Good afternoon, thank you for standing by. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the UniFirst Corporation First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions). I would now like to turn the conference over to John Bartlett, Senior Vice President.

Thank you and welcome to UniFirst Conference call to review our first quarter operating results for fiscal 2009 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’s President and CEO, and Steve Sintros our Corporate Controller. This call will be on a listen only mode until we complete our prepared remarks. Today we released the results of our 2009 fiscal year. Revenues increased 6.2% to a record $62.3 million and our net income increased 14.5% to a record $18.9 million or $0.97 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 first quarter performance; however, I would like to stress that UniFirst is not immune to the challenging economy in which we operate. Since November we have seen a significant increase in the shrinkage in our customer wares, as well as increased lost accounts. Nevertheless, we are cautiously optimistic that our full year results will still approximate the results we achieved in fiscal 2008, which we believe is both a testament to the recession resistant industry in which we operate and our hands on conservative management. Now, before I turn the call over to Ron and Steve, I would like to give a brief disclaimer. This conference 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, believes, 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 of 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 will turn the call over to Ron Croatti for his comments.

Thank you John and welcome all of you who are joining us for the review of our first quarter and fiscal period that produces record revenues and profits for our company once again. Steve will cover the details in a few minutes, but let me start with a brief recap. Revenues for the first quarter of 2009 were $262.3 million, a 6.2% increase over the $247.3 million for the same period a year ago. Income from operations increased 17% during the quarter as compared to 2008 and earnings per diluted share for the first quarter were up 14.5% to $0.97 as compared to 2008’s $0.85. Despite considerable economic pressure during the fiscal weeks of the quarter, our core laundry operations continue to drive our company’s growth, showing a 6.95 revenue increase as compared to the same period a year ago. Decreases in merchandise, amortization costs, payroll and payroll related costs, as a percentage of revenues, helped to boost our income level. Our Specialty Garment business, which is our nuclear decontamination and cleaning business, continued an upward trend in growth for 2.8% gains in revenue for the comparable quarter in 2008, which also resulted in a modest increase of income from operations compared to last years first quarter. Meanwhile our First Aid business, our revenues decreased by 7.4% as compared to 2008. In the first quarter this was due to the sales of the Quick Aid division and the negative effect of the economic downturn. We expect this division to continue to have challenges in ’09 as a result of the financial culture and climate and accompanying trend toward service cut backs in the marketplace. In our Uniform business new sales from our professional field reps came in essentially flat, as compared to last year, due to the continued softening of…

Thanks Ron. As Ron discussed, despite an increasingly challenging economy, we had a strong start to fiscal 2009. Consolidated revenues for the first quarter were $262.6 million, a 6.2% increase from the previous years first quarter of $247.3 million. First quarter net incomes was $18.9 million, or $0.97 per diluted common share; a 14.5% increase from the first quarter of 2008 when net income was $16.5 million or $0.85 per share. This performance continues to be driven by strong results of our core laundry operations. Revenues from the core laundry operations grew 6.9% in the first quarter compared to 2008. Revenues from the core laundry operations net of the impact of acquisitions and changes in foreign currency increased 6.6%. Acquisitions accounted for 1.5% of the growth and the strengthening of the US dollar versus the Canadian dollar reduced revenues by 1.2% compared to the same quarter a year ago. Based on the current exchange rates we expect the growth rates of our core laundry operations to be negatively impacted by approximately 1.4% for the remainder of the fiscal year. Although we have been able to hold our growth thus far through this economic downturn, the already high headcount reduction rates in our ware base that we have seen over the last six to nine months accelerated significantly in November and December. These reductions will significantly challenge our ability to grow at the rates we have recently produced in future quarters. Income from operations from our core laundry business was up 17.9% compared to the first quarter of 2008 and its operating margin increased from 12.4% in the first quarter of 2008 to 13.7% in the first quarter of 2009. The improvement is primarily due to lower merchandise amortization, as well as lower payroll costs as a percentage of revenues. The…

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from John Healey with FTN Midwest Securities Corp.

