Welcome to the UniFirst Corporation fourth quarter earnings results conference call. (Operator Instructions). I would now like to turn the conference over to John Bartlett, Chief Financial Officer.

Thank you and welcome to UniFirst conference call to review our fourth quarter and yearend operating results for fiscal 2008 and to discuss our expectations going forward. My name is John Bartlett and I am the Chief Financial Officer. Joining me are Ronald Croatti, UniFirst President and CEO and Steve Sintros, our Corporate Controller. This call will be on a listen only mode until we complete our prepared remarks. Last evening we released results for the fourth quarter and 53 weeks ended in August of 2008. Our revenues increased 13.4% to over $1 billion and our net income increase 34.9% to $61 million or $3.15 per share. Ron Croatti and Steve Sintros will provide additional details regarding these results, but I can say that we are very pleased with our performance in a difficult economy. We had targeted the $1 billion sales milestone for several years and it was very satisfying to achieve it this year. Our relentless focus to increase our operating margins is yielding results and we are particularly pleased with the improvements at locations performing below our standards. Now before I turn the call over to Ron Croatti, I'd like to give a brief disclaimer. This call may contain forward-looking statements that reflect the company's current views with respect to future events and financial performance. These forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. The words anticipate, believe and other expressions that indicate future events and trends identify forward-looking statements. Actual future results may differ materially from those anticipated depending on a variety of factors including but not limited to the continued availability of credit and the performance of the capital markets, performance of acquisitions, fluctuations in the cost and materials, fuel and labor, economic and other developments associated with the ongoing war on terrorism and the outcome of pending and future litigation and environmental matters. Now, I'll turn the call over to Ron Croatti for his comments.

Welcome to all those who are joining us for the review of our fourth quarter and full fiscal year of 2008 results. Our numbers were released yesterday evening and I'm happy to report that they showed another year of record revenues and profit. Most important it was a year that saw us pass a milestone $1 billion revenue mark. A key event for our company and one that was especially meaningfully given the tough conditions we faced during most of the year. This milestone makes us the third largest provider in North America. I want to thank the entire management team and our thousands of dedicated team partners throughout North America and in Europe who worked so hard to make it happen. For the full year, revenues were $1.023 billion or a 13.4% increase over last year's $902 million. Net income was $61 million or $3.15 per diluted common share a 34.9% increase from the $45.2 million or $2.34 per diluted common share reported in fiscal 2007. These results which benefited through an extra revenue week in fiscal 2008 as compared to fiscal 2007, were in line with our expectations and consistent with the guidance updated that we provided during the year. Core laundry operations led the way with a 13.9% revenue increase over the previous year. Also the improvement was the result of internal growth and price increase with acquisitions accounting for 2.9% of the advance. The 53-week revenue week of fiscal 2008 accounted for approximately 2% of the increase. This was a solid performance in light of the challenging market conditions and once again served as testimony to our solidarity and resilience of our uniform rental business. Our specialty garment business, our nuclear decontamination and clean room specialists continued the improvements we saw in fiscal 2007 and delivered…

Thanks, Ron. As Ron discussed earlier, we're pleased to report the best full year results we've ever achieved. We did not originally project that we would reach the billion-dollar milestone in fiscal 2008, but we have achieved this despite challenging economic conditions, while at the same time exceeding our profit goals. Our full year revenues increased 13.4% to $1.023 billion compared to fiscal 2007. Fiscal 2008 was a 53-week year for us, the company; however, even excluding the effect of the extra week our revenues would still have broken the billion-dollar plateau and grown over 11%. Net income for the full year increased 34.9% to $61 million, or $3.15 a share, compared to $2.34 a share in fiscal 2007. The full year earnings of $3.15 were at the low end of the revised guidance we provided during our third quarter earnings call. Revenues were $251 million for the fourth quarter, an increase of 10.3% over 2007. Fourth quarter net income increased 13.7% to $12.3 million, or $0.63 per diluted share, compared to last fourth quarter net income of $10.8 million, or $0.56 per diluted share. The gross of net income for the full year was achieved primarily through strong revenue growth and improved margins in our core laundry operations, which excludes our specialty garments and first aid segment. Our core laundry operation revenues grew 13.9% for the full year to $920 million. Organic growth for our core laundry operation, which excludes acquisitions, the effect of the extra week in fiscal 2008 and fluctuations in the Canadian exchange rates, were 7.5% for the full year. Income from operations from the core laundries for the full year increased 32.4% to $103.5 million, compared to fiscal 2007. The operating margin increased significantly to 11.3% in 2008 from 9.7% in 2007. The full year…

