Greetings, and welcome to the UniFirst Corp. First Quarter Earnings Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode after which we'll conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Steven Sintros, UniFirst President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning. I'm Steven Sintros, UniFirst's President and Chief Executive Officer. Joining me today is Shane O'Connor, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I'd like to welcome you to UniFirst Corporation's conference call to review our first quarter results for fiscal year 2023. This call will be on a listen-only mode until we complete our prepared remarks, but first, 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, optimistic, believe, estimate, expect, intend and similar 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 risk factors. For more information, please refer to the discussion of these risk factors in our most recent Form 10-K and 10-Q filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Overall, our results for the first quarter came in largely as anticipated, and I continue to be pleased with the steady progress of our key technology and infrastructure initiatives. We continue to be focused on making long-term investments in our business designed to accelerate growth and profitability as well as ensure we are providing industry-leading services for years to come. I want to thank our thousands of dedicated team partners to continue to always deliver for each other and our customers. Consolidated revenues in the first quarter grew 11.4% and adjusted earnings per share grew 10.5%. Shane will provide the details of our first quarter results shortly as well as comment on our outlook for the full fiscal year, which remains unchanged from our year-end earnings call. We are pleased with the execution of our team, which continue to deliver…

Thanks, Steve. In our first quarter of 2023, consolidated revenues were $541.8 million, up 11.4% from $486.2 million a year ago, and consolidated operating income decreased to $43.4 million from $44.8 million or 3.1%. Net income for the quarter increased to $34 million or $1.81 per diluted share from $33.7 million or $1.77 per diluted share. Our financial results in the first quarters of fiscal 2023 and 2022 included approximately $10 million and $5.9 million, respectively, of costs directly attributable to the three key initiatives that Steve discussed. Excluding these initiative costs, adjusted operating income increased to $53.5 million compared to $50.7 million in prior year or 5.4%. Adjusted net income increased to $41.5 million from $38.1 million, and adjusted diluted earnings per share increased to $2.21 from $2 or 10.5%. Our Core Laundry Operations revenues for the quarter were $477.4 million, up 11.3% from the first quarter of 2022. Core Laundry organic growth, which adjusts for the estimated effect of acquisitions as well as fluctuations in the Canadian dollar, was 10.7%. This strong organic growth rate was primarily the result of solid sales performance and customer retention as well as efforts over the last year to share with our customers cost increases that we have incurred in our business due to the ongoing inflationary environment. Core Laundry operating margin decreased to 7.1% for the quarter or $33.8 million from 8.5% in prior year or $36.5 million. The costs we incurred related to our key initiatives were recorded to the Core Laundry Operations segment. And excluding these costs, the segment's adjusted operating margin decreased to 9.2% from 9.9% in prior year. The largest item impacting our adjusted operating margin compared to prior year continues to be merchandise amortization, resulting from the inflationary effect on the cost of our products as…

[Operator Instructions] Our first phone question is from the line of Andy Wittmann with Baird. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Great. I just thought I would start with a question on your outlook. The organic growth in the core segment was 10.7%. Good, I'd say, a pretty good result there. But the implied revenue guidance for the rest of the year suggests total growth of like 5.8% to 6.8% for the rest of the year. So pretty market deceleration. I totally understand that this is just the first quarter, but I'm just curious as to why there wasn't a guidance raised because that level of deceleration is a little bit surprising. So hoping you can provide a little bit of detail as to the thought process behind that.

Yes, Andy, it's a good question. I think when you look at next year and you look at the trajectory of our revenues and what happened in 2022 with the heavy inflation, some of which we're still obviously experiencing. We were obviously working with our customers as we've been talking about to try to offset some of the inflationary impact of all the things we've been talking about that have impacted the business. We don't expect that to be as significant as we annualize some of that activity that happened in the latter half of 2022. And so therefore, when you look at the result of our first quarter, we made the comment that it was mostly as expected. That was really the case from a top line perspective as well. So, I think that deceleration is something that we anticipate and is largely the result of some of those pricing activities, including some specifically related to the energy prices.

Got it. So energy prices, maybe there's fuel surcharges or other things that might go away with prices coming down. Are there other things on the cost structure? I mean, obviously, you talked a lot about merchandise, not just this quarter, for the last several quarters, talked about labor. Are there -- are you seeing moderating trends in those other key categories that would, I guess, support lower price adjustments for the balance of '23 than you've had over the last year or so?

Yes, I think when you look at the inflationary environment you've hit on a couple of the larger areas, sort of labor and energy. I would say the environment is still challenging from a cost perspective, but we are seeing some moderation. And you can see it in the cost of, say, gasoline. Some other aspects of energy are still dynamic, like natural gas was still pretty high during the quarter. Electricity has remained high. We're probably not seeing things accelerate the way they were during 2022, but there are many things we're also not seeing retreat and some -- many remain high. So, we're cautiously optimistic that the balance of '23 will be less dynamic than '22 from a cost increase perspective. But there's still pockets of challenging and labor still one of the larger ones, although we're seeing some, I'd say, minor improvements in that area in terms of labor availability, the cost of labor remains high.

Thank you. And our next question is from the line of Andrew Steinerman with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Would you be willing to share with us how much kind of in basis points in percentage terms merchandise amortization was a drag to the core margins in the first quarter? How much you're suggesting merchandise amortization will affect the full year?

Yes, absolutely. Sort of at the end of last year, I had indicated that the merchandise headwind for the year was going to approximate about a point. I still believe that that's the case. And in the first quarter, the headwind that we saw from merchandise amortization was about a point. So, we expect that, that headwind is going to continue throughout the year.

Great. And could you also tell us what you're penciling in for energy as a percentage of revenues for the year?

Yes. So for the year, my energy expectation is 4.5%.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And at this moment, I'm showing no further questions.

Okay. I'd like to thank everyone for joining us to review our first quarter fiscal 2023. We look forward to speaking with everyone again in March when we expect to report our second quarter performance as well as the outlook for the remainder of fiscal 2023. Thank you, and have a great day.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's call. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your lines, and have a good day.