Hey, good morning. Welcome to the 26th Annual Needham Growth Conference. Thanks for joining us today. We're gonna sit down with a discussion with the co-CEO of Clean Harbors, Mike Battles, and CFO, Eric Dugas. Also with us today in the audience, Senior VP, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications, Jim Buckley. Here you are, Jim. My name is Jim Ricchiuti, and senior analyst here in the Equity Research Department at Needham, covering industrial technology companies. I think most in the audience are familiar with Clean Harbors, one of the strongest industrial growth stories, I think, over the past 20 years that we've come across. So why don't we jump right into the Q&A? Guys, welcome. Thank you. Welcome to the conference. Jim, thank you, and thanks for the team at Needham for having us. It's always a, always a pleasure to come out and, and see the team, and- Well, we appreciate you joining. Meet all kinds of new investors. It's great. Okay. Let's start off with the Environmental Services segment, which, for those in the audience, a little bit more than 80% of the total revenues. The ES business has been, yeah, generating solid growth, healthy margin expansion over the last couple of years. And, you know, historically, you guys have talked about it, and I think we've looked at it on the sell side, about, you know, the correlation in the business to industrial production, you know, which obviously makes sense, just, you know, given the nature of that business. But, you know, more recently, the ES business has been, you know, growing faster- Mm ... than industrial production. Mm. And, so what's your assessment as to why? What- Yeah, so, you know, it's a good question 'cause, you know, Jim, you've followed us for a long time, and the answer has been, "Hey, industrial production moves up, we're gonna grow, you know, 100 basis points, 200 basis points as fast as industrial production." And in the most recent track record, we've grown much, much faster than that. And as industrial production slows or flattish or even down, there's some concerns, certainly in the investing community and within the management team, as to, you know, what happens to us when that happens. And so we, you know, we look at this all the time. We have conversations with our teams. We look at the sales pipeline. I'm here to say a couple of things. First of all, inflation was high in those years, so our cost structure raised. And since we have such scarce assets and a disciplined competitor base, we were able to raise price at a pretty good clip, probably faster than inflation, to drive the margin appreciation that we're seeing, we saw in 2022 and in 2023, in the Environmental Services business. But, you know, more importantly, I'm not sure all Industrial production is measured the same. I feel like investments that have been made in the chemical space, investments that have been made in the semiconductor space, investments that have been made in green technology, those generate a fair amount of hazardous waste. And so it's. I, I. Again, it's hard for me to pinpoint as to why, if IP is flattish, why are we growing at 5%? The answer is kind of all of that, is that there's been a fair amount of growth. And when you look at our business through Q3 and even into Q4, you know, the pipeline remains very strong. The waste streams, we continue to have a backlog of waste streams, not just in our network, but even outside our network. And so, you know, I'm very bullish about 2024 and beyond. And we had an Investor Day back in late March of last year. We talked about a five-year horizon of the business growing. I mean, nothing has changed in that area. As a matter of fact, I'm more bullish about Environmental Services than I was back then. That business continues to grow well, and I think that... When you think about margins, and we talked about this, and certainly some of our solid waste companies are getting into the hazardous waste business with the Republic Services acquisition of US Ecology in 2022. You know, they see that as where solid waste was 10 years ago, whereas the margin—there's margin expansion. You know, the Republic Services margins are, and the solid waste margins are in the high 20s. We see no reason to think that we can't do the same. And, and it just takes—I mean, there, there, they aren't making any more hazardous waste incineration. There's no greenfields out there. There hasn't been for over 20 years. And so I'm of the view that there's more opportunity for us and less opportunity to continue to grow, you know, that top line and that bottom line in environmental services. I think most of the people we talk to, in these conferences and others, are interested in that business more importantly than anything else. So, you know, I'm really bullish about that as we go into 2024 and beyond. Yeah, and let's pick up on that, the point you made... Mm ... Mike, which we're, I think most of us are familiar or aware of, is the scarcity value of these businesses, these assets, whether it's the incinerators, the landfills, the transportation assets, to some extent. I mean- Sure, absolutely. So price has been a lever that you've pulled, and largely we've seen, you know, as a result of the inflationary pressures that we've seen in the last couple of years. So what role is price gonna play in the company's strategy to drive the ES margins higher over the next several years? Yeah, I think that price is... We've been raising price and been price