All right. Cool. All right. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the next session of Baird's Global Consumer Technology and Services Conference. We're really happy to have everyone join us. I'm Andy Wittmann. I cover the facility services stocks here at Baird. Really happy to be joined again this year by Aramark. Jim Tarangelo is up on stage with me. He's the company's CFO. We have about half an hour to go through the company, the story. I'm going to spend half the time probably being pretty basic, to be honest with you, for those of you who might not know the story. Then we'll take about the second half of the time to get a little bit more in the weeds about what's going on today. Usually, to start things off, I usually just ask Jim to kind of give us a, who are you and what do you do, kind of introduction, 10,000-foot view. I'll use that to launch our series of questions. We also do have an iPad up here, which you can email. If you email session2@rwbaird.com, I'll monitor this iPad for questions as they might come in during our time together here today. Also, one last thing as a point of process here, we do have a breakout session after this presentation. If you had further questions, if you feel like they're too small or not important enough for the big room, we can certainly do some of those there. Jim, why don't you take us through a little bit of an overview on Aramark? Sure. Jim Tarangelo, I'm the CFO of Aramark. I've been with the company for over 20 years. Took over as CFO about a year and a half ago. Nice to be back here with you again, Andy. Again, Aramark off to a really nice start in the first half of this year. Really pleased with the results we've generated. Seeing nice momentum with our revenues and expect revenues to accelerate significantly in the second half of the year. We're off to a really nice start with our retention rates, our new business overall, continued progression on margins, and a nice improvement in our balance sheet in terms of financial flexibility and deleveraging the organization. With that, we're pleased with the outlook and have a lot of confidence in the path forward. OK. Cool. I want to back up a few years, actually, to start. I want to start with John Zillmer coming in in 2019, because I think that was a really important change in philosophically how you guys go to market and how you approach your employees and your customers. While that does seem like a long time ago, there was this thing called COVID that happened right after he joined, which was a gigantic setback for everything in the world, particularly for the contract catering business, because it is so profound of the depths of the challenges. It slowed down what was going to be good momentum that we've started to see more recently here now, just in the last couple of years. With that, it's too long of a preamble. Why don't you talk about some of the changes fundamentally that John Zillmer's approach brought to the mindset of the employees at Aramark and why that matters? Yeah. The company's gone through quite a remarkable transformation with John coming back and the leadership changes that were made back in 2019. We shifted to really a growth-oriented model with a hospitality focus, which was always there, but we really reignited that with John's return to the company. A number of strategic actions to execute that. We realigned the incentives of the organization so that 40% of our incentive base comp is based on net new. For us, net new is our gross wins, less retention, a really important metric for the organization. We decentralized the organization, putting resources back in the respective lines of business, putting decision-making closer to the clients, and elevating the levels of customer service. Those are some of the key actions that enabled us to transform to this growth-oriented company. Growth drives scale for us. That drives scale in our supply chain, scale in our SG&A, which is a big driver of the margin improvements that we've carried out. It is this growth-oriented model, and it's generating the results we expect and has been very effective. I always like to say, many of you I've been on the phone with, these types of companies like Aramark, with lots of recurring revenue, growth usually starts with a customer you don't lose. Not to say that you want every customer, but most customers, if you can keep customer retention high, that's a really great indicator that things are going well. Can you just talk about the journey about customer retention in particular, the net part of the net new, and just talk about kind of where you've been, where you are today, and what do you think is a realistic target for that over time? Yeah. I mean, we're off to a really strong start with retention. Through the first half of the year, we were ahead of 98%, which is a really strong point for where we are at this point of the year. I think the second half benefits from some just general statistics, where there's simply less rebid activity in terms of size and scale. With that, we're very confident in we have this 95%-96% target that we established as part of that growth algorithm. We are certainly on track to either achieve or exceed that based on the first half performance. We successfully retained one of our largest clients at Aramark and the largest in our collegiate hospitality group, which is Arizona State University. Not only did we retain it, we actually