Earnings Labs

Cintas Corporation (CTAS)

Q3 2008 Earnings Call· Wed, Mar 19, 2008

$173.27

-0.50%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day everyone and welcome to the Cintas quarterly earnings results conference call. At this time I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Bill Gale, Senior Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer, please go ahead sir.

William Gale

Management

Good evening and welcome to our third quarter fiscal 2008 conference call. We appreciate you joining us this evening. For the quarter ending February 29, 2008 revenue grew at a rate of 8% to $976 million. Earnings per share were $0.53 versus $0.48 a year ago, a 10% increase. Our financial condition continues to remain strong. During the quarter the company sold $300 million of 10-year notes using the proceeds to reduce its commercial paper outstanding and thus freeing up additional capacity in our CPP program if opportunities arise. At February 29, our debt to capitalization ratio was 30.8%. Also last week the company paid its annual dividend which was $0.46 per share, an 18% increase over the dividend paid last year. Given our performance through February, as well as the economic slowdown being felt by our customers and prospects, we are adjusting our revenue guidance for the year. For the entire year we expect revenues to be in the range of $3,930 million to $3,965 million. While the revenues are still within our original guidance range, it is in the lower quartile. However we are also anticipating continuing high energy costs. These factors are causing us to reduce earnings per share guidance to be between $2.12 and $2.16, down from the previous total year guidance issued last July of $2.15 to $2.25. The company has implemented aggressive cost control measures in order to offset these lower revenues and increased costs. With me today is Mike Thompson, Cintas’ Vice President and Treasurer. After some comments from Mike we will open the call to questions. 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. I’d like now to turn the call over to Mike Thompson.

Michael Thompson

Management

Thanks Bill and good afternoon. Total revenues were $976 million for the quarter, a 7.8% increase over the $905.4 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2007. Our rental organic growth improved to 3.8% for the third quarter, a 55 basis point improvement over the second quarter when adjusted for the additional work day. Total company third quarter internal growth however decreased slightly to 4.5% from 4.8% in the second quarter. Year to date, total company internal growth was also 4.5%. Our new business efforts continue to meet our expectations but deteriorating economic conditions caused additional weakness in our existing customer base. As mentioned on our second quarter call, we began to see weakness in our customer base in November. This weakness continued through our third quarter. As a reminder our third quarter had 65 work days which was one more work day than the third quarter of fiscal 2007. Our second quarter of fiscal 2008 also had 65 work days. The number of work days does impact quarter to quarter comparisons. Our fourth quarter of fiscal 2008 will also have 65 work days. This is one less work day than our fiscal 2007 fourth quarter. For forecasting purposes, please note that the number of work days for next, fiscal 2009, will be 65 work days for each quarter. This will equate to one less work day in fiscal 2009 as fiscal 2008 will have 261 work days and fiscal 2009 will have 260 work days. Rental uniforms and ancillary products is our largest operating segment accounting for 72% of total company revenues during the third quarter. This segment reflects the rental and servicing of uniforms and other garments, mats, mops, shop towels and other related items. We also provide restroom and hygiene products and services within this segment. We…

Operator

Operator

Your first question comes from Kartik Mehta - FTN Midwest Research

Kartik Mehta - FTN Midwest Research

Analyst

I wanted to get your thoughts on the performance of the company, I guess in the last recession versus this recession, how you think it might be similar or different since the company is a little bit different today than it was probably in the previous recession.

William Gale

Management

I guess what the differences today is the document management business and the first aid and safety business appear to be less sensitive to the recession. We also though are probably because of our size in uniform rental and in direct sale rental, we’re subject to that having a big impact on us and therefore I think it is going to keep our growth rates down probably for some time in the mid to upper single-digit levels because I just feel like that the drag on the economy that is impacting the rental business is going to continue for some period of time. I think the thing that we as a company are recognizing the need to do is that this slowdown does not appear to be something that’s going to go away quickly. We feel because of that coupled with the high energy costs that are going to continue and probably get worse, we have got to do some things to really hone in some of our other costs and so we’re becoming very aggressive in looking at opportunities to reduce costs by consolidating some of our backroom operations perhaps, by looking at our suppliers and trying to make sure that we can withstand this and continue to post nice profit increases even though our revenues aren’t going to be growing at the rates that would like to see.