focused for 20 years, right? We've since the incinerators kind of came to be, and we've always been focused on our ability to drive price faster than inflation. Yeah, I don't see that changing. As we get through year-end and we go into 2024, even if inflation is starting to moderate, which is terrific, you know, I think that there's still an opportunity there to price. Maybe not as aggressively as we were in 2023 and 2022, when inflation was really high, but certainly, you know, our customers realize that there aren't a lot of alternatives, and we give good service. We are very timely, we give them slots, we give them what they need, and we've been able to drive price across the... And not just in, you know, in incineration and in landfills, but in industrial services and in field services. Because we are a very large player, because of our safety, because of our focus on safety and compliance, we've been able to charge a premium for those services. Like you said, transportation, it's hard to be a national player in there. We are the only national player now in industrial services, and it allows us to drive a better price even in those areas. Even if they don't have a ton of hazardous waste at the back end. Not to mention, there's cross-selling opportunities- Of course, of course. And we- And it's hard to put a finger on that because, you know, yeah, but certainly it's very real. Okay. The number of captive incinerators in the U.S. has come down fairly meaningfully over the last several years. You know, maybe along those lines, 3M closed a large incinerator in 2022. Mm-hmm. They've expanded their collaboration with Clean Harbors. And how's that relationship progressing? How did it progress in 2023? Yeah, so Eric? ... I'll touch on that, Jim. Thank you. Yeah, the 3M relationship and what we've been able to grow with 3M has been great. They are one of our largest customers, and as you mentioned, Jim, you know, they made the decision to close down their captive incinerator and send their waste streams to us, and we've been handling those waste streams for the last couple of years, providing great service, delivering things on time to them, and really have grown that relationship, and I think we'll begin to get new opportunities going forward. But when I look at that 3M relationship, and I think about it in the context of captives, I kind of view that relationship as maybe a blueprint for some further opportunities in the captive space. Other companies that have captive incinerators themselves, that are customer of ours today, when they go into turnarounds, we take their waste. We're actively engaging in discussions with them about their captive incinerators and the ability to perhaps take over those waste streams if they make the decision to close them down in the future, which I think is a real reality. If I'm a captive owner today, you know, running a captive incinerator really isn't my sweet spot as a company. There's large compliance that will continue to increase. There's a large cost there. So we really work with those customers, think about the costs, think about ways we can help them reduce costs by taking on those waste streams. I think we haven't really spoken about it a great deal, but I think, you know, bringing our new Kimball incinerator on at the end of this year and kind of really bringing it up to speed next year, I think that may be something that, again, for some of these captive owners, "Hey, there's an opportunity, there's some more capacity opening up here. I can get into an agreement with Clean Harbors' help, and I can really have a reliable resource in the future to deliver those waste streams." So, you know, 3M in and of itself, a great relationship, but I think something, you know, can really pay off as being that Blueprint in a future similar relationship. How many other captive- Yeah, so just to give you some numbers. Yeah. So there are 41 captive incinerators. 14 of them have rotary kiln type of technology that we would be able to use. None of them have... You know, they're standalone plants, they can't take waste from outside of that site, and so that's how the pie can grow here. The great thing is, as Eric mentioned, the great thing about 3M is that it's a case study. It's a case study of success, and so you always wonder, like: "Hey, if I'm going to close my captive incinerator," well, okay, you've got to, you've got to get in bed with somebody you can trust. You've got to- you have environmental liabilities, as Eric touched on, you have to remediate. I mean, so it's a big decision that these businesses have to make. The good news is that... Well, go call 3M, ask them how, how it's been so far. They've got to make sure that we can take their waste streams and deliver it every time, and those types of things, we've proven with 3M, and, and that's a, in my mind, that's a great... Eric said it right, great relationship, great customer, but more importantly, a case study for others. You know, 41, how many customers, how many companies would that comprise, do you think? I forget what it is. Jim, do you know how many customers that translates into? It's maybe 30? Thirty sites. Thirty- But, you know, the point also being, in all likelihood, these are companies that know you guys. We do business with a lot of them today. Every day. Right. 