Cintas (CTAS) FY2026: Record 23.1% Margin, and a UniFirst Deal That Adds $2.8B of Debt and 14.3M Shares
Cintas closed fiscal 2026 with its highest operating margin on record — 23.14% on $11.26 billion of revenue, against 22.82% in fiscal 2025 — and then committed to the largest acquisition in its history. GAAP revenue grew 8.9%; organic revenue grew 8.3%, and it did so within a narrow 80 basis point band in every quarter of the year (7.8%, 8.6%, 8.2%, 8.4%, per the company's quarterly earnings releases), which is the signature of a business monetizing route density rather than riding a cycle.
The tension in this filing is not operational — it is in the capital structure, and it runs in two directions at once. The UniFirst transaction, valued at approximately $5.5 billion of enterprise value, is expected to add roughly $2.8 billion of new debt, taking consolidated indebtedness from about $2.4 billion to approximately $5.2 billion (Cintas's own estimate, disclosed in the 10-K risk factors). It will also issue equity: UniFirst holders receive $155.00 in cash plus 0.7720 Cintas shares per share, and Cintas expects to issue approximately 14.26 million shares, leaving legacy UniFirst holders with roughly 3.4% of the combined company. So this is not a debt-only story. A company that spent fiscal 2026 returning $1.65 billion to shareholders — $952.1 million of buybacks and $701.5 million of dividends — is about to add leverage and undo roughly three years of share-count reduction in a single transaction. Fiscal 2027 guidance excludes any future share repurchases. For a compounder that has returned cash relentlessly for decades, the question for fiscal 2027 is whether the machine keeps compounding in the same form.
One caveat before the numbers: the deal is not closed. UniFirst shareholders approved it on June 11, 2026, but on the same day both companies received a Second Request from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, extending the antitrust waiting period. Closing is expected in the second half of calendar 2026, and a termination fee of $350.0 million is payable to UniFirst under specified circumstances if the deal fails.
