On Thursday, UniFirst (NYSE:UNF), which cleans radiocative material, reported results for the second quarter of fiscal 2006. Sounds like one cool company, eh? Technically, UniFirst does deal with the decontamination of radioactive materials, but only because it has to wash a lot of different types of clothes. UniFirst's primary business is to provide workplace uniforms and protective clothing for companies in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

Uniforms and washing clothes is about as boring as it gets. But if you're a Peter Lynch fan, you know that boring is cool for a Foolish investor. Foolish colleague Stephen D. Simpson already covered the many qualitative reasons to like the drab demeanor of the company, but a numbers checkup is still required.

A business that's unappealing might also catch the eye of a studious investor. But UniFirst's reduced earnings are nothing to look at. Second-quarter diluted EPS declined to $0.33 from $0.52. What was unsettling about the precipitous drop was that it was blamed primarily on higher energy prices, even though those costs were similar to the first quarter. When an analyst brought this up in the conference call, management said it was more concerned about the other costs associated with the business. Some of them included decreased revenues from the specialty garments segment and increased selling costs as the company expands its sales force. EPS for the year is now expected to be lower than FY 2005 and to come in at $1.95 to $2.00.

I don't want to be too harsh in my analysis, considering that UniFirst has provided quality returns for investors for many years, especially those who have regularly invested in it. Plus, the second-quarter revenues came in at a record $202.2 million, and revenue guidance for the year was raised to $805 million to $810 million. If management can start to control costs, then this year's results may simply make for a nice comparison for next year's results. The stock is already down nearly 30% from its 52-week high reached earlier this year, but I'll be watching to see if the poor results for the first half can push the price down even further in hopes of catching a true bargain.

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Fool contributor John Bluis does not own any shares of UniFirst.