'Cause they do turnarounds, Jim, and so we take their waste- Right ... when they're in turnaround. Yeah. We have long-standing relationships. It comes down to, obviously, compliance and sustainability is very, very important, but it's a math exercise. Can we do that work, take that waste for them cheaper than they're doing themselves? Yeah. After you get through that, the good news is, we've been able to prove with 3M, we've been able to do that. It's a, it's a good winner for 3M. And it's a big company, it's probably a rounding error for them, but it's a big deal. And every plant has, as you guys all know, they all have, you know, cost saving initiatives every year, they have to go find, and they're kind of running out. So I think that's going to push more and more kind of our way. You know, can you characterize the conversations you may be having? Has it picked up in this area? Absolutely. Do you see- Especially with Kimball coming online, I think that they are eager to have these types of conversations. It's hard, right? Because you want to make sure you when you do it, as I've mentioned before on the stage, is that it creates once you get rid of the permit, there's no gives you backsies. It's gone. And it's hard to start up. You can't start it up again, and then you have the environmental compliance aspect- Right ... which is not immaterial. Right. Right. These are not... The one option is not to acquire these assets, because it's much more complicated. Well, not only that, but they're- Yeah ... they're captive incinerators. Exactly. I can only take the waste that's being produced by the plant. Right. You know, Dow has a plant, I'm making this up, and then at the back end, there's an incinerator. Well, I can buy the plant if I want to, but- Yeah ... I can only take that waste. Yeah. The permit doesn't allow it to take any other waste, which is kind of a good thing in one regard. Sure. Sure. We talked about inflation. Labor's been tight across the industrial economy. How many employees do you guys have right now? About 22,000. 22,000. 22,000. Okay. How has that labor availability, how much of a headwind has it been, do you think, to growth, or has it just been something you've had to, you know, constantly adjust to? Yeah, I'll take that one. I look at labor fairly closely, and I wouldn't describe it as a headwind to growth this year, Jim. I think when we look at labor, you know, we've done a lot of things to try to decrease retention. Obviously, with the great resignation and things, we felt some of that. So we implemented, you know, more training, more benefits, more opportunities for folks within our company to see a path to promotion and greater responsibility. So, you know, we've done all these things. We've implemented different systems, we've tracked them, and we've seen retention today is at its lowest point it's been since pre-pandemic, right? Our direct headcount, we've increased our direct headcount by about 600 folks this year, and really been able to utilize that to be a cost savings for us. You know, it reduces turnover. Obviously, turnover reduces, training costs reduce. When we hire somebody, we can't just put them in a billable position on day one, there's a time there. So all those things are helping us on the bottom line, and still helping us grow too. You've talked about this, I think, possibly most recently in the Q3 call about. And this is probably ongoing, but you did call out productivity and efficiency initiatives, to you know, help drive that margin expansion. Talk to us a little bit more about what- Yeah. - uh. I mean, when I think about our company, it's right in our tagline, it's our corporate mission, it's people and technology making a cleaner and safer environment, right? And so technology is a huge part of our business. Our founder, Alan McKim, is really, you know, he's founded this company, built this company on technology, as I just stated, and he's taken an active role. He was active before, he's taken an active role now in our technology play. But, you know, we started using, you know, RPA, probably the early aspects of RPA, a decade ago. But I would say five or six years ago, we really kind of got into RPA. Began in back office, you know, AP, things like that. But today, we're looking at AI technologies in several ways. Some of the biggest ones being in transportation, with low-cost routing. Yeah, the, and, with labor, scheduling out labor. A real interesting one that I was in a meeting the other day on, that we're exploring, is a technology that if you think about kind of what we call insight programs. So I'm out at a university, or I'm out at a hospital, or I'm out at a plant, and there may be some hazardous materials that I need to pack in a safe and efficient manner, to get it ready for transportation into its ultimate place of disposal. You know, two years ago, I was a chemist in that situation. I'm seeing all this waste, and I'm kind of doing the best I can through a checklist, a paper checklist in many ways, and packing things to the best of my ability. Now, we can kind of load up what that waste is, AI will tell us exactly how to pack it safely. Mm-hmm. So how to fit these containers into a drum or whatever the packing material may be. But how do I put like materials together so that there's no bad reaction to that? But even more importantly, it's efficient, and then I can put it on a truck, and I can bring it to its ultimate place of disposal, and those chemicals can be destroyed together. And so it's really, think about safety, think about speed, think about efficiency at the plant when it ultimately gets taken care of. All those