Steven Sintros
Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets
Thank you, Ron. Second quarter revenues were $344 million, up 2.9% from $334.3 million a year ago. Net income of $25.6 million or $1.27 per diluted share was down from $26.6 million or $1.33 per diluted share reported in the second quarter of fiscal '13. Revenue and profit comparisons, as Ron mentioned, were affected by a customer-related specialty merchandise buyout in the second quarter of 2013. Excluding the effect of this buyout, overall revenues would have increased 3.6% and fully diluted earnings per share would have been $1.27 for both periods.
Revenues for the quarter in the Core Laundry Operations were $313.2 million, up 3.8% from those reported in last year's second quarter. Excluding the impact of the weaker Canadian dollar and the specialty merchandise buyout, as well as the positive effect of acquisitions, revenues grew 4.3% for the Core Laundry Operations. As Ron mentioned, growth was driven by solid new account sales, as well as the impact of annual price increases. Wearer additions versus reductions were negative for the quarter and slightly negative year-to-date. This segment's operating income grew 2.1% compared to adjusted operating income for the second quarter of fiscal '13. Its operating margin was 12.6% compared to an adjusted operating margin of 12.9% a year ago. Adjusted operating income and operating margin for the second quarter of fiscal '13 exclude the effect of the customer-related merchandise buyout. This dip in operating margin was primarily due to higher costs related to our plant operations, energy, depreciation and bad debt expense as a percentage of revenues.
Energy cost for the second quarter were 5.4%, up from 5.2% in the second quarter of fiscal 2013. In addition, during the quarter, we incurred certain start-up costs related to a new garment manufacturing facility that is not yet in full production. Current quarter profits were also impacted by higher legal and environmental costs compared to a year ago. The current quarter included a $0.4 million charge related to increases in interest rates used to discount our environmental liabilities. In addition, we incurred higher legal costs related to the ongoing litigation surrounding the New England Compounding Center matter, which we have discussed in prior quarters.
Our guidance to this point and for the remainder of the year does not take into account this uptick in legal costs as we are currently in discussions with our insurance providers concerning the level of reimbursement of our defense costs. These higher costs were partially offset by lower healthcare claims expensed during the quarter. Our operations were also somewhat challenged by a particularly difficult winter storm season. Although we are used to dealing with a normal amount of winter weather during our second quarter, this year was unique with many locations that are not typically affected by winter storms forced to shut down for multiple days at a time. As it is difficult to quantify the true financial impact of this disruption, we don't want to place undue emphasis on it other than to note it was a unique operating challenge we faced during the quarter.
Revenues for the Specialty Garments segment, which consists of nuclear decontamination and cleanroom operations, were $20.4 million, down 9.7% from $22.6 million in the second quarter of 2013. This decrease was primarily the result of less power reactor business in the U.S. and Canada compared to a year ago. As a result of the revenue decline, this segment's income from operations fell to $0.3 million from $1.3 million in the comparable period in fiscal 2013. This segment's revenues and profits were also impacted by the weaker Canadian dollar during the quarter. Although we expect a strong power reactor outage season in the spring, we do not expect this segment to achieve its full year profit goals, which were included in our guidance a quarter ago.
First Aid segment revenues increased 2.9% to $10.4 million in the quarter compared to $10.1 million a year ago. Income from operations for this segment fell to $1 million in the quarter from $1.3 million in 2013. Looking ahead, we also expect our First Aid segment to fall short of its annual goals. The expected shortfall is primarily the result of revised forecasts for a large retail customer served by the segment's pill packaging operation.
The effective income tax rate for the second quarter of fiscal '14 was 37.8% compared to 38.4% in the second quarter of fiscal '13. We continue to expect our full year fiscal 2014 effective income tax rate to be approximately 38.5%.
UniFirst continues to maintain a solid balance sheet and financial position. Cash provided by operating activities for the first 6 months of fiscal '14 was $109.1 million, up 17.9% compared to $92.5 million for the first 6 months of last year. The improved cash flows were primarily the result of higher earnings, as well as the timing of income tax payments compared to a year ago.
Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the quarter totaled $157.2 million, down from $197.5 million at the end of fiscal 2013. This decrease was the result of September repayment of $100 million in private placement notes that came due.