Kartik Mehta - FTN Midwest Research

Analyst

Well then Bill I guess then the second part of that question would be in this environment considering that you’re going to have some cost cuts, you obviously have a fairly strong balance sheet, what kind of earnings growth do you think you could sustain in this type of environment?

William Gale

Management

That’s a very difficult question to think Kartik because I don’t know what’s going to happen but our expectation is that we should be able to get back up into double-digits in earnings growth even if our revenue growth are in single-digits.

Kartik Mehta - FTN Midwest Research

Analyst

So I guess maybe a better way to phrase it is if the environment stays the way it is, and kind of revenue growth stays kind of what you just said, mid single-digits, do you think that you could leverage that to double-digit earnings growth?

William Gale

Management

Over time, yes, I think we can.

Kartik Mehta - FTN Midwest Research

Analyst

Alright, and one last question, would there be a change at all, I know you talked about reduction in costs, any change at all in the ability to grow your sales force, will you contract that or will you kind of continue that pace as it is even if we go into a little bit of an economic slowdown or remain in this slowdown?

William Gale

Management

Well no, I think we’ll have to watch that sales force. Right now I would tell you that the sales…the new business efforts have met our expectations in all the business except for the direct sale of uniforms. Therefore we feel like we’re getting the value out of that sales force. But if we see things get much more difficult, we certainly can scale back on some of those sales efforts and probably need to do so if things got very difficult.

Kartik Mehta - FTN Midwest Research

Analyst

Thank you very much Bill, I really appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Michael Schneider - Robert W. Baird

Michael Schneider - Robert W. Baird

Analyst

Maybe first if we could just focus on rental, the organic growth rate you mentioned was slightly below your expectations but was still up sequentially by 55 basis points, given what you know about ad stops and kind of the rolling affect of that now looking forward over the next 12 months, is it possible to sustain this growth rate near 3 ½ to 4% organic growth based on your new business wins, just any color on your expectations or knowing what you know about the, again the lagging affect of these metrics.

William Gale

Management

Mike, we’ve really looked at that a lot here especially over the last month or so and I think we feel confident that we can do what you just said, that is maintain this organic growth rate in the rental division despite the headwinds of the ad stops and the lost business. And again the reason I feel confident in saying that right now is because the new business efforts are yielding the results we expected and we only expect that to get better as tenure improves and as productivity improves. There are pockets of the country where things are continuing to go well. Canada continues to do very well for us. So we think that that is certainly an achievable situation to get that kind of rate of growth.

Michael Schneider - Robert W. Baird

Analyst

And have you been more or less or equally aggressive on trying to recover price now, especially with energy surging?

William Gale

Management

We’re trying to recover price. I’d say we are being more aggressive. We are finding our competition continues to be extremely aggressive in their pricing so it’s a very competitive environment. But we are going to our customers and we’re attempting to recover as much of these cost increases as we can but of course our customers are facing problems of their own and therefore they’re pushing back quite a bit. But I would say that we’re taking the opportunities to get price increases when we can and contractual…under the terms of our contract, but being realistic in meeting competition as we have to.

Michael Schneider - Robert W. Baird

Analyst

Okay and then within the growth rate of rental, given that the uniforms are obviously the vast majority of that segment, presumably uniform is growing, call it 2% to 3%, at what rate are the ancillary products growing and I ask just to get a sense of what element of the business project one is really benefiting and what type of growth rates its driving.

William Gale

Management

Mike, your 2% to 3% is probably too high. It’s really more than the 1% level in garments so a lot of our growth is coming from the ancillary products.

Michael Schneider - Robert W. Baird

Analyst

And it presumably is double-digits then, just to get to the weighted average?

William Gale

Management

Not sure of that.

Michael Thompson

Management

It wouldn’t be that high.

William Gale

Management

We’d have to look at that number more detailed but I…just off the top of my head and Mike said, I don’t think that would be the case.

Michael Schneider - Robert W. Baird

Analyst

So then project one team as of now is benefiting the ancillary products far more than it is the garments?