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Andrea Wirth – Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. Andrea Wirth – Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. : I'm wondering if you could first just talk a little bit about your '09 assumptions, just in terms of what you're looking for, the core rental business in terms of growth rates. It looks like from your guidance that it assumes that growth is to come down pretty hard, but will probably still stay positive, probably around 2% to 3%. Does that seem to make sense to you?

That's correct, Andrea.

I think the range, kind of assuming the reduction related to the extra week, as well as the impact on Canada of the exchange rate, I think the range assumes about a 2% to 4% core organic growth excluding all those factors. Andrea Wirth – Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. : And then I'm just wondering if you could address a little bit what you've seen essentially since the end of your quarter end in August? And obviously, a little bit before we started seeing things fall apart in mid-September. Just wondering given the growth rate you're expecting now to come down to 2% to 4%, are you seeing a significant payoff already? I mean, will you probably start getting down to into that range of 2% to 4% already in the fiscal first quarter, or are things holding up still fairly well? We only see a kind of a slight deceleration in the first quarter.

Andrea, we've seen a continuation of the shrinkage of our wearer base. Last year it was over 5.5% of our wearer base. That has continued. Our new business for the first eight weeks has slowed and we're down about 5% in new business. And the outer businesses and small businesses has continued pretty much at the same pace that it was in the fourth quarter. We are cautiously optimistic here.

And just to add to that a little bit, Andrea, we've gotten our September numbers. Next week we'll get out October numbers, and quite frankly they were pretty good. So we're cautiously optimistic. And then I think the recent changes in the financial markets and so forth don't seem to have affected out business as yet. That isn't suggesting that they won't and I think we're seeing some favorable things in the energy costs. I mean everyone knows the cost of gasoline has come down dramatically and natural gas has come down since the last few months. So we actually have seen a couple of positive things.

I think when you look at that guidance you’re right Andrew I think that it won’t be as sharp of a decrease in the first quarter. But over the course of the year as these conditions continue we’ll fall down into that range. And we expect that range for the full year. Andrea Wirth – Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. : Got it, and just to clarify a couple of things, Ron when you mentioned that new business was down 5% is that year-over-year or sequentially?

That’s year-over-year, it’s just people are less likely to spend right now in the last eight weeks. I mean companies are tightening up all the way along the line. And we have some good programs and we’re focusing towards businesses that have to have uniforms, so but it’s getting a little more difficult in the selling environment. Andrea Wirth – Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. : And just one more question. Some of your peers are already starting to really go after their cost base taking some facilities off line. Just wondering if you’ve taken a look at your cost structure at this point and if you feel like there’s any major moves need to be done?

We have no position to take any facility offline. We’re tightening our cost structure making sure that what we spend makes good business sense.

As we go through our acquisition program and acquire companies we are on an ongoing basis we have closed facilities and duplicate plants or whatever. But we’re certainly not looking at any of our facilities today and say we’re going to close it and consolidate it. In fact we actually have just opened one or two. We just opened two.

Our next question comes from John Healey - FTN Midwest Securities Corp.

Question, I don't know, just conceptually and how you guys look at yourself and how you look at the industry. For a number of quarters and for the whole fiscal year for you guys, you have outperformed the industry and your organic growth rates are a lot higher than what peers are reporting and probably much higher than what’s taking place in the industry. Just from your vantage point, and you see yourself operating in the field, what are you guys doing differently than the industry is doing different relative to the industry. I mean, I look at your organic growth figures and they continue to amaze us, so I’m just trying to get a better understanding of how you guys continue to do so much better than the overall market place?