I wanted to get a little bit of color from you just about the quarter. Obviously your organic growth continues to be pretty amazing. I was hoping you could give us a little color on what drove the organic growth in the quarter. Maybe what key metrics were the most surprising to you, how strong they were? It sounds like you are showing weakness and I am just trying to understand what is driving the growth right now.

This is Ron. I will try to give you a rough answer to it. In September, if you will recall, energy prices were pretty high, gasoline and so forth and we were able to sustain a fairly decent price increase that was part of it. Our new sales have held up the entire quarter comparable to 2008. We have really seen a drop off in the new sales the last five weeks, I mean right up until today. The shrinkage within our customer base was fairly typical for September. It accelerated a little bit in October and was greater in November and greater in December to the point where every week we had during the quarter we were positive growth and the last five weeks we are seeing the line cross the other way between the shrinkage in our base, our customer losses and our new business, the line is crossed. So, that is our concern, but it really was a combination of good sales and we were able to get a little price along the way.

That is helpful. I also want to make sure I understand what you have mentioned there. Over the last five weeks have we seen organic growth rates and any of those weeks begin to be negative on the year-over-year [interposing].

That is correct.

Or is that just kind of on the new sales?

No, they are negative year-over-year.

Well they are negative week-over-week now.

To try to explain it to you, you know if the wearer base is negative and the customer is shrinking and the customer losses are negative, new business is appositive, but the negative is outweighing the positive.

Okay that’s helpful. Then when I think about you guys talking about your guidance, you said that ad stops is a little bit, organic growth is a little bit worse than maybe you thought, but you are getting the offsetting benefit on the energy side of things. Were you kind of reaffirming the earnings guidance or are you reaffirming both the revenue and the earnings guidance? I was a little confused on how those two metrics seem to be going in opposite directions and how both revenue and EPS can be kind of where we thought they were going to be three months ago.

I think we are reaffirming both guidance’s, the revenue of about $015 to $1.045 billion and the earnings per share of $3.05 to $3.25.

We are really saying essentially we think we are going to be flat. I mean that is our best…

But to answer your question, I think the revenues in the first quarter were probably a little better than the first quarter that we had projected in our original guidance.

But we don’t project the quarter alone.

But for the remainder of the year it is going to be a little worse, but we still think we will be able to fall within the guidance we projected from a revenue side, even though the growth is slipping a little bit, and then the energy, I think we will make up some of the shortfall on the profit side.

Okay that’s helpful too. Then just from an industry standpoint, there was a lot of discussion a few weeks back about how a lot of manufacturing facilities were shutting down for the holidays maybe a little bit earlier than they normally do. Have you seen the facilities open up as they normally do? Are you guys seeing some of your business not come back as quickly as you though? Is there any color you can give in regards to that?

Well I think it’s only two days back from the holidays, so we really can’t give you any color. I mean there is no question a lot of businesses shut down for the two week period and it seemed fairly typical from ’08 to ’09. I mean we didn’t see any more than usual.

Okay that’s incredibly helpful. My last question is, if I remember your comments correctly from last quarter, you guys talked about being ready to make acquisitions potentially if the right ones came about to you. Do you have any color about the acquisition environment? For instance if you are seeing more properties come up for sale, if you are seeing prices for properties, as the environment is a little bit more stressed, become more attractive, do you have any thoughts there?

I think because of the holidays we really haven’t had much activity, quite honestly, in the last couple months. I think people are kind of thinking about other things. I think the real issue is that the sellers really haven’t adjusted to the market and so they are still looking or hoping to get the prices that they have traditionally gotten. We are still talking and are interested, but I think the price has to come down a little bit before we pull the trigger on anything significant.

Your next question comes from Andrea Wirth - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. Andrea Wirth - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: I just wanted to be clear, again, about what you are seeing and what we should expect for organic growth in the rental division. Based on just what you have seen in the last five weeks are you essentially seeing negative growth with it switching over, so we should essentially see growth go from 6.6 this quarter to negative next quarter, negative year-over-year growth? Am I understanding that correctly?

