Cintas: a recession survivor

Article Excerpt

Cintas’s shares fell from $43 in 2007 to just $18 in March 2009, mainly because the recession prompted businesses to slash their spending on the company’s uniform rentals and other services. That prompted Cintas to cut its costs, mainly by closing plants and merging delivery routes. The savings helped it deal with rising fuel and cotton prices in the wake of the downturn. Cintas also made its sales force more efficient by training each employee to sell all of its products, instead of focusing on just one. These moves are starting to pay off for the company, and the stock has rebounded strongly as a result. We feel it will keep climbing as the U.S. economy continues to recover. CINTAS CORP. $39 (Nasdaq symbol CTAS; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 129.7 million; Market cap: $5.1 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.3; Dividend yield: 1.4%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.cintas.com) provides a wide range of products and services to over 900,000 businesses,…