Of our cash on hand, $61.8 million has been accumulated by our foreign subsidiaries and is intended for future investments outside the United States. The company also continues to have significant capacity under its existing bank line of credit to continue funding acquisition activity or other capital allocation options.
Capital expenditures for the first half of 2014 were $44.1 million. We continue to invest in our Unity 20/20 systems project. So far this year, we have capitalized $8.4 million related to this project. We also continue to invest in plant updates, expansions and automation that will allow us to achieve our long-term strategic objectives. We continue to expect capital expenditures in fiscal 2014 will be between $90 million and $100 million. Year-to-date, the company has not expended any significant capital on acquisitions, although we continue to look at acquisition targets as they remain an integral part of our overall growth strategy.
At this time, we'd like to provide you an update regarding our outlook for the remainder of the year.
In October, we communicated we expect fiscal 2014 revenues to be between $1.372 billion and $1.385 billion and full year diluted earnings per share to be between $5.60 and $5.85. During our first quarter earnings call in January, we stated that we expected our full year results to be at the higher end of these ranges. Now that we are halfway through our fiscal year, we want to again provide an update on the remainder of the year. The weaker-than-projected Canadian dollar is impacting our full year revenue projections by approximately $3.5 million. Despite this headwind, as well as further uncertainty around our Specialty Garments segment, we believe that we'll be well within the range of our original full year revenue guidance.
We now expect fiscal 2014 diluted earnings per share to be between $5.60 and $5.75 per share. Our outlook for the remainder of the year includes lower expectations for the performance of our Specialty Garments and First Aid segments, as well as an assumption that the recently weaker Canadian dollar and higher energy prices will continue to impact our results.
As a reminder, fiscal 2014 will be a 52-week year for the company compared to fiscal 2013, which was a 53-week year. The extra week occurred in our fourth quarter of fiscal 2013. The negative comparison of 1 less week of operations will have the impact of reducing our year-over-year revenues by approximately 2% and our fourth quarter revenues by approximately 7.1%.
At this time, we also want to give you an update regarding our expected impact of the Affordable Care Act, or ACA. As we discussed last quarter, UniFirst obtained a waiver under the transitional rules of the ACA that allowed our existing healthcare coverage to remain intact through August 2014. At the beginning of our fiscal 2015, the ACA requires us to modify one of the healthcare plans we currently provide to our employees. These plan modifications, as well as the payment of the ACA transitional reinsurance fee, will cause our cost to rise. There remains a significant amount of uncertainty as to how much our healthcare costs will ultimately increase, including the impact of the planned changes on our claims experience, as well as the potential for increased enrollment in our health plans as a result of the individual mandate provisions of the ACA. We continue to explore ways to mitigate the impact of the ACA on our operating results. However, at this time, we currently project that the combined impact of the ACA's requirements, normal annual increases in our healthcare costs and other changes in employee benefit programs will likely pressure our operating margin between 35 and 65 basis points in fiscal 2015.
Again, we do want to stress that this range relies on numerous estimates and assumptions that could cause the actual results to vary materially from this range. One fundamental assumption is that the Affordable Care Act will remain intact as currently constructed. Given the recent and continued modifications to the law, the range we have provided could be affected by future changes in healthcare laws.
We also would like to take this opportunity to update you on our Unity 20/20 CRM systems project. We currently don't anticipate beginning deployment of this system to our locations until the second half of fiscal 2015. As we have mentioned previously, the increased expense to our operations once deployed will primarily be the result of incremental depreciation related to the new system that we currently estimate will be approximately $6 million per year once fully deployed. We also expect to incur certain nonrecurring costs associated with the training and deployment effort associated with our new system in fiscal '15. Although we do not give guidance regarding our next fiscal year this far in advance, we do want to emphasize that the impact related to the Affordable Care Act, as well as the deployment of our Unity 20/20 system, are real costs that will affect our results in 2015. We recognize there is a fair amount of uncertainty and variability around our estimates regarding the ACA, as well as the timing and cost impact of our Unity 20/20 system. However, we want to make sure that external expectations around fiscal 2015 are taking these items into account. We will continue to update you on these items in future quarters.
This completes our prepared remarks. We'll now be happy to answer any questions you might have.