things are being helped by this AI technology, and that's just really the tip of the iceberg for us. It's something that we've got a large team devoted to it. I think it'll continue to be a big part of our future. Yeah, I think technology's been a differentiator since Alan started the company. Nothing changes. I mean, he was. You know, he loves it, and he's focused on it, and we make. We don't talk about, you know, huge investments in technology. We make huge investments to keep it current. We spend, you know, $15 million a year versus, you know, $5 million and then $20 million. We make continuing investments in technology because we know that's a differentiator, and we know that's going to continue to be a differentiator. And as we get more complex, it's important that we get the right people at the right places. Mike, you were talking, and you alluded a couple of times to Kimball. Talk about this facility in Nebraska. How's it progressing? I mean, I'll take that one. Yeah. I was out there a couple of months ago. Okay. Mike, please chime in. Yep. But so back in October, we kind of had a topping off ceremony, we called it, where the largest piece of the steel structure was put on top of the facility. We announced, when we put our Q3 earnings out, how we had shifted kind of the start-up date to late 2024. Prior to that, we thought early 2025, so we've moved that ahead. It'll be late in the year, so, you know, it won't be producing for a long period of time, but it's great to see a large-scale project like that a little bit ahead of time, a little bit ahead of budget on time, and then still expecting kind of a overall $180 million spend. In terms of, you know, getting the facility up into production, the first thing I would mention, Jim, is I kind of view, and we kind of view the facility just as another spoke within the entire incinerator network, right? So, you know, if we look at the Eldo facility that we opened a couple of years ago, and the new Kimball facility is almost an exact replica- Mm-hmm ... a few extra bells and whistles from learnings. But it took about two years to ramp that facility up. We're probably on that same time horizon, but I think it'll really help us from a logistical perspective. You know, we have a strong backlog of waste now getting into certain facilities. This facility will be able to burn the nastiest and the dirtiest of the waste. We can begin rerouting things to Kimball, where it makes sense and where it eases logistics elsewhere in the company. So I think it comes on board late this year now, in 2024, ramps up through 2025, and is really kind of full tilt in 2026, and at that point, fully accretive within our network. The two things I'd add to that, it's good, it's good points, Eric, is that. Is that the reason why we moved it, we sent a public statement that we're going to open in late 2024 versus early 2025. It's only a few months, like, why would we bother? It's really just to tell the people in this room, to say that, "Hey, we're, we're going to be on time." You know, you think of a five-year project, a $180 million spend, you worry that there's going to be delays, supply chain challenges, and all kinds of other problems, and we built some of that into the numbers. So really just to tell you that. It's gonna be ready to roll in 2025. It's not gonna be a material number in 2024. In 2025, we're gonna be ready to roll. The other point I wanna mention is that although, you know, Eric's right, there's gonna be a year or so of kinda shaking it out, there's gonna be things that come up during the course of the year. There's gonna be compliance issues we're gonna solve and solve for. All that's very normal. We've done that before, but it's gonna be accretive to our ES margins. It's not gonna be me. These margins are gonna be still accretive to our. If the average number is 25 or whatever the number is, they're gonna be accretive to that. They're not gonna be at the 40% margin when this thing is rocking and rolling, but I just want people to know, don't walk away, that yeah, it's gonna be a tough 2025 as we get this thing up and running. It's gonna be starts, it stops. You know, utilization will be up, it's gonna be down a little bit because of the new, the new incinerator. But overall, I mean, it was, in Kimball-- I mean, Eldo, what we did in 2017, we're the benefit. We see that in 2023 and 2024 you see that in the margins, you see that in the numbers. I, I see the same type of growth trajectory in, in 2025 and beyond, you know. So I'm really excited about it. I mean, we kinda need it, kinda need it tomorrow, really. Does this generate a new customer relationship? It's mainly existing, I mean, isn't it? I mean, I think that, I think the answer is that the, the Kimball incinerator allows us to have more productive conversations in the captive environment. Because I do think people are saying, "Hey, this is a-- we got a one-time opening here of 70,000 tons of capacity. You want in? Now is the time." Because when you think about a captive, they-- the, the difference between them and, you know, Jim's Auto Body Shop, is that they can't stop the train. If they can't take the waste, the tanks fill up, operations stop. That's a problem. And so the-- if we know that we have 70,000 tons coming online, the captive knows that, well, we're gonna be able to take it because they're gonna be open, and so that's great. And so that type of thing is spurring that type of conversation, which I'm excited about. But