First let’s look at the income statement itself, in Figure 1, below. We pulled up a few prior first fiscal quarter results for comparison.

OK, the financial performance itself seems solid — but wow, Cintas classifies more than 20 percent of its revenue as “Other.” And that Other segment, whatever it is, went from $468.7 million two years ago to $567.7 million today; that’s an increase of 21 percent. That compares to growth of only 14 percent for Cintas’ uniform and facilities rental segment, which supposedly is the star of the show. 

So exactly what’s in that Other segment? Why is it growing so fast, and what else can we learn about its performance? 

Those answers are easy to find if you know where to look.

To start we went to the Disclosures and Footnotes tool, to find Cintas’ earnings release for its fiscal first quarter. (This was not hard; Cintas filed it at 8:32 a.m. on Wednesday and Calcbench had it indexed within minutes.) Read through the release and you’ll find that the Other segment Cintas lists on the income statement is actually two segments — First Aid and Safety Services, and another other segment labeled “All Other.” See Figure 2, below.

Not only do we have a more precise breakdown of operating segments; we have more granular data for each of those segments. For example, we can now calculate that All Other has an operating margin of 15.7 percent; First Aid and Safety has a margin of 24.3 percent; and Uniform and Facilities Rental has one of 23.1 percent. 

From there you could continue digging. For example, you could use our Export History feature to pull up disclosures from prior periods and assess historical performance. We did that, to compile this chart of All Other’s performance for the last 12 quarters. (Actual performance in blue; trend line in red.)

All well and good, but we still have the question: What is “All Other”? 

For that, we used the Disclosures and Footnotes tool again to open Cintas’ Management Discussion & Analysis section from its most recent annual report. Pretty near the top we found our answer: 

The Uniform Rental and Facility Services reportable operating segment consists of the rental and servicing of uniforms and other garments including flame resistant clothing, mats, mops and shop towels and other ancillary items. In addition to these rental items, restroom cleaning services and supplies and the sale of items from our catalogs to our customers on route are included within this reportable operating segment. The First Aid and Safety Services reportable operating segment consists of first aid and safety products and services. The remainder of Cintas’ business, which consists of the Fire Protection Services operating segment and the Uniform Direct Sale operating segment, is included in All Other.

So, direct sales of uniforms and fire protection services; that’s the answer, and you’d only find it by digging into the footnotes.