Analyst at Goldman Sachs
Very helpful, thank you.
OPERATOR
And our next question comes from Andrew Steinerman from JPMorgan Securities. Please go ahead. Andrew.
Alex Hesson for Andrew Steinerman, Analyst at JPMorgan Securities
Yes, hi, can you hear me? This is Alex Hesson for Andrew Steinerman. Just wanted to maybe touch briefly on the gross margin expansion. Obviously there's a lot of in the news about supply chain pressures and fuel costs and you guys just had a pretty significant step up basically across the business on the gross margin front. Could you maybe outline you guys speak to supply chain excellence a lot but what that sort of looks like in practice for you guys what we should expect on that line for next year.
And then just. I know people keep hammering on the incremental margin question, but when you guys are running that comparison for us, are you comparing adjusted to adjusted GAAP to GAAP? Are there any sort of add backs we need to be thinking of when we're building our models out? So thank you very much.
Todd Schneider, President and Chief Executive Officer
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 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 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 out inefficiency in our business and improve that gross margin. Jim?
Jim Rozakis, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
Yes, Alex. I'll start on what are our key inputs towards driving gross margin expansion. Maybe worth noting that 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, overall size of individual customers 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 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 Smart Truck across our service platform. And when you take the revenue and then you put service, you put Smart Truck 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 those inefficiencies. So we expect to continue that moving forward.
OPERATOR
Thank you. And our next question comes from Joshua Chen from UBS. Please go ahead, Joshua.
Joshua Chen, Analyst at UBS
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 success in this penetration? Thank you.
Jim Rozakis, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
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 long-standing 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 it 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.
Joshua Chen, Analyst at UBS
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. Thank you, Josh.
Todd Schneider, President and Chief Executive Officer
You're right. 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. We like having competitive advantage, 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 want them 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.
Joshua Chen, Analyst at UBS
That's great. Thank you, Todd, and congrats on a good quarter.
Todd Schneider, President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Josh.
OPERATOR
Our next question comes from Jasper Bibb from Truist Securities. Please go ahead, Jasper.
Jasper Bibb, Analyst at Truist Securities
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 2017 guidance too, that would be great.
Todd Schneider, President and Chief Executive Officer
Jasper, thanks for the question. This is Todd. 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 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. That's where our focus is. In addition to taking great care of the customer, it all goes together and obviously driving new business. So it all goes into the formula and it's working for us quite well. Makes sense.
Jasper Bibb, Analyst at Truist Securities
We haven't really touched on fire yet. That's been a really nice growth story for you guys. I was hoping you could maybe just talk about broad expectations for that business next year. And obviously you're doing some pretty significant investments in the tech platform too. Just hoping maybe you could refresh us on how you're thinking about the long-term margin opportunity for that business.
Todd Schneider, President and Chief Executive Officer
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. 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 Cintas. And it takes some time for us to go in and implement our playbook and get the overall productivity up to Cintas performance standards. That takes a little bit of time, but as we demonstrated this past year, certainly something that we're comfortable being able to go and do.
We will have an NSAP implementation in fire that was scheduled for this upcoming fiscal year that will have about 100 basis point annual headwind for the fire 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.
Jasper Bibb, Analyst at Truist Securities
Got it. Thank you for taking the questions guys.
OPERATOR
And our next question comes from Jason Haas from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead, Jason.
Jason Haas, Analyst at Wells Fargo
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 is maybe some more manufacturing processes get automated. Thanks.
Todd Schneider, President and Chief Executive Officer
Jason. Thanks for the question. This is Todd. First of our customers have been automating for years, so that is certainly 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. To think about it from that standpoint, automation plays probably a larger role in manufacturing goods producing than it does in services providing.
And our business 25 years ago was 70% of our customers were goods producing and 30% were service providing. And today it's exact opposite. It's 30% goods producing and 70% services providing. So certainly automation plays roles in our business and our customers' business in different ways depending upon the business. But it 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's 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.
Jason Haas, Analyst at Wells Fargo
That's great, thank you. Certainly makes sense. And then as a follow-up, I just wanted to circle back on pricing and just to understand, given that there's maybe some more inflationary pressures. You talked about fuel cost. Are you taking a little bit more price to offset some of that? And what's the customer reception been to those price increases?
Jim Rozakis, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
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 we believe it's strategic and the environment calls for some price increases, as we saw back in 2022-2023, 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.
Seth Weber, Analyst at BNP Paribas
Got it. Certainly makes sense. Thank you very much.