added athletics to it. We added the faculty dining as well. I think it's a testament to our approach and the success that we've achieved in improving and elevating the retention for the company. Is there anything to read into the retention rate coming into the high end, or maybe even above this year, at least through the first half of the year, as to what it could imply about the future, about the service culture? Was it an unusually low number of rebids this year that maybe bumped that number? I'm just kind of wondering how to think about this and what it might imply about the future. Yeah. I think the 95%-96% retention levels, which is really part of this growth-oriented model and elevating retention, if you exclude some of these facilities exits over the past year, we've sort of been maintaining. So we have elevated retention levels from where we were prior to the transformation. I certainly think exceeding 95% is something that we expect and plan for each year. I think this year in particular. On top of that, I think there's probably a little less rebid activity as well that's helping a bit of a tailwind on top of that. Got it. OK. One of the things you made in your preamble was you talked about how you're expecting a ramp in growth in the second half. Obviously, you've gotten an innumerable number of questions on this one. I think for the benefit of the room, we should ask it again. I think the first half of the year, I think last quarter, maybe organic growth was around the 3% range, if I'm not mistaken. You're expecting much more than that in the second half. Can you just talk about why the acceleration is expected and the confidence you have in it? Yeah. The second quarter was 3% organic. We talked about growth accelerating throughout the course of the second quarter for the organization. We generated 6% growth in the month of April, which I think was reflective of sort of the run rate for the quarter. On top of that, you talked about some of the facilities exits in the prior year. That had about a 2% headwind on the organization, where those contracts were exited primarily in June and July of the prior year. On top of that sort of 6%, we will exit and lap those exits in essentially the fourth quarter, in which we would expect to add another 2%. That's the September quarter for everyone who's paying attention. September quarter is the fourth quarter. Go ahead. Sorry to cut you off. No, that's right. Sort of as we look toward exiting that fourth quarter, we're looking at an exit rate in the 8% neighborhood. For the company, the multi-year algorithm is 5%-8%. To sustain and fuel this growth-oriented and the margin levers, anywhere in that range, we're in a good spot. We'll be exiting the year sort of at the high end of that range. Yeah. What's interesting about the 8% now is it was not that many years ago that you actually had a number that was 8% or actually more, but that also had the nominal benefit from inflation that came out of the COVID thing. This is an 8% level with a different level of inflation underneath it. Is that right? Yeah. I think it's reflective, again, this underlying growth rate, excluding unusually high inflation, excluding the COVID recovery. 5%-8% is where we want to be as an organization. Prior to the growth transformation, we were in the 2%-3% range. That is not enough to drive the margin levers and scale. This underlying, and by the way, that excludes obviously the 53rd week, which further complicates things. I refer to this underlying growth rate in that range. I think we are well on track to be in that range. Yeah. For someone who's covered this one since its most recent IPO, this seems like a kind of a different level. And then combining last year, you're going to say last year was the best year you've had since you've been a public company. This This time, I think, as I look back to it, 50 basis points of margin last year. This year, maybe 40-50 basis points again, probably coming, at least implicit in your guidance, along with this top line. In 2014, these were numbers that we weren't considering. No one was really considering. I want to just kind of point that out. As it relates to margin expansion, I guess maybe that's the next place I want to go. Again, 50 basis points is kind of unusually strong. Maybe you could or it's above your long-term algorithm. How about we put it that way? Right. Why don't you talk about what some of the drivers are today that are affording this above long-term average rate of margin expansion? Big picture, we've made really good progress in growing the margins. Again, the margin growth coming out of the growth. It's not leading with margin. We've been down that path. If you lead with margin, you might make cuts to labor and food that sort of then affect your retention rate. It all starts with growth. That growth has contributed to the margin increasing from about 4.6% in fiscal 2023 to 5.1% in fiscal 2024. Midpoint of the guidance, I think, is about 5.5%, I think, is where that would be. We've been pretty consistently generating about 40 basis points of margin improvement year after year and quarter after quarter. You hear me talking about margin levers. For us, the lever, it starts with scale. Not unlike an Amazon or Walmart model, the bigger you are, the more procurement you have, the better you're able to negotiate deals with manufacturers and suppliers, the higher the tiers are in terms of