Michael Thompson

Management

Actually the big benefit of one team is the emerging businesses where we’ve been able to leverage those sales territories by adding additional reps and in the document management and first aid and safety businesses.

William Gale

Management

But yes, I would say going back though, that because of project one team we also have been able to add additional headcount in certain markets that have been able to push some of the facility services type products.

Michael Schneider - Robert W. Baird

Analyst

Okay and then final question just on gross margins in rental, Mike you had mentioned that energy was up 50 basis points sequentially if I heard that correct then that accounts for 50 of the 130 basis point deterioration sequentially, what else would explain the deceleration in margins sequentially?

Michael Thompson

Management

The main thing from our standpoint is the additional lost business and stops that we’ve been seeing. That is very profitable business for us that has gone away as these stops increase and the additional costs factor is because of that lower margin business has put some pressure on us.

Michael Schneider - Robert W. Baird

Analyst

And can you put the ad stop rate at least in some historical context. I know you don’t discuss specific numbers but if you look back to the last recession, are we at the same rate you saw mid way through that decline or are we at the same rate at the trough of the employment cycle?

Michael Thompson

Management

We haven’t really given that detail. I would say that it is certainly worse than we’ve seen in the last couple of years and the trend is getting worse. Really to go back to the profitability though, think about what happens when we have a stop in an account. We go from a 10 man account and they stop two individuals to get to eight, we’ve still got to cover the truck, we’ve got all the delivery costs still of stopping that truck, we have material costs coming back in certainly but it still amortizes and it just really puts a crimp really on your profitability within those accounts when you lose 20% of an account. I’d say the stop metric has certainly been as well as the lost business has been the key issue for us over the last quarter.

William Gale

Management

And Mike its hard for us to compare one economic downturn to another but I have seen…I see no signs yet of things getting better. I see signs of things getting…continuing to get a little worse. So we’re still early in our fourth quarter but that was what prompted us really to adjust the guidance down. We’re not going to recover in the fourth quarter that’s for sure.

Michael Schneider - Robert W. Baird

Analyst

Right, okay, thank you again.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Michel Morin - Merrill Lynch

Michel Morin - Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Document management margins, is this all the recycled paper prices or is there something that’s been helping margins?

William Gale

Management

The paper prices help a bit but also just establishing scale. We’ve been very aggressive in rolling these services out throughout the country by making small acquisitions and building up sales forces and you’re starting to see some benefit that we anticipated would happen as we scaled in these markets.

Michael Thompson

Management

These significant growth rates are really helping the local operations begin to cover some of those costs.

Michel Morin - Merrill Lynch

Analyst

And is there anything seasonal that might have boosted this quarter?

Michael Thompson

Management

Not really.

William Gale

Management

I think the trend has certainly been improving and that we expect that to continue.

Michel Morin - Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Great, and then you made some comments about competitors being aggressive on price, is that pretty much across the board Bill or is it kind of specific to certain markets or to a specific competitor?

William Gale

Management

Actually it’s with the large competitors, the big companies and from what I hear from our operating people it’s pretty much across the board. They are being very, very aggressive.

Michel Morin - Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Okay and then just finally on the buy backs, you said that you did not repurchase any shares this quarter, was there a specific [inaudible] to preserve capital knowing that the economy was worsening or was there any other reason that you mentioned that I might have missed?

William Gale

Management

There were several reasons, first off I think we wanted to get our balance sheet in order with the debt offering and so that was part of it. We also met with the rating agencies and we were very careful to tell them we’re going to maintain conservative financial policies. We are not going to do something to deteriorate the balance sheet because we expected the downturn to start coming because we started seeing that late in our second quarter. We also believe as has been the case before that there will be some great acquisition opportunities that might present themselves now that things are getting tougher and so we want to be sure that we maintain some dry powder so that we can take advantage of those things.

Michel Morin - Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Right and the criteria that the Board has set has not changed?

William Gale

Management

The Board…we’re in constant communication with the Board as to direction from them and I would say that generally they’re direction to us has not changed from what it has been over the last nine to 12 months.