that's not to say, just one final point, kinda, not to say that we need captive closing to be able- No ... to fill that plan. No. Right. There's plenty of demand we're seeing in the marketplace. There's tailwinds with reshoring, and there's tailwinds with infrastructure- That's right ... work that's on the horizon. You know, certainly, PFAS is an opportunity which we may talk about, but, lots of other things to kinda get us there. Yeah. You know, we're just thinking from a captive perspective, it might be that, that thing that gets a captive operator over the hurdle. Sure. Eric, I do wanna talk about PFAS. You guys talked about it at the Analyst Investor Day. Mm. Give us some sense as to what's happening there. There's still, I think, a lot of confusion. Yeah. We're still dealing through- Yeah, yeah, yeah. ... some of the regulatory, Yeah ... initiatives, and that hasn't all been sorted out. Yeah, so- Talk to us a little bit. So I love talking about PFAS. I think it's a real long-term catalyst for growth for Clean Harbors. Right now, we do about $40 million-$50 million in PFAS work. It's hard to measure exactly how much that is, but, you know, on $5 billion, that's not a, a really super big number. But, but that's mostly in firefighting foam, stuff that's heavily laden with PFAS. You know, the regulations aren't finalized yet. They're finalized on water, not finalized on soil yet. But the point that we've made to investors and to our customers, more importantly, is that we're the only company that has an end-to-end solution today that is scalable. When you read about some of our competitors having a PFAS solution, that's great, and that just validates it, but we have one. Is it, is it scalable? Is it working? We know today that our incineration can take PFAS today and destroy it. We've done two separate studies on this, up to 99.9999%. And so we know we have the lab equipment to test, but we have an end-to-end solution. Lab equipment to test just how much PFAS you have. Water remediation services, so we can clean the water, both drinking water and, you know, and disposable water. You know, the soil remediation team and, of course, the assets, whether it's an incineration, landfill, whatever the treatments facility is, we have it all today. And so when I hear a competitor talking about, you know, these solutions and the fact that we're getting a lot of questions on it, that's just great. That's great, let's go! I'm of the view that, you know, PFAS, it's gonna be—even if the regulation started tomorrow, even if the government said, "Yeah, here it is," it's gonna take time. But we're gonna... PFAS is just one more waste stream that we're gonna—that's gonna drive our operations for the next decade. And so, again, I, I'm excited about PFAS, but you've gotta take a longer-term view of that because it's gonna be—even if it decided, maybe they'd be stuck in the courts, it's gonna take time. And in the interim, though, we're taking work, we're doing it, and we're getting more waste. And we have a remediation group. It's about $150 million of revenue. When I say that's slow, a large-scale, slow remediation project team, I mean, that's all they're talking about is PFAS. They're, they're PFAS, PFAS, and more PFAS. And so that's really gonna be a growth engine for them for a long time, and that's scalable. Move to the SKSS business. Mm-hmm. Just shy of what? 20% of the- Yeah, a little under. Little less. Yeah. But we had a, you know, banner 2022. We did. Um, less- Less banner in 2023. Less banner. Less than that. Quite, quite a bit more volatility in this part of the business. Yeah ... given the contraction we've seen in oil prices. Right, yeah, first of all, given that, how satisfied are you with the performance of that business? Yeah, so, you know, we'll start with, first of all, the team. I mean, I think the team has done a great job of managing, you know, the price decreases that we faced. And the problem with the SKSS business is that, look, if the oil prices are up or down a little bit, we can manage through that. We can manage it because we can adjust the input prices because of our used motor oil collection business. So we're managing a spread, and so as long as oil prices go up and down a little bit, we can manage. But what happened in 2023 was that there were some large decreases, $0.50 decreases. That's a 10% decrease- Yeah ... right? A 20% decrease, and then another $0.30, and then another $0.30. Like, we can't, we collect oil from Jim's Auto Body Shop. We pay them for a dirty motor oil, a certain price. Takes us 8-10 weeks to work its way through the system before we sell it as base oil. That lag creates a, either a headwind or a tailwind, depending if oil prices are going up or going down. And in 2022, with the Iraq War, I mean, excuse me, the Ukraine War, I mean, that, oil prices went way up, and we were the beneficiary of that... to the good. And then 2023, it kind of came back down to earth, and we were. We suffered from that. And so the way I want investors to kind of think about it is as follows: look at—we're gonna do a lot of different things, whether it's blended oil, whether it's Group Three oil, which I'm sure we'll talk about. You know, that's gonna kind of keep us kind of growing at a reasonable rate. If oil prices are flat, we're gonna be about $200 million, $190 million. Oil prices going up, we'll do a little better. Oil prices go down, we'll do a little worse. And that's gonna be how we're gonna think