I think it comes back to our restructuring of our sales organization about three years ago and changing the mentality and the focus and the training and the tools and like I said before we basically turned over everything. And then it’s getting that in position getting the people trained and a lot has to do with the location managers. We’ve changed the mentality of the location manager that he has to be not only a location manager but a sales manager and that’s a constant thing. We’re not there yet where we want to be, but that’s really the difference, it’s the basics of blocking and tackling. The hard sales focus.

I guess when you guys look at kind of the guidance you’ve provided here, $3.05 to $3.25. I was hoping you could try to give us a little bit of color John or Steve, just how you guys look at margins for the year. Looks like they’re kind of going to be similar, maybe down a little bit if I do the math on the back of an envelope, but just trying to think how much you expect those to kind of trend as the year goes on?

I don’t think we’ve ever been in as difficult an environment as we’re looking at. We have just faced I think more uncertainly than we have had in the past. I think the one thing that has benefited us this past year, probably the biggest thing, is the merchandize cost. And we do not anticipate we’re going to have the same kind of favorable year-over-year benefit as we go forward. So I think we’re just concerned with the cost pressures that we might have to squeeze in our margins in general and our goal is to do as well as we can. But I think we’re really looking at, you know we had a 34% jump this year. It’s pretty optimistic that we certainly can’t do that again. And it doesn’t seem unreasonable from where we sit that we might be flat next year. So we’ve kind of given this a range of kind of plus or minus over the current year. And that’s I think how we see it at this point. Steve you want to add a little bit to that?

Well I think a couple of items we talked about the exchange rates in Canada and our Canadian operation had a huge year this year. They were benefited by the exchange rate. Where the rate stands today, I mentioned that’s going to have an impact on our overall revenues of about 1.7% and probably a little bigger percent than that impact on our profit. We’re baking in a higher tax rate as well. And although fuel has come down a number of our other vendors as I mentioned Hangers in the fourth quarter and some of the other vendors that we deal with have put through price increases that we’re dealing with as well. So although I think energy will have a benefit over time, at the current levels, there are some things working against us. And so like John said, given the market I think flat would be a solid improvement.

And just another big picture question, so many pressures taking place in the economy right now. I can't imagine the uniform industry is going to feel it from a top line standpoint, but when you look at some of your smaller competitors out there, when you look at the pressures in the economy, do you think this is going to force the hand of some of your smaller competitors to begin to look to sell their businesses? And would you anticipate that the softening economy is going to push the envelope more towards consolidation in the industry? And maybe how do you guys see yourself pursuing potential acquisitions in a tough environment?

Well I think we’ve seen actually more activity from the smaller people already. I don’t think it’s just the economy. I think they’re looking at the government situation and they’re expecting that tax rates are probably – maybe they won’t go up too much but they’re not going to go down, as they’re looking at it. And they’re looking at it and they’re looking at maybe a good opportunity to get out. I don’t think the economy is going to force that. I’m not aware really of anyone in our industry that has been forced out of business. It’s more usually a family or kind of a decision that they don’t have children come along that want to run the business and the economics that usually force it. But clearly if they don’t make as much money as they did the year before and they’re trying to divide up the pie with two or three families rather than one, it kind of forces their hand or makes them think a little bit harder about it. But I think as Steve said in his comments, we’re going to look aggressively at acquisitions that make sense but at the same time we realize how precious cash is and so we’ve actually walked away from a couple of acquisitions in the last couple of months.

(Operator Instructions). Our next question comes from Ashwin Shirvaikar - Citigroup.

My first question is, is it possible as you look at the year-over-year margin improvement that you can break out the various pieces?