I think what we are talking about is each weeks revenues we are getting now are a little bit less than the prior week, so our week-over-week revenues have declined in the last probably eight or ten weeks. [Interposing] Andrea Wirth - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. : Got it, so you are just saying sequentially they are [interposing]

I think if you put it on a graph, we think we will have positive growth in the second quarter, but it will probably be significantly less than the first quarter and if that continues, which we don’t know whether it will or not, but if it continues to go downward the year-over-year growth will decline each quarter through the year. I will have a better handle at the end of next quarter where it is going to go, and if it starts declining more rapidly than it will be worse. Andrea Wirth - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: Right, right, no fair enough. That makes sense. I don’t know if you can give us somewhat of a sense, but I am just trying to understand the magnitude of the shift in kind of what you saw from November to December. Is this kind of a case where we should maybe expect growth rates to be cut in half, so maybe we would see something more along the lines of 3% growth next quarter, or is that even a little bit optimistic?

I wouldn’t be surprised at that, but I think we are really guessing.

Just keep in mind too, next quarter too you lose the extra week and you continue to have the headwind from the FS so total growth next quarter probably or very well could be negative, because for the quarter it is about a 7% losing the extra week.

It’s almost 8% for the week and its one thirteenth and plus the foreign exchange so it is likely that the quarter-over-quarter revenues will be negative. Andrea Wirth - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: Sure revenues will be, but if you look at just kind of the organic growth of the rental you probably should still see positive growth, at least given how conditions are right now?

We hope so.

Correct, correct. Andrea Wirth - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: I guess, I don’t know if you have done this type of internal analysis, but if you kind of look at the guidance range, what type of unemployment rate are you generally assuming? At this point I know it’s kind of a crapshoot, but what are you kind of looking at, 8%?

We really don’t, I think we’re really looking at our, what we think our revenues are going to do. That is kind of tied to an increase in unemployment I guess, but [interposing].

Kind of said another way, we look at these weekly net, are we positive for the week or negative. We mentioned for the last several weeks we have been negative after taking your new sales, less your reductions, less your lost accounts. So, we kind of have a number of scenarios we look at and how far up may that continue, is it going to get better or is it going to get worse, so we look at it that way. Assuming it stays the same as kind of the bad numbers from the last eight weeks that kind of assumes unemployment is going to continue to accelerate. It is indirectly factored into our scenarios, but not necessarily in that way. Andrea Wirth - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: Sure, Okay and then I just want to switch over to margins. That is a very impressive number. I want to say, according to my mile one of the best operating margin numbers I have seen since, it looks like, ’86. I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about how the benefits broke out. It sounds like you got some great benefit on the merchandise cost side. It sounds like you did get a little bit extra benefit from healthcare. I wonder if you could maybe try to quantify that? Then maybe on top of that, energy costs were higher, but did you get maybe a little bit of an additional bump just because maybe energy costs were coming down a little bit, but you still had some fuel surcharge benefit? I am just trying to understand of this 13.1% margin how much of that is really sustainable? I guess at this point how much is just some one time benefits that might not remain?

To answer a couple of those pieces of that question, on the payroll related side and the healthcare and so on, that probably helped us about ½ point. Again, as I mentioned in my scripted remarks, we have had quarters in the past that those kind of costs have jumped up and down and helped us or hurt us, so that is not what I would necessarily consider a long-term sustainable benefit. From the energy side it was somewhat higher than over the prior year and we do expect to get the benefit of that. I think your comment was a good one and I think, as Ron alluded to, if some of our annual price increases did go through when energy was a little higher there might have been some benefit of that, but that is part of what we are seeing in our shrinkage numbers, is some of that we are forced to back off as the costs have come down. Maybe the timing during the quarter helped us a little bit, but again, we don’t anticipate that being fully sustainable, other than the fact that the energy on the other end is going to help us. Andrea Wirth - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: Right and obviously you have done a fantastic job with your cost structure in general. I am just trying to understand what kind of level is sustainable. I mean obviously borrowing depending on a huge decline in volumes overall that could happen, do you think a margin level kind of in the 12% range would be sustainable throughout the rest of ’09?