about it, and we're gonna try to—and I don't like the fact that it's been pretty volatile. I get it. I get the fact that it's been pretty volatile. $120 million, $220 million, $300 million, $180 million. Like, okay, what's the right answer? The answer is that we're, these prices have been pretty volatile. We're trying to manage a number around $200. We're gonna do things like more blended oil, which is less volatile, more Group Three oil, again, less volatile. We're trying to do that and drive that type of business to try to keep that number in a reasonable range and stay away from the whipsaw things that get people kind of concerned and upset and wondering about what the real number is. Look, no one's happy about the fact that we had a missing Q3 because of plant productions and the oil business kind of suffering a bit. But at the end of the day, I think that the big business, the Environmental Services business, the reason why pretty much probably 95% of the people in this room are here for, that continues on kind of unabated. Yeah. And you've demonstrated, I think, certainly a better ability to manage the spread when we don't have quite that kind of- Right ... gyrations- That's right - We've seen in the market. That's right. Talk about the new initiative in that area as you move into. Yeah, so, you know, so Group III oil. Group III oil is used as a baseline for full synthetic oil or synthetic oil. And so you see it today, and so we, our plants can produce Group III today. The problem is that the source of that oil, if I'm going to Jim's Auto Body Shop, and then I go to a Mercedes dealership, it all, it's all one trip, it's all one truck, it all gets mixed together. And so the low-quality oil and the high-quality oil gets mixed, and we make a Group II today. We make a viscosity that's very close to Group III, but not there. And so what we're doing now is that, hey, we're being thoughtful about our route so that we're just going to the BMW, Audis, and Mercedes in one truck, and then the other truck's gonna go to Jim's, and Mike's, and Eric's Auto Body Shop to collect the, collect the lower quality motor oil in a way to kind of drive more Group Three into our network. We think there's 25 million gallons out there, mostly on the coasts, frankly, to kind of drive that type of growth, and we have some re-refining capacity in both sides of the country. So we think there's an opportunity to drive that. It's about $1-$1.50 more a gallon, kind of, of, of profitability embedded in Group Three. There's only one other maker in the country that make Group Three. Otherwise, it's Canada, or it's imported. So full synthetic, as that continues to be a bigger deal, we think there's an opportunity there to drive incremental profitability in Group Three and drive that profitability to make it less volatile. Really, I'm not trying to sit there and say: Hey, we're gonna get to $350 million-$400 million of EBITDA. I'm trying to solve for when oil prices start to slide a little bit, we can still deliver numbers that make sense to us, that we can grow and grow this business. I feel like these are just good ideas that we're having just to try to drive this business. The idea would be like, hey, we're at $200 million for 2023. Maybe we get to $300 million over the next 5 years, next 4.5 years, and that's really kind of the goal here. It's selling more blended, it's driving more network capacity, it's selling more, making more Group III, selling more Group III, and that's really kind of how we get there. How is the Kleen+ rebranding, was there anything- I mean- -you can say about- You know- - conversations you're having? Jim, you and I have talked about, you know- I know, clean up ... Clean... Clean Plus, and I mean, look at the end of the day, as more and more companies focus on sustainability, and they get, and that drives down into their business, and so that's gonna drive more people to think about our solution. And so we are looking at large fleets to try to drive that. But really, like, anywhere from elevator companies to printing shop, I mean, they want a solution. Oil's not going away. They want a solution that drives less energy, more sustainability. This is coming to us. And so I think there's a long-term catalyst there around using re-refined motor oil, and that's gonna help us kind of maintain the spread. Yeah. Is there a way for folks to maybe think about the margin profile of this business? Yeah, I mean, I'd say that, you know, it does bounce around a little bit. Yeah. Like in 2022, it was 30%- Yeah. ... now it's closer to 15%-20%. I mean, I'm more... You gotta think about it, 'cause oil prices go up or down, and, and our charge for oil, when we charge oil, it's a revenue stream. When we, when we pay for oil, it's a cost. And so that margin gets really weird when we switch over to charge for oil, 'cause all that re-- now, now it's revenue, and that hurts our margins. But when I think of, when I think of the SK business, I really, I really want the Street to think about, the way we think about it, is in absolute dollar amount, and not get so hung up on the margin for that business. Because depending on the accounting rules, if it's, if it's charged for oil, well, then it's revenue, and that's gonna hurt. If it's a pay for oil, well, it's a cost. Maybe margins get better than that. Company's had a long history on the M&A side. You've done a couple recently, one fairly sizable. How satisfied are you with the way that played out, and- Yeah