NVDs and rebates. That's really a core component of our model to be bigger, more efficient, better economics on supply chain. A second lever we talk about is simply good old-fashioned scale and overhead. We look to really be disciplined about growing our overhead. We're a fit-for-purpose organization, having executed the spin of the uniforms business about a year and a half ago. We're able to take on a significant amount of growth without adding a lot in the way of overhead. Those have been kind of the two main drivers of margin improvement. On top of that, we have this concept of new business margin progression. It simply means as you take on large new accounts, and that's a good thing. We've elevated that. We're taking on a lot more new business. Not unlike sort of a restaurant, there's start of a cost, and it takes some time to become more efficient and create those margins toward the steady state margins as well. As we've had elevated levels of new business, initially, that's a margin headwind that turns into a margin tailwind. That's what we're seeing as those accounts mature. Then good old-fashioned middle of the P&L, which is managing food and labor at the account level. There we look for moderate improvements, just get a little bit better each year, providing high quality of service and quality to our clients, and slight improvement on the margins. You add those four up, and those are really the key drivers of the margin story for us. As you look back at your business's margins today versus the prior peaks of what the margins were, I think they peaked in 2018 or 2019 if you excluded the uniform business. I think that is the last time we saw the peak. I guess maybe the question is, do you see that as the cap? That was a very cost-focused management team before, John, that really tried to push margin at the expense of growth. Is that a ceiling to where your margins can go? Or do you feel like the strategy you have in place now can get there and then blow through it? It's not a ceiling. I think the reason it's lower than where it was, again, we've invested significantly in growth, doubling the size of the sales and marketing organizations. We've invested in technology. We were sort of underinvested previously. Then again, taking on that new business has initially created some margin headwinds versus where we were. The 40%-50% basis points we've done, I think, is sort of elevated beyond the core model. Once we reach sort of this steady state, I think 20%-30% basis points of margin improvement over the longer term is certainly reasonable as well. That will get us ahead of where we were back in 2019. Yeah. OK. I wanted to talk about your business by segment next. Your international business is the smaller one, but I'm going to start there anyway. It's interesting because I think this business has been probably a very consistent performance, growing above the rate of your U.S. business. I'm just wondering what it is about this business that's allowed it to be so successful. Yeah, maybe I'll just leave it there. Sure. I've spent a significant portion of my career, probably half my career in the international business as the CFO of that business back in the 2014 time period. The team there has done a great job elevating and exceeding expectations, starting with Carl Mittleman, the COO, and Paul Sizer, the CFO. Our leadership teams in the countries where we're operating are very seasoned and tenured and continue to deliver really double-digit growth quarter- after- quarter and year- over- year. I think it starts with the team we have in place. They've been very successful at establishing leadership positions in sort of certain subsectors. As an example, we're very strong in what we call remote services. That's serving the mines down in South America. These are very complex mines with hundreds and hundreds of employees, 12,000 feet up in the mountains. The folks are there for two weeks at a time. We do the facilities, the lodging. Imagine serving out the needs and capabilities to do that successfully. Remote services means mining in Chile. In the U.K., remote services means offshore rigs. We do the accommodations and food services there. We are a leader in that market. In Canada, it means extracting and doing the oil platforms there. That is an area where Aramark is very strong and able to leverage our capabilities across the portfolio. The team's done a nice job identifying these subsectors, or even though we may be smaller sometimes than our competitors, we are very effective in delivering against those. I think the market overall in international is a little bit more insourced today, meaning there is a little bit more of an opportunity to outsource. It is the team, it is the strategy, and it is some market dynamics that I think have driven the success that we have seen in our international portfolio. As a result of that, the margins here are a little bit lower than the U.S. segment's margins. Do you expect that its stronger growth rate will lead to faster margin expansion than the corporate average? Yeah. So there are two reasons for that. The first is the scale in SG&A. We operate a country-specific operating model, which means we have a leadership team in each of the respective countries that we operate. By the way, that's the right approach. You do not want to go regional. You need a country-specific local expertise to drive growth in international. With that, once