Michel Morin - Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Great, thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: I have several questions, first just wonder you mentioned that you were continuing to do acquisitions in your other services business and how about the, how’s the acquisition environment looking like in your core uniform rental business. Is this something that you may be considering?

William Gale

Management

I would say we are always evaluating opportunities in the rental business. At this point in time we have found very few compelling opportunities to allocate part of our acquisition capital. However as I just stated that those opportunities tend to come along in the downturns and I would not expect anything to be any different. We will be very careful though in making acquisitions. We don’t need a footprint in any particular area of the country. We pretty well have that all covered so an acquisition will have to make a lot of financial sense to us before we would be willing to be aggressive on pricing. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: Okay, actually a follow-up on that is what would be a good target for the acquisitions. You mentioned that you may not look for geographic diversification then, what could interest you in that targeting market?

William Gale

Management

An acquisition such as the one we completed a couple of years ago, which was a strong regional player; a company by the name of [Andine Crawdy] would be very attractive to us. It was an extremely well run company, good books of business, had some nice capacity that we were able to utilize. Those are the types of acquisitions that make the most sense to us. We have to be very careful that the business that we are acquiring is good business and that’s what we would look at most closely when we evaluate one. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: Okay and second question about margins, so you see higher energy costs and you mentioned that you have not using hedging, would you consider that going forward?

William Gale

Management

We will certainly consider it. We haven’t found a good reason yet to do that because I think energy has been so unpredictable and obviously when everybody thinks energy is going to go up, the value of a hedge becomes very difficult to justify so…but it’s something that we look at and we just haven’t found a compelling reason to do it at this point. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: Okay and for costs, would you consider other measures like maybe a headcount cut, I mean you said you won’t do that in the sales force but maybe other corporate areas and also regarding your recent battle with the union will that impact your costs structure in your near future?

William Gale

Management

Well one of the advantages that Cintas has and we believe we’ll continue to have is that we are a growth company and we’ll be able to continue to grow. And we can do headcount leveraging by not adding people and you have attrition that takes place and so what we’re going to do is we’re going to be very careful that when we lose an individual that we don’t necessarily replace them by making a new hire. And I think by doing that we can keep headcount under control and actually show an overall reduction given just a normal attrition and continued growth. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: Okay, is there anything else that you can share with us within your cost control project besides maybe considering hedging and the headcount additions?

William Gale

Management

Well I think every cost area is subject to review and scrutiny and we certainly have charged all of our management to take a look at every line item of cost that they have from the supplies they purchase to the travel expenditures they’re incurring to deciding whether or not to make a capital investment, so it covers the whole gamut of the income statement and we expect our people to manage their particular operations to ensure that they control costs and conserve cash. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: Okay, thank just want to clarify on your share repurchase because you suspended it during first quarter ’08, when you were trying to explore some strategic alternatives. Just want to confirm is that something that you will reconsider or is that totally not relevant for now?

William Gale

Management

I really can’t make any comments on that at this point. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: Okay, and last question, you mentioned that you are losing some older customers, can you give us more color in terms of like how much percent of older customers versus new customers right now on your total customer pool.

William Gale

Management

No, we don’t disclose that level of information. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: Okay, thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Gary Bisbee - Lehman Brothers

Gary Bisbee - Lehman Brothers

Analyst

A couple of questions, first of all the extra work day this quarter, am I thinking about this right that this added like close to 2% to revenue growth?

William Gale

Management

It adds about a point and a half but Mike adjusted that when he gave you the organic growth.

Gary Bisbee - Lehman Brothers

Analyst

Okay, that’s what I wanted to confirm, so the 3.8% is adjusted for that.

Michael Thompson

Management

That is adjusted for the work day. Whenever we give internal growth numbers we always adjust for work days.

Gary Bisbee - Lehman Brothers

Analyst

Okay, I guess just following up on that last question or one of the last questions there about acquisitions in the core business, you’ve basically got a fully build out footprint in the US and Canada for uniform rental, I guess would it make sense if…do you have routes around the country where if you made an acquisitions it would allow you to increase the route density and thus be highly profitable or is that not really the reason you do acquisitions. I’m trying to understand it seems like if its getting tougher for you it’s got to be a lot tougher for the small and mid sized companies and so it seems like you would have a good opportunity if you wanted to to buy other uniform rental companies, but I’m trying to understand economically. If you can find one, you pay the right price, is it really accretive or how should we think about that?