A nd how has the integration gone, the cross-selling- Yeah - with Hydro? Yeah, so I think you're alluding to HydroChem, right? I am. Obviously, you know, the HydroChem acquisition kind of put ourselves, Clean Harbors and HydroChem together, kind of the 1 and 2 players in the industrial space. So really good acquisition. It's played out better than we thought. I think we gained more synergies out of the deal. I think we brought more value to it by putting kind of the largest players together. Still only about 25% of the overall market, so there's still a lot of white space there to win. But lots of cross-sell opportunities, probably a little bit more than we thought there. And also, I think it allowed us to execute some of our pricing strategies more effectively, right? Because we view a lot of these customers, they use us from an industrial services position, they use us from a technical services position on the waste. So we're able to really kind of packaged together some deals, and I think that helped. But you know, probably one of the best, looking back now, almost two years later, a great deal, certainly one of our largest acquisitions. And the acquisition of Thompson last year- Yeah - kind of a bolt-on into that space, has helped as well. So, you know, acquisitions, Jim, as you know, huge part of our growth. Our Vision 2027 model, that played a large piece, in that strategy as well, and, you know, that'll continue to be, where we... Our, our preferred kind of capital allocation strategy going forward, I think. Is there any color on just how that pipeline looks? You know, doing a deal like this, does it, you know, has it given you a lot more confidence or given you more confidence about pursuing some of these types of potentially larger deals? Larger deals, yeah. Yeah. Well, first, just kind of on the overall maybe landscape of what we're seeing, I mean, I think even in the recent weeks and months, we've seen a few environmental-type deals- Mm. come through. I think that's indicative of, you know, if you look at things that go by my desk, or Mike's desk, or Brian Weber, the gentleman that runs our business development, I think lots of opportunities, at least kind of a couple a week in terms of books that we see, things of all sizes. So small singles and doubles, tuck-ins, to larger deals. Sometimes when we think about larger deals, when I'm talking to folks, people think of public deals only and public companies that might be out there. You know, there's a lot of sizable deals, chunkier deals, kinda $400 million or $500 million or more, kind of in the private space as well, that we're taking a look at. But in terms of, you know, the ability now and the confidence to take on a deal of any size, I mean, we have a great team. We have a well-established playbook of taking in acquisitions, bringing them onto our platform. One of the things that's unique is typically we bring them onto our IT platforms on day one, which takes a lot of noise. It's hard work to get them on day one, takes a lot of planning, but it takes a lot of noise out of the system going forward, makes the integration a little bit easier after that initial pain. I think it brings the synergies to the deal a little bit quicker. So, we'll continue to do the deals. There's lots of opportunities out there. We've got a team to do it. You know, right now, I don't think we're kinda going off away from kind of our swim lanes. Certainly, there's opportunities there that we think about kinda long term, but looking to really allocate our capital kind of in businesses that are complementary to where we are now. Speaking to which, you also have the balance sheet- Yeah ... too. Talk a little bit about that. With net leverage is- Two times. 2 times, and probably going lower? We're right around 2x. Yeah, so really strong balance sheet. That gives us more confidence to be able to do larger deals. Going back to HydroChem, it was a situation where we levered up and then quickly kind of brought that leverage back down. So as you say, Jim, we'll close out this year at about 2x. You know, I think as we think about that capital or debt structure in particular, we look out. I think we kinda wanna be - would like to be in the 2-3 turn space. Would we go something higher to do a larger deal? We would, but only with a path to kinda get that back down. Okay. Mike, talk to us about the co-CEO role. It's unusual. Yeah. And, you know... But, But, but it seems, you know, talk to us about how it's played out within Clean Harbors- Sure A nd also with customers and, you know, how that's- Yeah ... evolving. Yeah. So, you know, first of all, I wanna say, I read this the other day, it's some Harvard study that there's been 92 co-CEO structures, and the average return has been 40% better than the market during that time horizon. So it can work, and it certainly has worked. Now, when you think about it from the outside, it's 92, so it's not really a good example. But anyways, I like the stat anyways, I'm using it. When you think about the co-CEO structure, from the outside in, you're like, "Well, this seems odd. Like, who's in charge? Who's gonna make the call? Are you guys gonna have to arm wrestle for it? Like, how's it gonna work out, right?" At the end of the day, you know, as the founder of the company, Alan McKim, you know, kinda saw this thing coming, you know, he actually did less, and less, and less. He's still the CEO of the company, he still ran the town hall, still on the earnings