Vestis (VSTS) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Motley Fool Transcribing, The Motley Fool

Tue, February 10, 2026 astatine 10:14 AM CST 25 min read

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Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026 astatine 8:30 a.m. ET

• Chief Executive Officer — James Jay Barber

• Chief Financial Officer — Adam Bowen

• Chief Operating Officer — Bill Seward

• Vice President, Investor Relations — Stefan Neely

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James Jay Barber: Thank you, Stefan, and bully morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. We started fiscal 2026 with disciplined execution and a wide absorption connected our concern translation framework. I privation to locomotion you done what we person accomplished successful the archetypal 4th crossed our 3 pillars: operational excellence, commercialized excellence, and web and plus optimization. Before that, I privation to concisely interaction connected the fiscal show for the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $70,000,000, improving sequentially from fiscal Q4 2025, which represented a debased constituent successful our profitability. This betterment is precisely what we acceptable retired to execute with our transformation, reflecting aboriginal tangible advancement from actions to crook the outgo curve and thrust amended utilization of our radical and our network.

Now turning to the archetypal pillar of our concern transformation, operational excellence. In a route-based, asset-intensive concern similar ours, operational excellence starts with the basics: accordant work and a web that runs reliably each day. When we execute good successful our plants, we amended productivity, heighten work quality, and unlock operating leverage crossed our network. In the archetypal quarter, we made advancement successful the starring indicators that substance astir to our customers. On-time transportation improved 300 ground points versus 2025. Plant productivity improved 7%, and lawsuit complaints declined 12% twelvemonth implicit year, and our mean play mislaid concern successful Q1 declined 15% from the 4th quarter. These are not conscionable statistics; they are starring indicators of operational ratio and profitability.

We expect the benefits to amusement up successful lawsuit retention, little outgo per pound, and stronger operating leverage. This is the benignant of advancement that builds momentum due to the fact that erstwhile the web runs better, we tin service customers much reliably and make capableness for the close growth. Going forward, operating leverage is going to beryllium our superior scorecard for worth creation. In the archetypal quarter, we saw a $0.02 betterment successful outgo per lb implicit fiscal Q1 2025, which translates to astir $10,000,000 successful adjusted EBITDA astatine our existent measurement and premix levels. We expect to spot continued betterment successful this inclination passim the year. And fto maine beryllium clear, this is not a one-quarter effort.