William Gale

Management

Well we won’t do it unless it’s accretive Gary. I think the way you look at it, maybe you don’t necessarily gain leverage on the routes but what you gain leverage on is in the plants and in the backroom, the corporate functions. We certainly have demonstrated that time and time again when we make an acquisition, we can consolidate it into our company pretty quickly. And very cost affectively. The routes themselves…the opportunities we typically see on an acquisition is that we will be able to sell additional products and services to the customers of the acquired company because they typically don’t have the full gamut of service offerings that we have in some of the facility services and ancillary products. So we do see some benefit there. We see benefit in our purchasing power. We’re able to buy things cheaper than our competitors, especially the small to regional players. The fact you pick up capacity, you’re able to take and consolidate what maybe was one plus one becomes three because you end up shutting down some of their plants and branches or some of our plants, some of our branches and consolidating some of their operations and then to not have to build them. So acquisitions do make a lot of sense but you just have to be very careful on what you’re paying for because of the fact that you’re not really getting the presence in a particular area like we did when we were making acquisitions in the 80s and 90s.

Gary Bisbee - Lehman Brothers

Analyst

Alright, so it’s much more close down either your plant or their plant, get the customers, increase the utilization of the plant that you keep and through that drive accretion.

William Gale

Management

Right.

Michael Thompson

Management

It definitely comes down to valuation and the benefit you get, like Bill said, if you moved into a new market you get the positives of the additional growth rate that you would have in a new market place but since we’re everywhere today, we are strictly looking at valuation and what you can drive out of the bottom line.

Gary Bisbee - Lehman Brothers

Analyst

Just one other one on acquisitions, you’ve done a great job over time of doing the small mom and pops, every quarter sort of continuously, is there anything larger out there that makes sense in some of the non-uniform areas and I guess why have you not been more aggressive, is it a matter of price, or they’re just not the right assets or ….

William Gale

Management

Well the non-uniform areas, if you want to specifically talk about document management, the couple of other big players are Iron Mountain and Shred It, neither of which I think have any interest at all in selling those businesses since they’re growing very well for them. In the first aid and safety there isn’t anyone. And in the fire business the big player is Tyco and they I don’t think have any interest in selling their business. So, there are regional players but most of the….there really aren’t any big players out there other than the things I mentioned that aren’t actionable I would say at this time.

Gary Bisbee - Lehman Brothers

Analyst

Okay, I think back to your Investor Day a couple of years ago, one of the things that I remember being a focus is some new areas of opportunity and maybe some less cyclical end markets for uniforms and one with health care that I remember you talking about over the last few years, any progress there or is there any initiatives that you can take in a more challenging market like this to try to expand in less economically sensitive areas or is that something you’ve continued to do and that’s benefiting growth to a certain extent already?

Michael Thompson

Management

We have certainly focused on a few different areas. I’d say health care; we’re still just scratching the surface. We are certainly putting more effort into that although that’s not really uniform rental, that’s other products and services that we have. We’ve certainly done that with things like flame resistant clothing, expanded our foray into those type areas. We certainly have looked into additional niche opportunities and done well there. Food processing is another area that’s done well. With health care I’d say that we are improving in that area but we’re still a very small player at this point.

William Gale

Management

Gary, the company has a very active ongoing strategic planning process looking at opportunities, of where the growth is going to be and what we think would make sense for us to be involved with and we certainly are…we have a number of initiatives in place that we believe will benefit us down the road to take advantage of, the higher growth segments. And some of which we really just can’t talk about at this time.

Gary Bisbee - Lehman Brothers

Analyst

Okay, that’s fine and then just one last question. Can you give us any sense within the first aid, safety and fire business how much of that has been these fire suppression systems or the stuff that’s somewhat tied to construction, I mean is that a big piece or has that been a pretty small piece but its just a piece that’s probably shrinking right now.