We are looking at each other, Andrea. I think that might be a little strong. Andrea Wirth - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: That might be a little strong. Okay, fair enough.

That is probably my best answer.

I think it is going to be affected by the revenues probably as much as the cost side, because I think the costs are going to probably be what they are. They are relatively, I won’t say fixed, but a lot of them are fixed, and as the revenues come down obviously the margins get squeezed. So, we are really concerned where the revenues are and we are doing everything we can to control the costs. The one big asset we have had is that the merchandise continues to benefit us and I think, hopefully that will continue, because as our revenues shrink and we are not putting on new customers we don’t have to spend as much on new garments; so that hopefully will continue to help us. As revenues go down the delivery costs don’t change too much. It is not that easy to cut a route or a driver or things of that nature. Andrea Wirth - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: Definitely, fair enough. I have one last question on headcount. It sounds like your sales force headcount is up, but is the rest of your headcount maybe actually down? I know you haven’t done actually wholesale headcount reduction, but through attrition, things like that, is your headcount actually down when you look at kind of the operations side?

I think on the operations side we have given them a difficult time on replacing anybody, so the headcount might be down slightly. The sales force is, as I said in my scripted statement, up slightly. At this point we are in our phase two and if things deteriorate significantly we will go to our phase three and we will make headcount reductions. Andrea Wirth - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: Got it, got it. Great thanks so much, fantastic quarter.

Your next question comes from Andrew Steinerman with J.P. Morgan. Andrew Steinerman – J.P. Morgan: The last conference call, which goes back to the end of October, when asked about the underlying organic core growth within your revenue assumptions, you had indicated 2% to 4%. I wanted to get a sense of what do you think the underlying core organic growth would be in the revenue assumptions at this point. Even is you say that we are not sure, my question is of course revenues have deteriorated, how are you confident that you are able to maintain the general range of revenues at this point?

Well I think the 2% to 4% we gave in the last call, and again I mentioned that the guidance kind of assumes a number of different scenarios that we are trying to project out based on what’s going to happen with the economy and unemployment; I still think it is a fair range. I think the higher end of the range that we provide we might be a little less optimistic about being at the higher end than we were a quarter ago, but it was still a fairly broad range. Again, given significant further deterioration and so I think we still feel we can be within that range. I think we have some scenarios that still allow us to be between that 2% and 4% organic for the year. Considering we were 6.6% for the first quarter, that really isn’t that positive for the remaining part of the year. Andrew Steinerman – J.P. Morgan: I think you are saying the strong start really helps get you towards the goal of 2% to 4%.

That is exactly what we are saying.

That is exactly right, yes.

Your next question comes from Ali Mohamed with Boston Partners. Ali Mohamed – Boston Partners: You have a buy back authorization of other peoples values of their own businesses on the M&A side isn’t coming down. The market value of yours certainly did and you seem to be executing as well as we could have imagined. Do you have any comments on the buy back?

We don’t have any buyback authorization right now. We had a brief conversation at our last board meeting and we are going to have a meeting next week, and we may discuss it again, but there is no authorization currently. Ali Mohamed – Boston Partners: Okay, so you are going to be discussing it at the board meeting.

I believe so. Ali Mohamed – Boston Partners: Okay thank you.

Mr. Bartlett, there are no further questions at this time. I will turn the call back to you.

This is Ron. I want to thank you all for coming to our webcast and having an interest in our company. I can assure you that we are pushing forward both on the revenue side and we have a good cost containment plan to reach to projections that we have put out there. We look forward to talking to you next quarter and may things improve in the economy. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen that does conclude the conference call for today. We thank you for your participation.