Seeing as we are between earnings seasons, the pace of earnings has been at a crawl over the past few weeks. As shown in the chart, things will more or less remain that way for the rest of June and into July with only 51 reports between now and July 15th. Afterward, things pick up when the major financials start to report their quarterly results as earnings season begins in earnest with 130 reports that week and 527 the following week.

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With the caveat of small sample size, recently there have been very few earnings triple plays. This morning’s quarterly report from UniFirst (UNF), however, broke a two-week drought. Before UNF, the most recent triple play was Restoration Hardware (RH) on June 12th. We define a triple play as a beat in sales and EPS estimates in addition to the company raising guidance. We like to look at these as they can be indicative of solid fundamental health of a company.

UniFirst (UNF), a uniform/workwear rental and facility service company, saw EPS come in at $2.46, well above estimates of $1.70. Revenues were over $12 million above estimates at $453.72 mln; 6.2% growth versus the comparable quarter last year. This was UNF’s second consecutive triple play. The company cited revenues benefiting from solid organic growth and lower costs in its core business in addition to solid growth and margins in its specialty garments business (nuclear decontamination and cleanroom operations) thanks to a 2018 acquisition paying off.

In the other six triple plays in its earnings history, UNF has averaged a gap up of 6.78% followed by an average decline from open to close of 1.7%. UNF has followed this script today with the stock gapping up 7.37% and so far falling 1.28% from the open as of this writing. 

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