So Ashwin, I think we can give you some high level ideas. I don’t particularly want to get down to the actual percentages for each piece, but as we talked about throughout the year the biggest pieces of the margin improvement obviously have been the merchandise and I think that was the biggest piece clearly. And that was in the neighborhood of a 1% increase year-over-year. Payroll and payroll related costs next in line as the biggest improvement. And there were a number of other small things that contributed to it as well. And then those were offset by the energy. Some of those items flipped around in the fourth quarter. Energy became a much larger negative. For the fourth quarter energy was, it hurt our margin 1.5% over the fourth quarter of the prior year and for the entire year it hurt our margin about 0.07% so you can see how much it accelerated in the fourth quarter.

On the topic of energy can you go through how the mechanics of the fuel surcharge work in today, do they roll off automatically as the fuel price declines?

No, we basically – it’s a percentage of the invoice and we look pretty hard at what UPS does, how they tally it and based on what UPS does we probably adjust it semi-annually.

So it’s not really a –

No it’s not adjusted every week like UPS.

And it’s not negotiated it’s just –

Well it's always negotiated.

What’s your CapEx for the fiscal '08? I missed that.

We expect about $55 million.

And could you go into sort of the big part of the CapEx, if you could?

Well about $22 million goes for trucks and computers. And then the difference would go into – we got continued construction of the plant in England, which is costing a lot more than what we anticipated. And additions and improvements and further sortation automation in the plant.

So basically you’re spending on short-term ROI kind of things where you see immediate benefit.

That’s pretty much it.

Any way you could, I know you have not in the past but anyway you could get into your end market exposure by verticals, how that looks?

Not sure what you’re suggesting.

We’re looking at each other here.

I mean with direct exposure to what percent is construction, what percent is maybe travel that kind of thing?

I guess I’m still unclear where you’re in market, what?

Yes customer exposure, high investment?

Oh I don’t believe we have any major customer. We pretty much go across the board. We don’t have much manufacturing. Probably the single biggest segment is the automobile related which is not just dealers and not really the manufacturers more the auto repair shops, the mechanics, things like that. And traditionally we’ve catered more to the smaller businesses and there’s no question some of those are going to reduce men and some go out of business. But I think in this environment where people aren’t buying new cars they’re going to continue to have their cars serviced and repaired. We have some, a grocery store business, I mean that’s going to – I don't think we’re not really into the high-end type of restaurant or anything like that. No question we’re going to have some exposure but we have over 200,000 customers and we think we’re pretty, and we’re spread all over the United States, so.

Our next question comes from Andrea Wirth – Robert Baird & Co., Inc. Andrea Wirth – Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. : Just a follow-up on energy costs. In the quarter what was it about 6% of sales? Is that about right?

Let me get that for you Andrea. Between natural gas and gasoline it was 5.9%. And add another percent for electric. Andrea Wirth – Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. : Oh and another percent for electric so all in about –

All in about 6.49% for the quarter. Andrea Wirth – Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. : And what essentially is baked into your guidance of that$ 3.05 to $3.25 what essentially percent of sales or essentially what’s your outlook for energy for that guidance range?

Well it really depends whether it’s $3.05 or $3.25. We, I think we’re optimistic that the energy prices are going to maybe ratchet up a little bit but not dramatically the way they did a year ago. So we’re hopeful that they won’t see the dramatic changes that we’ve had last year is what we’re contemplating in that range. If things stay low and we can maybe towards the higher end if they ratchet up we will be at the lower end. That’s one factor obviously there’s other factors that come in, but the unemployment if it stays where it is we’ll do better and if it goes up significantly we’re probably not going to do as well. That’s why it’s just so hard to predict the next year. Andrea Wirth – Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. : Is it probably fair to say that the high end of your range assumes energy costs essentially will stay where they are right where they are right now?

Right.

Yes I think that’s correct.

(Operator Instructions). There are no further questions at this time I will now turn the call back over to you, please continue with your presentation or closing remarks.

Well I want to thank you all for coming to our webcast, our best year ever. And we certainly will stand fast and meet the challenges of the coming year. We look forward to talking to you in the next quarter.