OPERATOR
And our next question comes from Seth Weber from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead, Seth.
Seth Weber, Analyst at BNP Paribas
Hi guys. Good morning. 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 deals, bidding for other assets? Just sort of how you're positioning that business relative to some of the other growing competitors that are out there. Thank you.
Jim Rozakis, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
Hey, good morning, Seth. We really like the fire business. It's the only business that we're in where you legally have to have it for our customers. So as a result, the TAM is somewhere beyond massive. So the opportunity out there is incredible. It's a service business 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're 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, 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, see an incredible runway, and we're investing appropriately to attack that opportunity.
Seth Weber, Analyst at BNP Paribas
Appreciate that. And then just maybe on CapEx, it was, I think, 3.5% this year, had been maybe closer to 4 in the last couple 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 Unifirst assets? Or, or do you think CapEx kind of stays in this 3.5% to 4% range for this year?
Scott Garula, Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
Yes, Seth, this is Scott. Appreciate the question. CapEx for the year came in at that 3.5% of revenue, right within the range that we 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 a 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 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.
Jim Rozakis, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
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, so they're not investing appropriately. We're running our business in the normal course. When we close, then 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.
Seth Weber, Analyst at BNP Paribas
Appreciate it, guys. Thank you.
OPERATOR
And our next question comes from Tony Kaplan from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Tony Kaplan, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
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.
Jim Rozakis, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
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. There are certain areas like supply chain, 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 you may not, may not be a robot or might be another nature of automation, such as the garment sharing that Jim spoke of and such as smart truck.
So all that plays into the role of automation. It's throughout our business and has been and will continue to be.
Tony Kaplan, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
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? Thanks.
Jim Rozakis, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
Hey Tony, this is Jim. I'll take that question. 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 performed 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 picked a lot of the right verticals and they are performing quite well for us.
Tony Kaplan, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
Thank you.
OPERATOR
And our next question comes from Connor Cerniglia from Alliance Bernstein. Please go ahead. Connor, thank you for the question.
Connor Cerniglia, Analyst at Alliance Bernstein
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 a healthy clip. 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?
Jim Rozakis, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
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 well, in picking that vertical 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 are, 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.
Connor Cerniglia, Analyst at Alliance Bernstein
Great. And then just a follow up, EBIT 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 Unifirst 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 will be helpful.
Jim Rozakis, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
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 will. We're not slowing up. We're running separate business from Unifirst. We're investing as appropriate, running it just as a, as we always would.
Scott Garula, Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
And maybe I'll just add one little bit of color on that. Just regarding the incrementals in the fourth quarter, you know, coming at 37.7, you know, 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 unserved 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 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 say all 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 mid to high single digit growth rates, expand margin and deliver 10% EPS growth.
Connor Cerniglia, Analyst at Alliance Bernstein
Great, thanks so much. I'll pass it on.
OPERATOR
And our next question comes from Curtis Nagle from Bank of America. Please go ahead Curtis.
Curtis Nagle, Analyst at Bank of America
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?
Scott Garula, Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
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. Then 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 Nagle, Analyst at Bank of America
Curtis, regarding supply chain and business efficiency, extracting out those inefficiencies, they all contribute, they're all important to us. We have a culture here of positive discontent. 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 customers have 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 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.
OPERATOR
And our last question comes from Ashish Sabhadra from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead, Ashish.
Will Chi for Ashish Sabhadra, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets
Hey, good morning guys. This is Will Chi on for Ashish Sabhadra. Appreciate you guys squeezing us in maybe just a bit on the macro side. Wonder if you could get a little bit more color, I guess on visibility for hiring trends across the verticals. Healthcare has been strong, but just any other kind of vertical commentary you might be able to provide.
Todd Schneider, President and Chief Executive Officer
I'm happy to start. Jim, you can speak to anything we're seeing in the customer base. But Will, 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 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?
Jim Rozakis, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
Yeah, 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 if you go into digging beneath the headlines on the jobs reports, it certainly supports a narrative that Todd just gave. You see nice growth in healthcare, education, hospitality, you see some in state and local government. Specialty 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 an end market for us for our uniform rental. 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.
Will Chi for Ashish Sabhadra, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets
Thank you guys. Congrats on Porter.
Jim Rozakis, Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
Thank you.
OPERATOR
And the question and answer period has concluded. I will turn the call back over to Jared to close out the call.
Jared Mattingly, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations
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.
OPERATOR
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.
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