William Gale

Management

Well it’s a significant portion of it. It’s not the majority but it’s a significant amount of the business.

Gary Bisbee - Lehman Brothers

Analyst

Okay so that could be a headwind for a while here then?

William Gale

Management

Probably so.

Gary Bisbee - Lehman Brothers

Analyst

Okay, thanks for all the color.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Greg Halter - Great Lakes Review

Greg Halter - Great Lakes Review

Analyst

I wondered if you could provide any commentary on what’s going on with the situation with Unite recently.

William Gale

Management

Actually very little. I think Unite is focusing as all the unions are right now primarily in the political front, getting behind their preferred candidates to push forth their agenda. So what we have seen here is just a continued lawsuit support that they have for some of those suits that are out there and they just create noise now and then. They’ll show up to our plant periodically and hand out some literature but that’s about it.

Greg Halter - Great Lakes Review

Analyst

Okay and you briefly touched on some of the cost measures, attrition and so forth, are there any other things that you’re specifically focusing on in that area?

William Gale

Management

Well as I mentioned to the prior questioner on that, we focus on everything Greg. I don’t think any costs can go unlooked at in terms of what opportunities might exist. You can always try to do things more efficiently, work with your suppliers to get costs reduced. You know, look for opportunities in other parts of the world to get supplies and products. It goes through everything. Travel and entertainment, we talk to our people and do you really need to take that trip, can a phone call do? You have to attack all the little things and then they add up to something more significant.

Greg Halter - Great Lakes Review

Analyst

And I know you’ve been successful in the document management, first aid, fire safety so forth and so on, are there any other new initiatives that you’re continuing or currently experimenting with?

William Gale

Management

Yes there are, there are several things that we’re experimenting with none of which I can talk about at this point. But we are bullish on some things that might build up to something more significant down the road.

Greg Halter - Great Lakes Review

Analyst

Okay, and given the commentary about lost business and the increase in stops, what kind of I guess I would characterize it as obsolete inventory risk do you run with uniforms that may not be used by someone at some point?

William Gale

Management

Very little because in the rental business, you don’t rent something that you couldn’t utilize for another customer without a…if somebody wants something so unique in a rental program we require a guaranteed buy back of that inventory regardless of what happens and we won’t even sign a contract with a customer unless we’re comfortable with their credit…to make sure that they can stand behind that commitment. Most items, the vast majority of items in a uniform rental program are items that can be used on a multiple number of different types of customers.

Greg Halter - Great Lakes Review

Analyst

Okay, that sounds good. And you’re comment about the cash with the majority of it being in Canada, I’m just wondering why that is?

William Gale

Management

Well there are laws that prohibit you from bringing cash back into the United States without incurring some costs associated with that and so as our businesses have built up in Canada we’ve accumulated some cash up there that has exceeded what we’ve been able to redeploy in acquisitions in Canada and so we are looking for other opportunities to the point of that cash perhaps as we seek out acquisitions in other parts of the world.

Greg Halter - Great Lakes Review

Analyst

Okay and obviously if you brought it back you’d have to pay some sort of tax on that repatriation of the funds?

William Gale

Management

Yes, it’s fairly expensive.

Michael Thompson

Management

So it’s accessible but at this point it’s not necessary.

Greg Halter - Great Lakes Review

Analyst

And there’s been obviously concern over investments and auction rate preferreds and just I know Mike you made a commentary about T-Bills and all that, but just wanted to touch on that again whether or not there’s any kind of wacky stuff in the portfolio.

Michael Thompson

Management

Cash is invested, short term very conservative, governmental type securities.

Greg Halter - Great Lakes Review

Analyst

Alright, just wanted to check, we’ve heard it before.

William Gale

Management

Greg, it’s a very valid question but we have not done anything exotic.

Greg Halter - Great Lakes Review

Analyst

Okay and would you expect your tax rate for fiscal ’09 to be around this 37, 37 ½ area?

Michael Thompson

Management

We’ll comment on that a year end but we think it’ll be around that level.

Greg Halter - Great Lakes Review

Analyst

One last question here, a comment on the first aid or document management that there’s not a whole lot of public companies, in the past I think you’ve talked about, or maybe there’s been commentary about a company called Brambles, just wondered if that would peak your interest?