this country reaches a certain size and scale, the SG&A as a percentage of revenue looks more like the U.S. That is factor one. Factor two is just the GPO, which has more attractive margin characteristics, is a bigger percentage of the pie in the U.S. business. As that grows internationally as well, the margins will look more similar. Now, despite that, the international margins have, I think they were actually ahead of where they were in 2019. They've continued to generate pretty consistent margin improvement in the 40-50 basis points neighborhood. Yep. OK. The U.S. business is the behemoth. This is where, I guess, it's what, two-thirds of your profits or more than that? Of revenue. About two-thirds of revenue. Yeah, two-thirds of revenue. Can you just talk about some of the trends in terms of outsourcing? For a while, during COVID and right after COVID, there was an uptick in first-time outsourcers. I think that's more normalized today. Why don't you just talk about what you're seeing in terms of the ability to find gross new wins? Right. Yeah. I think one of the questions we get a lot from investors, I think we're in steady state. The question is, hey, are you still benefiting from coming at it? During COVID, it was very difficult for companies to do their own food service, given the heightened safety requirements, the supply chain challenges, labor challenges. Labor was really hard. Right. I think at this point, we're in a steady state of how we're converting our new business. Generally, about maybe 40% or so of our wins is coming from first-time outsourcing. That's maybe a little bit elevated. Historically, maybe that's a third or so. About a third coming from small and regional players, another third coming from the global players. I think we're in a steady state in terms of first-time outsourcing conversion. I think we're in a good state with new business overall. I mean, each of the respective sectors that we operate in has a lot of runway. I mean, we target generally 8%-10%. This is annualized new wins. That's really the starting point for the budget across all the sectors. Another question, hey, what sectors are performing well? I mean, all of them, we see significant growth opportunities ahead. We think the U.S. is in a healthy position in terms of the outlook for new business. It is probably worth just for the benefit of the room for you to do the build on price, yeah, price, volume, net new, kind of the breakdown for the five to eight, just so people can get a sense of where it is all coming from. Sure. The algorithm that starts, it starts with targeting 8%-10% annualized new business, a retention rate of 95% or better. Just sort of simple math, you are at 9% new and 5% lost retention. That gets you to about a 4%-5% net new, which is an important thing. These are on an annualized basis. On top of that, we have pricing and what we call base business growth. You can think of it as same-store sales, sort of 2%-3%. That puts you right in the middle of the range of the 5%-8% organic growth that we target. Yep. Maybe I'm guilty of making too much out of this, but things like fundamental changes like name, image, and likeness in college sports has driven this total arms race for revenue so you can pay college athletes. The obvious result of this was decades of precedent of college sporting athletic venues refusing to have alcohol sales have now said, OK, we're OK with the trade-off now today. I'm curious as to your thoughts on how much more there is to go on that. If there are other developments in any of your businesses which are showing these kinds of inflection points or change points where things are kind of different now than maybe they've been. Maybe that could be from a technology development. Certainly, there's sports. I think about it's incredible the experience that you get as a result of some of the technology. Other things like that that are interesting, that are driving growth or efficiencies. Yeah. You're absolutely right. Let's start with collegiate athletics, which, as you said, athletes essentially being paid through name, image, and likeness, which has increased funding requirements for schools to fund those programs. They are increasingly looking to professionalize the collegiate athletic experience. Think about how an NFL or baseball stadium was in the U.S. back in 20 to 30 years ago and where we are today. I think there's a similar opportunity really throughout collegiate sports to continue to elevate, professionalize, increase the retail experience, and literally invest in those facilities, which is a source of opportunity for Aramark, both our existing clients and potentially new clients, really leveraging the strong portfolio of collegiate hospitality clients that we have. We have a very strong presence in the SEC with both residential meal plans, traditional food, and as well as athletics. As these schools roll out alcohol sales, not surprising, the average checks increase significantly. A lot of these college games actually have more fans than a typical NFL game. We are seeing levels of revenue being generated at a collegiate football game that is approaching the NFL, which five years ago, that would not have been the case. On top of that, you mentioned technology. Again, going into a stadium as an example, having frictionless automated checkout, where you might have one attendant who can monitor six or seven different kiosks for folks