calls, but to be fair, he has given myself and Eric Gerstenberg, my co-CEO, as well as Eric Dugas, kinda more and more responsibilities. I mean, I... When investor conferences, as you know, he went to, like, maybe 1 a year, maybe not. So, I was more involved as the CFO, and more involved with the strategy, and more involved in that, and Eric Gerstenberg was as well. Although it looks really unique and different to the outside, from the inside, it doesn't feel very different at all. Like, Eric and I, along with Eric Dugas, you know, helped develop the strategy that we're executing on now for years. And we got more and more engaged in that, and the M&A activities, and dispositions, and other things, the capital allocation, those are all done. You know, Alan was in the room, but we all had a vote, and so the strategy we see today is the strategy we have today. As an investor, you know, you want that smooth transition. You don't want, you know, a new CEO gonna hard left, hard right. You know, we're actually doing pretty well, and so you kinda want more of it, and I think you're gonna get that with Eric and I. You know, Eric and I have, we're both different people, of course, but, you know, he's an engineer, I'm a former accountant. We're data-driven. We're data-driven, we're process-driven. You know, that's what makes us, makes the company work. We get into the details. We kinda don't mind rolling up our sleeves and really understanding things, and that's what you're gonna get more of. So I, in my mind, I feel like, you know, as an investor, I'd be more concerned about, you know, a new CEO, him or her, kind of taking a hard left with the company or a hard right, and what the impact would that be. I think that so far, I mean, it's only been 9 months, maybe 10 months, so far, so good. I can affirmatively say, Jim, there's been no arm wrestling that I've seen. I'd lose. Yeah, you touched on this, the Q3 was not the cleanest quarter. Mm. And yet, I thought this was interesting, the reaction of the market, and I think I'm kinda curious what your view of it is. There's a certain amount of stability, consistency, and performance that you guys have had over the last couple of years. Mm. You know, obviously, you had built up some capital and some goodwill. Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right, Jim. I think we've had a pretty good record of meeting or beating street expectations. We've gone six years without having an actual miss on our books, and so, hey, look, I feel like, I feel like those were things that, the reason why the street, First of all, they had a new CEO and CFO, so they gave us, they thought we were doing a great job, so they kind of gave us a pass. But more importantly, I think that it really was a history of consistently meeting or beating, and the fact that these were kind of one-timey type events, I think. These plans were kind of, they all kind of went sideways at the same time, that caused us this miss. You know, I think that's kind of the drove the answer, saying: Look, if I like the story, the fact they had a miss by a little bit is kind of no big deal because the answer, the long-term answer is unchanged. And so I think I'd have a different answer if it's like, hey, it's macro factors are going the wrong way, and here are the new results, and here's how I feel about 2024, it's all changed, I'm going to throw my hands up in the air and start again. That didn't happen. Yeah. I mean, clearly, what you're seeing in the market suggests that there's still pretty healthy business conditions, certainly on the ES side of the- No real changes from what we talked about. Yeah. Before we end, anybody have any questions? Do you mind taking one? Sure. Sure. We may want to repeat this for the- So, the question was, if we had a large deal or any deal, does Alan have a- You would have... Well, it has played out, right? I mean, we have had those conversations, and we have three different people with three different views, and I think that it's collaborative. We go through the pros and cons. Well, I mean, I think every decision we've made as a board to do a material acquisition has been unanimous. So I think we want to try to continue that trend. If the answer is that not just Alan, as chairman of the board, you know, how does he think about it, but do other board members have some real strong concerns? And so the answer is that we've had a unanimous consent on every deal we've done, and I don't see that changing. Gotcha. We don't go backwards, Jim. You may want to just shorten that question just for pricing. The question is, look, there's a lot of capacity coming on the network. Yeah. Is that going to create some price problems for us and others in the network? Because there's going to be a lot more capacity kind of coming online in the very short term. And the answer to that question. So my opinion on the question is that no, because there's so much demand out there, and we're backed up, and we have backups behind backups of stuff we can't, we can't handle right now, nor can the industry. And I went to an industry conference last September, and I, and I almost got my tires slashed because people are looking for slots and looking for opportunities to kind of get rid of their waste. And so my view on that is that if they, if they both open it up tomorrow, I think pricing would be unchanged. My opinion. My opinion. I think we're going to have to end it there. Okay, great. Great. Jim, thanks. Good questions.