Michael Thompson

Management

Yes, that’s Recall, is the division that does the document shredding. They’re slightly smaller than Shred It. So they could be the third of the larger companies.

William Gale

Management

You know there are a lot of businesses outside the US which would probably be a little bit bigger thing to swallow for us at this point but we’d certainly be interested in talking to them if the opportunity presented itself on their US business.

Greg Halter - Great Lakes Review

Analyst

Okay, I know you’re share repurchases, you’ve made buy backs as high as on an average $41.81 or almost $42.00, I guess it is, and with the stock at $28.00, $29.00 here just a little interested in your commentary and obviously you’ve provided some about powder dry and get your balance sheet in order and discipline and so forth, with the share price where it is now, I would have to think that you’d be more willing to look at the share repurchase at these levels than in the 40s.

William Gale

Management

Well we might be. We’ll tell you in July what we did.

Greg Halter - Great Lakes Review

Analyst

Okay.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Brandt Sakakeeny - Deutsche Bank

Brandt Sakakeeny - Deutsche Bank

Analyst

Could you just talk to the energy exposure in the document management business, I think we’re pretty comfortable with the risk obviously in the core business but is that business less energy intensive at all?

Michael Thompson

Management

The costs were up; you do have fuel costs in that business as well. But it was not as dramatic as the other divisions.

William Gale

Management

I don’t have exactly that number in front of me but it’s something we can maybe follow back up with you on.

Brandt Sakakeeny - Deutsche Bank

Analyst

Great, and I guess just over time, obviously given the growth in the margins, sort of sustained success in that division can help offset weakness in your other areas on a blended sort of mixed basis, how comfortable do you feel about sustaining last quarter’s growth going forward in light of the environment offset by its still a reasonably small business right now.

Michael Thompson

Management

We’re pretty comfortable with the long term growth rates there. Certainly we’re not going to stay in the 40s forever we don’t believe but it continues to exceed our expectations and it could slow into the 30s potentially but overall we feel very good about the growth opportunities in that business and it’s been so far very resilient within the economy so, we’re keeping our fingers crossed a little bit because its still relatively new business for us but right now it’s been very, very positive.

Brandt Sakakeeny - Deutsche Bank

Analyst

And just finally on the sales force productivity you mentioned obviously some successes, how do you disaggregate sort of the same store successes outside of the tougher ad stop and lost business numbers and do you think there’s risk that as things get worse you start to see higher attrition and start to lose some of those productivity gains.

Michael Thompson

Management

That’s difficult to say. I think we certainly are concerned about the trend within both the stop ratio and the lost business but again as we indicated the new business has been going pretty well and really allowed us to [inaudible] from growth rate within rental to improve. So we’ll certainly keep an eye on that and it’s a concern but overall we feel pretty good with where we are.

William Gale

Management

I’d say at this point we’re still confident in our ability to sell new business given the number of people we have out on the street, the products that we have offering, the value proposition that exists, and I think the real risk we have is more on the existing customer attritions that they’re having, reduction in workforces et cetera. So, but as Mike said, we’ve got to be very careful here and we monitor this stuff all…every week and so we can tell if we start seeing too significant a slowdown in new business we’ll have to make sure that our cost structure is adjusted accordingly to compensate for that.

Brandt Sakakeeny - Deutsche Bank

Analyst

Okay, and just a follow-up on the new business can you just give us a rough breakdown between or among the percentage that’s come from folks who have never had a uniform program before from whom you’re taking share?

Michael Thompson

Management

Its still in excess of 60% of the new customers are customers that have never had a uniform rental program before.

Brandt Sakakeeny - Deutsche Bank

Analyst

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we have no further questions in queue; I’d like to turn the conference back to our speakers for additional or closing remarks.

William Gale

Management

Well thank you all very much for joining us. We hope you appreciated it that we didn’t’ interfere with those of you interested in the basketball for tomorrow evening. But we wish you all a very good holiday coming up this weekend and then we’ll look forward to speaking with you in July when we release our fourth quarter earnings.