to get their concessions and their beers and so forth, has increased the efficiency and the throughput and the number of transactions that we are able to serve. How built out is that in the college game? I go to a lot of college sports events. It's my guilty pleasure in life. I'm still not seeing. Are you taking advantage of the alcohol sales? Yeah. It's funny because I go to the pro sports games. You've got all this stuff where sometimes it's not even one checker out over 16. There's that. You've got the beer person that's got the tub and just handing it out. There's so much more throughput, so much accessibility. I'm seeing this at lots of pro sports venues, but I haven't seen it at a lot of the college venues I've been yet. Is this not in place today and still on the come mostly? I think it's in some stadiums. I think some of the stadiums that the collegiate are a little bit more restricted from in terms of the infrastructure. At the end of the day. That's right. Our sports folks, our sports leaders are managing. When we have a large opportunity for sports in our collegiate business, the sports operators are running that. It is the same folks that are putting in the kiosk and increasing the throughput. They are the same folks that are managing. Leveraging the relationship that's from the dorm food or the retail and the union, they're leveraging those relationships, but they're bringing in the skill set from your NFL and proteins. That's right. Which only makes sense. I have to think that that's a different barrier to entry too, because once you start getting to that level where you need that technology, you just, you got to be with an Aramark probably. Yeah. If you look at some of the wins, University of Nebraska's one where we beat out a smaller regional type player. That's right. I think there's a lot of those where the capabilities, the expertise, frankly, the levels of capital that would be needed to sort of transform a stadium gives a nice advantage to a larger global player. Yep. OK. I guess maybe it's probably a question that's percolating in some people's minds about the COVID effect on people working from home. I just would like probably an update on where you see you've talked steady. We've steady. We've said steady state a few times here. I think this is another one of those areas. Are you getting any benefit from return to office still, or is that back in the steady state again? Yeah. Let's start with our, we call our business and industry segment is where this would come through. We've seen really nice growth across our BNI segment, both in the U.S. and in the international portfolio. We actually, I think, grew about 13% in the second quarter. It has been very strong. The main source of that growth is what we talked about earlier, just the new business in that segment. They've done a nice job building up a nice pipeline of small, medium, and large accounts. The base business, as I mentioned earlier, sort of the same store sales is coming through with higher participation rates. The levels of subsidy, when we're serving a typical corporate client, two-thirds of those clients are subsidized, which means the meals you pay in the corporate cafe will likely be cheaper than the meals you pay on the high street. That, I think, in addition to proactive retail strategies, elevates the participation rates and increases our same-store sales. There's a moderate, I call it very moderate tailwind to back to work, which I think if it was two years ago, it was three days a week for a lot of corporate clients. Last year, it probably would have been more like four. We have a heavy presence in financial services here in New York, clients like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, and they're primarily, I'd say, five days a week. I think that's why sort of this steady state with maybe this moderate tailwind on top of that. It's really the core performance of the business that's driving the results. Got it. I want to ask one last question here, and it's kind of a detailed question on your guidance. You gave yourself and you're implicit in your guidance a pretty big FX headwind at the start of the year. The start of the year for you was when you gave your initial guidance, which was November, because you have a September fiscal year. The dollar has changed a lot since November. We can all agree. Any thoughts on how investors should be thinking about FX as we round out the year here? Yeah, sure. I think the initial guidance had about a $200 million headwind for the full year. I think year to date, it was about $115 million of a headwind. Year to date through March. Through March, exactly right. Second half, I did not change the guidance. I I think my quote on the call was we are sort of one tweet away from FX rates going the other way. If rates stay where they are today, is there some potential upside to that? Potentially. Again, I think we are just cautious given how there has been some fluctuations over the last, even over the last two months on some of the FX currencies. The dollar is certainly in a better position than it was when we started the year. Great. I think I'm going to leave it there. If you have any other questions that you want to follow up with Jim on, please meet us at the breakout, which is located in the Astra Suite B. We'll see you there in a little bit. Great. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Thanks for joining us.